“You were in terrible pain, Teagan. The moment I knew it was safe to send you to sleep, I did. I put you in the ground to heal. You have been there for two risings.”
She knew he meant the rising of the moon. Two nights. Forty-eight hours. He’d fed her. That meant he gave her blood. He’d brought her out of the ground. Cleaned her. Cuddled her. She bit her lip again. As much as it was all his fault, he’d still been thoughtful. She couldn’t have faced all that. Not blood and dirt.
“Do bugs crawl all over us when we’re in the ground?”
His eyebrow shot up. “Bugs?”
“Andre, I don’t mind insects, but not crawling all over me.”
“I will do my best to keep that from happening.”
“And from now on we make decisions together,” she pressed.
He was silent for a long moment. Too long. She went back to narrowing her eyes at him. He so deserved narrowed eyes and a black scowl. Her meanest one.
He sighed. “Lifemates cannot tell an untruth to each another. You are not always rational, Teagan, and I do not argue well.”
She was outraged. “I am very rational.”
He shook his head. “You are not. And you admitted already you have trouble with anyone telling you what to do. What happens when I issue an order and you do not obey?”
“You do not issue orders, Andre. I do not obey.” Now, finally, she knew why people in books were sometimes described as “tearing their hair.” Because she wanted to tear at hers. He was impossible. Standing there, looking all gorgeous from his way superior height and telling her she wasn’t rational. Whatever.
“It was not rational to come here alone and go into the mountains with a serial killer who I will add was also a serial rapist.”
She did grab her long braid and yank. “You cannot possibly use that as an example. I didn’t know he was a serial killer.”
He was silent. His blue eyes had that faint trace of amusement in them. She could never resist that. Still. She was entirely rational at all times. She didn’t want to think about any of this right now. She needed to be normal, even if just for a short while. She’d discuss life-changing decisions with him when she wasn’t so emotional, because she was rational. Feeling better, she took a breath and let it out.
“Thank you for this evening. The wake-up, I mean. That was very thoughtful of you to remove me from the ground and . . . um . . . feed me. I’m not ready for reality yet.”
“I am aware of that, sivamet. I am happy to take care of those things for you. You will be ready in time, but for now, I enjoy taking care of you. The idea of you taking blood from another man does not sit well with me. We both have things to learn.”
That released about a million butterflies in her stomach. She lifted her gaze to his, trying for rational and practical. “I’m going into that little town to report that Armend Jashari is dead and someone needs to come up and get his body. Then I need to talk to the village police or whatever and tell them about the women he killed. After that I have to call Grandma Trixie and tell her I met someone.”
She could see, by the way his face darkened and his eyes went ice-cold, that once again he didn’t think she was being the least bit rational or practical.
15
Andre stood outside the entrance to the cave, looking up at the night sky. Gray and misty, not even the clouds could be seen. “A storm is coming in,” he announced. “A real one.”
“As opposed to a fake one?” Teagan asked, smiling up at him.
Teagan was full of smiles, he knew, because she was getting her way. It wasn’t rational or practical. He’d explained to her that it wasn’t a good idea for Carpathians to draw attention to themselves. He’d stupidly mentioned that he could easily get someone to come up the mountain, find the body and eventually discover the bodies of the women Armend Jashari had killed.
She had jumped all over that and argued if he could do that, he could protect her in a village with so few people. So she was making him just as irrational as she was—because he couldn’t say no to her. Not when he felt her need to do something normal, something human. Not when he could tell she’d buried her fear, but it was there. She was terrified and still holding it together. Mostly he couldn’t tell her no because he loved her and he wanted to give her everything she wanted and he couldn’t give her what she wanted most.
Not just couldn’t. If he was honest, he would never give her that, never take back that he’d brought her fully into his world even if it was possible—which it wasn’t. He hadn’t known she’d suffer the way she had, but still, it was done. She was his. She would get over being angry—and he could admit her anger was justifiable—but she wasn’t the type of woman to hold on to anger.
He’d said she wasn’t practical, but she was. She knew they couldn’t reverse the conversion. Because she couldn’t deal with it, she buried it along with her fears and turned to human normal. She would let him deal with Jashari’s death and the bodies on the mountain, but she just wanted to walk through the streets and look into store windows. Normal.
Andre shook his head and reached out to take her hand. She was trembling, but she didn’t hesitate. He needed to give her something else. Teagan admitted she was afraid of everything but she didn’t want to allow fear to rule her. She would accept the challenge of her new life. He had to give her time.
He closed his hand around hers and drew her to him. “Do you want to fly? By yourself, I mean. You doing it, not me.”