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“You’d be surprised, Blondie. When Nina found me, I’d been wandering around on my own for several years, barely surviving.”
The predator beneath Ava’s skin prowled forward as her heart skipped a beat. “When Nina found you?”
Remmus nodded, but didn’t turn. “I trespassed on her clan lands, and she had every right to kill me. Kaien wanted to. Fortunately, they noticed I was a youngling still—seventeen, despite my efforts to appear older—and took me in.”
“You weren’t born into Nina’s clan?”
“Nope. If I had been, I would’ve recognized the psychic boundaries that designated her territory. Walked right through them and hadn’t even noticed.”
“Where were you parents?”
Remmus flinched and something dark funneled through the bond between them. “They were dead by that time.” He shook his head, and the shadowy feeling in their bond dissolved. “Nina and Kaien were the first Raeths that actually cared about my wellbeing. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t originally of their clan. Nina saw a youngling and took me in.”
Emotions warred within her. While she could barely stand the thought of Remmus being young, alone, and vulnerable—much in the way she had been—his revelation had called to light the fact that Aidan’s information on him was very wrong.
Remmus hadn’t been born into Nina’s clan as the alpha wolf had stated.
“You were clanless as a child?”
At the word, Remmus shifted to face her, his hand falling away from the machine. “I thought you knew? Aidan said he’d—he said he’d told you about my background.”
“He thought you were born into Nina’s clan.”
“Aidan was away when Nina found me—didn’t return for a few decades.” Remmus grimaced. “Easy mistake to make.”
Silence fell between them, odd and heavy. Ava knew Remmus couldn’t change his past—and she didn’t want him to—but knowing he’d been clanless was a kick in the gut. What she’d thought she knew was no longer true. Her heart thudded behind her breastbone, a sudden spike of fear rolling through her.
She needed an escape, even if it was only temporary. “Do you mind if I go on a run?”
“Of course not.” His smile felt false. “I’ll be here. Besides, it’s the sunlight and silver part next, and I don’t want you exposed by mistake anyway.”
Nodding, she swung open the door and heard it slam behind her. Rushing for the outdoors where she could clear her head, Ava tried not to worry about what his past might mean for their future.
Chapter Eighteen
Sovereign, may I return to clan lands?
Remmus’ request went unanswered once more, and he hesitated to ask Kaien. Everyone in his clan was on edge. Even with the potent magic that lived in her veins, pregnancy had sapped Nina’s strength, and Remmus didn’t want to intrude, but he needed to speak with Kaien and check if the silver was still present in his bloodstream.
If silver poisoning wasn’t the culprit, the only remaining possible cause was his coercion. That would pose a far greater problem. Since the mating bond had appeared, the urge to harm himself had increased ten-fold.
The framework of the curse recognized what the bond meant—and it was slowly but surely strangling the life out of him. If he were to finalize the bond, the backlash would be immense and unrelenting. Remmus didn’t want to think about what it’d mean for the long run or whether it could somehow transfer to Ava and sully her with its darkness.
There was no solution for him, and he would never allow harm to her.
When he’d awoken this morning, a pounding headache had nearly made it impossible to focus. The ache had escalated throughout the day whenever he utilized his psychic gifts.
It’d taken him almost twice the amount of time it normally would to recode the HVAC at Seth’s pack house yesterday. Something was affecting his psychic abilities and causing him to lose the finely-tuned mechanics of his technopathy. To him, it was all the same: failure.
The moment he’d given in and dragged the blade across his forearm, he’d nearly doubled over from the reverberation in his mind. It had blinded him from within, a sharp, stabbing pain that throbbed between his temples.
Blood crusted beneath his fingernails, thick and red. He’d combatted the coercion too long, and now he was paying the price. As a child, he’d wrongly assumed that holding off longer would help him eventually conquer it, but he learned all too soon that the more he resisted, the worse the penance.
He had a mate to think about now. Worrying about what Ava would do once she found out—and what she would say—had his mind twisting in knots. She’d undoubtedly find him to be a monster, a twisted man who couldn’t contain his own demons.
When he’d revealed his childhood clanlessness to her yesterday, the fear that’d rebounded through their mating bond had been potent. She’d returned from her run more centered, but had quickly excused herself when they’d teleported back to Riaz’s den. He had worried about her all night.
Remmus scrubbed at the remaining flecks of blood around wounds that were sealing up of their own accord. Given the energy it took to heal them, his stomach was demanding sustenance again, but he'd deal with that later.
