As if he hadn’t heard her. As if he hadn’t just asked her that.
She was not surprised as he turned back to the kitchen area, and as she watched him move, she remained so confused. It was him… and yet not Kane at all.
He opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk to check the date. “Still good. I guess the wolven stays here regularly. Oh, look, an apple. May I please feed you?”
Nadya opened her mouth. Hesitated. “No, thank you.”
As he pivoted around again, he frowned. Then he came back over to her. “May I give you my vein?”
“Oh, no.” She put her palms up as she flushed. “No. I am fine.”
In the silence that followed, she became achingly aware of the height of him as he loomed above her, so vital, so healed… so beautiful in a masculine way.
When he sat back down next to her, he put his elbows on his knees, propped his chin on his linked hands, and stared at the floor.
“I don’t know what she did to me.” He shook his head. “All I know is that I came awake in her hut, and she told me she could save me.”
“Who was she? A healer?”
“No, she was something else entirely. She was mystical, she was… well, it sounds crazy, but she was of another world.” He held up his forefinger to emphasize the point. “That I am very sure of.”
A tingling ran down Nadya’s spine. “Was it the Scribe Virgin?”
“I don’t think so… but I’m not sure I’d know as I’ve never met the species’ creator before.” He shrugged. “She didn’t introduce herself, so maybe she was.”
“What did she say to you?”
“She offered me a resurrection. But then… I can’t remember what happened. It gets hazy for me after that.”
He held his hands out, turning them palm down and splaying all ten fingers. Then he flipped them over as if he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
“All I knew for sure was that I had to get back to you,” he murmured. “It was all about going into that hellhole and bringing you out.”
Nadya’s throat tightened. “You didn’t need to save me.”
He glanced over at her. “And you didn’t need to save me. So we’re even, aren’t we.”
As she stared back at him, she realized that they had been intimates when she had been tending to his body. Now, they were all but strangers, and she couldn’t imagine him naked.
Then again, maybe that was because of what he was like now.
“I took care of you because it was the job I declared for myself.” She tried to clear the lump that was making talking difficult. “You were my duty, so you owe me nothing—and before you say it, no, I wasn’t the onewho really healed you. It was whoever you were with when you were gone, and that is the truth.”
“Well, my truth is that I am a male with honor, and after everything you did for me, I wasn’t leaving you in there.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And I should like to take you to your family at nightfall. Your loved ones will be missing you.”
“There are none who miss me.”
Kane frowned. “What of your bloodline?”
This should not hurt as much as it does, she thought as a lancing pain went through her sternum.
It was a while before she could find her voice, and she hated the weakness inherent in the reedy syllables she spoke.
“I left mymahmenand sire. After… my difficulties.”
As a surge of anxiety rippled through her broken body, she, too, was seized by a need to move, even though she had long ago learned that everywhere she went, there she was. No true escape was available for her, which was why Kane’s chivalrous mission to free her from the prison camp was always going to be in vain. Her ruined body formed the bars she languished behind, her past the warden of her incarceration.
Her physical location was immaterial.