Strangely, where hard strength wouldn’t have moved him, the gentle nudge did. Wolfe stepped back.
“You will have to ask Rui when she wakes up. Perhaps she will ask you the same. Why is the Dragon’s Eye so important toyou, warrior? That you would fight the woman you love to take it from her?”
Wolfe stumbled another step back at that, his heart thumping thunderously, his breathing belabored.
“I…” he thrust a shaking hand through his hair, pulling it back from his brow, his fingers clawing into the back of his skull, as if he could somehow squeeze the right answers into being.
“Why don’t you mull on that for a while, big guy,” Ere said in a low voice, his tone strangely gentle, but firm.
“Sorin and I will watch over Rui and ensure that no further harm comes to her. When she awakens, and if she intends to compete in the afternoon matches, the choice is hers. We won’t stop her. And neither will you be able to.”
Wolfe took his words for what they were. A dismissal.
He looked once more at Rui’s resting form. Every fiber of his being told him to stay by her side. But he had no claim on her.
He had a mission to accomplish. A vendetta to fulfill.
Ere was wrong.
He didn’t “love” Rui. No man who loved his woman would do what Wolfe was doing—fighting to take what she wanted away from her.
Fightingherif need be.
But…
He sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone else hurt her. Fuck the Queen and her goons. Wolfe always had and always would play by his own rules.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
Rui’s eyes rolled restlessly beneath her lids as her mortal body healed with immortal strength.
As she rested both body and mind, her flesh knit, skin closed, and heart pumped steadily to fuel her veins with new blood. What would have taken the average human weeks to recover, took only hours for Rui. Her wounds healed so rapidly, her limbs sometimes twitched with a tingling, electric sensation.
Perhaps the Master granted her this small, exceptional Gift to help her fulfill the mission. The Universal Balance depended upon their success, after all.
In the meantime, she dreamed.
Not surprisingly, her thoughts revolved around Wolfe, her most coveted treasure. But the dreams did not show her the grown man she’d come to adore. Instead, they showed her his past. So real, she knew they could only be memories…
“Who was the soldier, Ma?” Thirteen-year-old Wolfe asked his mother both tentatively and stubbornly.
This was obviously not the first time he asked the question.
“Don’t ask things you won’t understand,” she answered as if by rote. Clearly, she anticipated and heard this question often.
“How will I understand if I don’t ask, and if you won’t tell me?” he argued.
His mother sighed but didn’t speak further, concentrating on her sewing.
Wolfe waited for her answer as he completed his chores, swept the small hut they lived in, put away the heavy stone pots.
Still, she didn’t speak.
He heaved a frustrated but resigned breath and was about to duck outside when she asked with a frantic edge to her voice, “Where are you going? When will you return?”
She never used to ask him these questions. He’d wandered far and wide, doing all manner of odd jobs to earn coin for the both of them since he was half his current height. He was a man now, taller and broader than most, and he still had room to grow. He felt it in his bones.
He was a wicked fighter. Killed his first man when he was ten. No one in their right mind challenged him. But his mother was nervous every time he left the hut, even when it was just a day trip to hunt.