Chapter 20 Kiera
KIERA
Kiera sat very still in Brux’s lap, hardly daring to breathe as he began, haltingly, to tell her what had happened.
At first, his voice was low and rough and uneven, as though the words themselves hurt him.
Maybe they did. He looked away from her as he spoke, staring at some point over her shoulder as though the curved wall of the home-dome had turned transparent and he was seeing another world entirely—a world that no longer existed.
“My people had a home once,” he said at last. “A real world of our own. Forests…and mountains…and snow so deep it would cover a male to his chest in the cold season. The air smelled of trees and ice and wood smoke. We hunted there…lived there…raised our young there. And I had a mate–so beautiful, so sweet and kind…” He swallowed hard. “But then the Darklings came.”
Kiera didn’t interrupt. She only sat quietly in his lap, listening, though she could feel the tension growing in him with every word.
“They came like a sickness,” Brux went on, his deep voice going even rougher.
“Like shadows with teeth. They poured across our world and took everything. Villages, cities…whole bloodlines.” He shook his head.
“There was no fighting them. Not really. You could kill one or two, sometimes more, but there were always more behind them.”
His jaw tightened and for a moment he couldn’t seem to go on.
“And your mate?” Kiera asked softly.
At once, pain flashed across his face so nakedly that her heart fisted in her chest.
“She was in our home when the Darklings came, and I couldn’t get to her in time.
By the time I reached her…she was gone.” His voice went hoarse and he paused for a moment, his face twisting in pain.
“She was the one the Goddess gave me. The one meant to steady my mind and share my life. Lykans are not like some other Monstrum, Kiera—we do not take mates lightly. The Goddess grants us only one. One true female in all the universe.” He looked down at his hands for a moment and then back at her, his blue eyes dark with sorrow.
“One mate to tether us to reason and call us back from the void. One Soul—Bond for a lifetime.”
Kiera felt a little chill run over her skin.
“Only one?” she asked softly.
He nodded.
“Yes. That is the way of my people. Or it was.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “The Goddess gave me mine, and I failed her.”
“Brux—” she began, but he shook his head sharply.
“No.” His voice cracked on the word. “You don’t understand.
She died because I couldn’t save her.” He drew in a ragged breath.
“I should have gotten her out. I should have protected her. I should have died before letting the Darklings touch her.” His hands clenched into fists. “Instead, I lived. And she did not.”
Kiera’s heart ached for him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she protested. “How could it have been? You said yourself there was no stopping them.”
“But I was her male.” Brux’s voice dropped to a rough whisper.
“Her mate. My whole purpose was to keep her safe, and I failed in the one thing I was made for.” He looked at her then, and the naked grief in his gorgeous blue eyes nearly undid her.
“So how can I deserve another? How can I ask the Goddess for a second blessing when I could not keep the first?”
“Oh, Brux,” Kiera whispered–her heart was breaking for him.
He laughed then, but there was no humor in it—only pain.
“That is why I think maybe this is punishment,” he said.
“Or judgment. The Goddess let me find you—let me scent you and know what you could be to me—but perhaps she never meant for me to have you fully. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t shift for so long…
why I was trapped in my primal form so long.
” He shook his head. “Because I am not worthy of another mate.”
Kiera lifted a hand at once and cupped his cheek, forcing him to look at her.
“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.”
He stared at her, startled into silence.
“What happened to your mate was not your fault,” she repeated, more fiercely now.
“You didn’t ask for your world to burn. You didn’t ask for the Darklings to come.
And you did not kill her.” Her thumb stroked over the hard line of his cheekbone.
“Surviving something awful doesn’t make you guilty, Brux. It makes you alive.”
For a moment he only looked at her, and she could see the terrible longing in him—the desperate need to believe her, warring with years of grief and guilt.
“I want to believe you,” he said at last, his voice so rough it was almost a growl. “Gods, Kiera, I want to believe so badly.”
But even as he said it, something in his face began to change.
Kiera saw it happen in real time.
The vivid blue of his eyes flickered and then darkened, the color draining out of them like dye in water, until gold began to creep in around the edges of his irises.
His pupils widened too, going strange and feral, and a shiver ran visibly through his big body.
The hand at her waist tightened convulsively and his chest rose and fell in a harder rhythm.
“Brux?” she said sharply, sitting up a little straighter in his lap. “What’s wrong?”
He tried to answer, but when he opened his mouth, the words seemed to catch in his throat.
His jaw clenched and the tendons stood out in his neck.
Then Kiera felt something shift under the hand she still had cupped to his cheek.
Not flesh moving normally, but something deeper—bones and muscle and skin rippling beneath her palm in a way that made her blood run cold.
“Oh my God—what’s happening?” she gasped.
“Forgive…me,” he ground out, his voice already roughening into something deeper and less controlled. “I cannot hold this form when I feel so…so…”
He shook his head sharply, as though he was trying to clear it, but the gesture only seemed to make things worse. The angles of his face were changing, growing sharper and longer. The short fur on his jaw and throat thickened before her eyes.
“Gods…” he muttered hoarsely. “Not now. I can’t…shift…now…”
Kiera felt a spike of panic.
No–no, he couldn’t change back now—not when she was just now getting to know the real Brux!
“What can I do to hold you in this form?” she demanded. “Tell me how to help you—anything. Tell me and I’ll do it.”
For a moment, Brux only stared at her, breathing hard.
It was clear he was trying to hold onto words and thought and reason at the same time that something more primal was dragging at him from underneath.
His chest heaved. His golden eyes shut briefly, as though he was gathering himself by sheer force of will.
Then he managed,
“More…contact…”
Kiera frowned.
“More contact?”
He nodded once—jerkily, as though even that motion cost him something.
“Yes,” he said, the word rough and strained. “Every time you touch me, you pull me back from the edge. From the void.” He swallowed hard and tried again. “Your hands…your scent…your skin.” His voice dropped lower, rougher. “I need more of you.”
Kiera’s heart began to drum in her chest. He was slipping away from her and she couldn’t bear it!
Then she looked at him properly…at the golden eyes…the lengthening angles of his face…the way his whole body seemed tense and unstable, like something caught between two forms and not fully able to settle into either. And beneath all that—beneath the fear and grief and wildness—she saw need.
Not just emotional need–physical need. She saw a terrible, helpless urgency to be close to her in every possible way and all at once, she understood exactly what he needed.
“Oh, I get it,” she said, nodding.
Brux’s gaze flickered uncertainly over her face, as though he feared she would recoil now that she knew what he was asking.
Instead, Kiera took a breath and slid out of his lap.
“Come on,” she said.
For a moment he looked so confused—and so heartbreakingly close to being completely lost to his other form—that Kiera wanted to wrap her arms around him and just hold him right there.
But she had an idea now, and if she was right, they needed somewhere warmer, softer, and more private than the living area.
She held out her hand to him.
“Come with me,” she said again.
Brux looked at her hand as though he couldn’t quite make sense of it. Then, slowly, he put his much larger hand in hers.
Kiera bit her lip–his skin was hot, almost feverishly so. But even that simple touch seemed to steady him a little, as though the change in him had paused just enough for him to follow her.
She led him down the curved hallway toward the bedroom, her pulse hammering with nerves and fear and something else she didn’t want to examine too closely. Maybe excitement? Need? Once inside the bedroom, she turned to face him.
Brux stood in the middle of the room, big and tense and half—wild, his eyes still mostly gold, glowing like twin suns in the dim light. His massive chest heaved with each ragged breath–the fur along his jawline thick and dark and his fangs still too prominent.
He was a barely contained storm of primal power, and every instinct in Kiera’s body screamed that she should be afraid.
But she wasn’t. Not of him. To her, she was still just Buck–the big, protective wolf she’d been living and sleeping with for weeks now. Buck in another form wasn’t scary–he was someone she cared about and wanted to help–no matter what it took to help him.
“Wait just a minute,” she told him, her voice firmer than she felt.
Then, before she could lose her nerve, she reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. It fell in a soft whisper to the floor. Her bra went next, baring her breasts.
Brux made a sound—half breath, half growl–deep and hungry. His eyes raked over her exposed skin, lingering on the heavy swell of her breasts and the peaks of her nipples already getting tight in the cool air.