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He’s dying.
“I can take you out there in the shuttle tonight,” Valeria said. “I don’t know how much time he has but we can leave right now.”
Dalk’s tail flicked for yes, but he still said nothing. Tears choking at the back of my throat, I suddenly found myself filling the silence.
“I’ll go with him!”
Dalk tensed, his expression tightening. He didn’t look at me.
“I’m going to take Dalk out there in the shuttle,” Valeria said to me, “but depending on what’s going on he might be coming back here on irkdu and then by foot. That’s a long, dangerous journey with a human along for the ride and only him to look out for you.”
“But-!”
“Fiona,” Valeria said gently, “Dalk may want to stay in the Sea Sands for some time after this, to visit with his tribe and to take some time to mourn. He won’t be able to escort you here if he isn’t coming back.”
If he isn’t coming back?
My throat closed with sudden panic.
He’d come back eventually... Wouldn’t he? This was Dalk! He was always there, staring and glaring and growling complaints at me! There was no way he’d go back to the Sea Sands and just stay there...
Would he?
But he hated the Deep Sky. He disliked most of the people and he loathed Gahn Thaleo. He disdained the use of water and held contempt for the landscape.
He didn’t want to be here.
The only thing keeping him here was...
Me.
And I’d just given him as good a reason as any to walk away from me. I’d all but told him we didn’t have a chance, didn’t have a future, unless it was secured by the mate bond.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever known true regret until that moment. I wanted to take back everything I’d said, not because my concerns weren’t real and still alive inside me, but because of the timing of them. I’d put a deep crack of doubt between us and now that crack was only going to be widened, turned into a chasm, by physical distance.
I wanted, needed, to physically hold him here. To grab his hand and make him stay. Or, at the very least, to get some assurance from him that he’d come back to me.
But how selfish would that be? In this moment of devastating grief, when his uncle was dying, to yank at Dalk’s hand like a petulant child and whine, but what about me?
Dalk was still tense and silent. In that silence, I could sense his pain, soundless and intangible yet recognizable as a dark shadow under stone. I remembered the bludgeoning blow I’d felt when I’d learned my Nan wasn’t going to make it. I knew that shadow. Knew his pain by heart.
“Dalk...” I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, but I knew how much that human inclination annoyed him. Helpless, wordless, I stared at him while he raised his gaze from the floor and turned it, not to me, but to Valeria.
“I will go now,” he said.
“Are you sure that... That I can’t...” That I can’t come with you?
Only then did Dalk finally look at me. When he did, his pain was no longer a shadow but it became blinding, like looking into the sun. Tears spilled down my cheeks, sorrow spearing me at his expression. My reaction was physical and instinctive. A reflexive motion I couldn’t stop any more than I could stop my own heart beating. I stumbled forward and I grabbed his hand.
“I must do this alone,” he said quietly, looking down at our joined hands. I thought he’d let mine drop, and he did eventually, but only after giving my inner wrist an achingly tender caress with the calloused pad of his thumb.
He let go.
It hurt.
“Dalk. I-”
I was wasting time. I couldn’t tell him I was sorry. I couldn’t beg him to come back.
