Confusion crossed Kess’s face. “What?”
The protests rushed past her lips, all her diplomacy depleted as the adrenaline leeched from her system. “Hunter told me you weren’t comfortable with our friendship.” Della’s head swung like a resigned pendulum. “You don’t even know me.”
Kess’s shoulders slumped. “He told me about that. He thought he’d done the right thing, but I was appalled.” She shot an exasperated glance at her mate and then met Della’s shocked stare again. “I’d never deprive Hunter of a friend, and I told him as much. My plan was to come talk to you and clear the air, but then you were gone, and I never got the chance.” Kess rubbed at her sooty forehead. “And Hunt regretted how he left things, especially when you went missing. He was so upset. It was clear how much he valued you and how silly it was for him to push you away.”
A shuddering breath quaked over Della’s shoulders. “Is that why you helped me tonight?”
“I dunno.” Kess tucked Della’s hand into her own, squeezing it in emphasis. “Maybe I figured you’d do the same if our positions were reversed. If you stay, I hope we can get to know each other better. Now. You feel ready to go to your Alpha?”
Della let Kess help her to her feet. The first rays of sunlight stole over the horizon, raising the curtain of night beam by beam. The mess hall fire continued, polluting black smoke into the sky, but a circle of Alphas kept an anxious watch, beating back the flames and containing the spread. A new mess hall would need to be built, and the food stores would need to be replenished. It would be a hard summer and maybe a difficult winter if they couldn’t recover from everything lost.
But none of that mattered.
Not as her feet stumbled to her mate’s side. The Alpha voices huddled around his body, muttering in high-intensity vigil, hushed as she knelt by Cal’s head. Hunter met her questioning gaze and gave her a resolute nod. Blood smudged his hands as he strung suture material for the long job of closing up the hacking mess she’d made of Cal’s flesh.
Even if her mate survived, there would be infection risk, bleeding risk, and innumerable other dangers ahead. Even if it did heal, he’d be a disabled Alpha in a group that valued strength above all else. What would that mean? Maybe the wound might never heal or forever give him pain. Maybe the imprecise break would prohibit any kind of prosthesis, however primitive of one they could fashion. Her mind flashed to Cal tottering around with a pirate-y peg leg, his easy, loping gait forever ruined, and she shooed all the worries away. They would cross that bridge when they came to it.
For now, he needed only to live.
Following instinct, Della bent forward and buried her nose in the crook of Cal’s neck, searching for his distinctive scent in the smoke-clogged air. She found it, coffee and cinnamon, faint and tingling warmly against her nose. Untainted by the stench of death, she identified his scent—man and musk, safety andlife—and relished it. She drew its peace into her lungs to dispel the toxins clogging up her airways and drove away the anxiety that churned and twisted in her guts.
Satisfied, she dragged her nose up along his jaw and over his face, her hand cradling his opposite cheek. “Cal, can you hear me?” she cooed in his ear. “You can come back now. I’m safe, okay? You’re going to be all right, but you need to come back. You can’t leave your Omega like this. I need you.”
Feeling the gratifying wisp of his breath against her face, she smoothed hair gritty with ash back from his brow and kissed him gently on the lips, on his nose, on each of his beautiful eyes, on his stubbled cheeks, and the cleft in his chin. “Come back, Alpha,” she whispered against his lips. “Come back to me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cal
The glowing speck shimmered in the darkness. Flirting for attention, it flashed and rippled, the reddish-gold ember beckoning to him with a seductive, capering flare.
A twinkling star. A word came to him from somewhere, some knowledge base floating in the midst of so much inky emptiness. Along with it came a feeling. How he knew it was a feeling, he wasn’t sure, but that’s what feelings did. They birthed themselves into existence and demanded consideration.
And this one? This flickering, fluttering spark? It trilled and bounced with anticipation. It strummed and tingled, eager to lead him along some invisible path toward some unknown destination.
All he understood was that he wanted to go there. Wherever it was, it was where he was meant to be. Not lost and floundering in this bleak in-between, but charging ahead toward the thing that waited for him. Nestled against that hint of fire, he followed its path to reclaim whatever it was, already certain it was his.
*
Midnight blue.
The color greeted him like a long-lost friend. Cal clung to it like a rope thrown to a drowning man, tracing the color to its surface, where it pooled in a pair of eyes set in a face—a pretty face, worn and serious and brimming with tenderness—that gazed at him in rapturous hope.
“Cal?” Musical and breathy, the voice reached into his bleary consciousness and hauled him further to the surface. Still following the burnished ember up from the depths, he grappled for comprehension, his vision clearing enough to sweep over the room where he now found himself. Rough-hewn walls. A cozy fire. A small table and a single chair. A nice room, yet none of it held the significance of the perfect indigo in that sweetly familiar face. A single drip of moisture tumbled over and snaked a path along delicately freckled skin.
Sluggishly reaching out to thumb away the drop, his entire body ragged and grainy, slowed from disuse and dehydration. “No need for tears.”
Small hands sandwiched his cheeks as she peered at him with intense focus. Which was fine with him, her touch a welcome comfort after swimming for a lifetime in darkness. “You came back. You came back to me.” Her voice broke on a sob, and his leaden arms again moved, pulling her tight atop his chest, where she fit like she was made for him.
Recollection converged around the edges of his consciousness. Tucking his nose into her hair, he glutted on breath after breath, reminding himself of the berry-ripe perfection of her scent. Every inhale brought him closer to this world, the real world, one he thought he’d left behind.
How long had he been asleep?
Memories rushed back from the weird, looping purgatory. “I dreamed I died,” he whispered, his hands soothing up and down her trembling back.
“No.” Her reply was soggy. “Don’t say that.”
But the memories flowed out, and his tongue failed to stanch the onslaught. “Died and then woke up back in the cave—ourcave—and everything happened again... with me and you... everything the same until the ceiling fell, and we died in that basement.” His breath whooshed out, overcome with the remnants of that total helplessness. “And then I’d wake up again, still in the cave, like none of it had happened, and the whole thing would start from the beginning. Except I knew what was coming, and every time I’d think, ‘this is the time we escape,’ but it never came. And your face... oh, Della, I looked into your face and thought I’d killed you, over and over again.”