Shades of Gray (66 page)

A faint sound from outside made her start, but with her already heightened senses, she knew it was Kusac.

The force field shimmered as he stepped through, carrying three bundles the size of small dogs, wrapped in damp moss.

“Coffee?” he asked, sniffing, as he put the parcels down by the fire. Picking up the stick she’d left there, he began to rake aside the burning ashes until the stones were visible.

“Some in the pot for you,” she said, eyeing the bundles as he placed them in the pit and covered them with the glowing embers. She reached out to put more fuel on.

Kusac picked up the dented mug, raising an eye ridge at her as he filled it from the jug and added sweetener and artificial creamer. “Someone had a temper tantrum.”

“Yes, you did. Some of us can’t run and hunt off our anger,” she retorted, taking another mouthful from her mug.

He sat down on the other side of the fire from her and took a long drink of the coffee. “Strong,” he remarked.

“Those critters are gonna take three to four hours to cook,” she observed. “I want to eat now. The military meals aren’t that bad.”

“Get a couple then, and I’ll join you.”

“You get them. I fixed the cave and the fire.”

As he passed her, she reached for the coffeepot, tilting dangerously close to the glowing fire pit.

“Easy,” he said, grabbing her. “I think you’ve had enough coffee. You’re drunk.”

“Nope. I’m pissed at you, Kusac,” she said, shaking free of his grasp and shuddering as his contact wakened her fully. “You walk out of my life for nearly a year, and when we do meet, you avoid me and tell me nothing of what happened. You’ve not even asked about your new son, Dyshac. You owe me one hell of an apology!”

He squatted down beside her. “Carrie, I had to go. You have no idea what it cost me to leave you.”

“I know what it cost me fighting to prove you innocent of the treason charges!” Swaying, she reached out for the coffeepot again, but Kusac grabbed it and filled up her mug.

“Had I remained on Shola another hour, we could have Linked again,” he said quietly. “I waited as long as I could, suppressing the pull of our possible Link, until the cub was born. I needed to know you were both safe, then I had to leave.” He reached out with his thumb to gently wipe away the tears on her cheeks that she didn’t know she was shedding.

“I’m more sorry than you can imagine. My place was with you, but Shola needed me to leave.”

“What about the last three weeks?” she demanded as he took the mug from her unresisting hand and took a drink himself.

“There is something here, something sinister, that every now and then tries to control me. It was on Kij’ik too. Somehow they managed to keep making me forget about it. I was afraid for you. I had to keep my distance and to pretend that Zayshul and I were lovers.”

“Pretend be damned. You were!” She snatched her mug back, taking another swig.

“Not by choice. I’m not sure who engineered that scent marker, but it wasn’t Zayshul. She was as much a victim as I was.”

“Well, don’t think I’m here for your taking, Kusac! No Link will force me to pair with you! When I’ve had enough of this coffee, I’ll pass out and you’ll be on your own, just as you like it!”

“It won’t work like that,” he said, reaching out again to wipe the tears off her cheeks. Her could sense her so strongly now, it was as if time had rolled back for them to the days when they had been Leska mind-mates. “You know it won’t. Can’t you feel your body quickening as it calls out for me?”

“Not for you. For Kaid,” she said harshly, pulling away and draining the mug. “You’re there, but only as a Third, not as my Leska.”

“Are you sure? You’re right, you aren’t a pet to be passed between Kaid and me, but you never were. You always came freely to us both.”

“I’m not drawn to you any more!”

“My shields are up. If I lower them, I can reforge our Leska Link. Do you want that, Carrie?” he asked softly, leaning closer to her. Gently, he had to go very gently with her because she was understandably as angry as hell with him.

She blinked owlishly up at him, finding she couldn’t look away from his amber eyes. They seemed to fill her field of vision until she could see nothing but him, and it felt as though he was looking deep into her soul.

“Oh, Gods, don’t do that to me, Kusac!” she whispered. “You know how impossible that is for me to resist.”

“Carrie, you have to decide. Do you want to choose me now while you still can, or wait until you lose control and pair with me anyway?”

“I want to knock some sense into you! You know damned well pairing would change nothing! I will still be Kaid’s Leska.”

“No,” he said, moving back a little and reaching out to catch a lock of her hair and twine it around his fingers. “I can change that. You would be my Leska again.

“I don’t believe you.” But there was doubt in her voice now. “What about this threat that you mentioned? I thought you wanted to keep us out of it.”

“I do, but perhaps the more of us that are involved, the more difficult it will be to influence us because we’ll all notice. I believe they’ve been manipulating me into staying away from you.” He raised the handful of hair to his nose and inhaled her scent. “I missed you so much that I had to lock my memories and thoughts of you all deep in my subconscious,” he said settling down beside her. “It was the only way I could survive on Kij’ik.”

“I fought to prove you innocent, to find the message I knew you had put on that crystal you left me. No one believed me! It was only luck Jurrel saw it. And you hurt Kaid very deeply. I know why, but you have no idea of the pain you caused him.”

“I had to make sure he wouldn’t try to follow me,” he said, allowing his shields to drop farther. Immediately, where his fingers touched her shoulder, he felt the almost forgotten surge of electricity pass between them. It was faint as yet, not as strong as when she’d still been his Leska.

“I thought I’d never feel this again,” he said, the longing for her stark in his voice and on his face.

“I don’t know who you are anymore, Kusac,” she said, slurring her words slightly as she pushed him away. “You tried to kill yourself rather than live without your Talent.” All her pent-up anger was coming tumbling out, and she hadn’t intended it to. “You didn’t care how Kashini and I felt, or Kaid, or your family! Then when Kizzy and Annuur cured you, you lied about that, and rather than take your full place with us again, you lied and ran away to Stronghold! You don’t face up to the trials in your life, you hide from them like a spoiled child!”

“I admit I acted badly in the past, but it wasn’t as simple as you make out. I only ever tried to do what I thought was right for you. I stood up to my worst enemy to rescue not only our son Shaidan but the other cubs as well. I have changed, Carrie.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it! Right now, you’re angry at being forced into a Link with me—if you can reestablish it! What I do or don’t want hasn’t occurred to you. I might not want you back!”

“I didn’t want it to be like this.”

“Then how? Life doesn’t wait for the right moment, you know. It’s untidy and inconvenient. I don’t want to wait for a youngling to decide it’s the right time, I want an adult male who knows his own mind.” She stopped, running out of steam, but it felt good to finally get that off her chest.

Her vision was getting blurred, and she blinked a few times in an effort to clear it. Exhaustion was wrapping her in a warm, fuzzy blanket.

“I need to sleep,” she mumbled, lying down. “Wake me when the food’s ready.”

Kusac watched her suddenly go limp as sleep claimed her. He sighed and got up to go back around to where she’d put his sleeping bag. Picking it up, he dragged it beside hers and went searching for some of the Prime herbal tea.

The trouble was, she was right—not completely, but enough to make facing the truth damned uncomfortable. If he wanted his wife back, he was going to have to win her back within the next few hours.

When the water had boiled, he rinsed his mug out then spooned some of the instant maush into it. The scent was instantly refreshing, and while he waited for it to cool, he reached into an inner pocket for the message crystal Carrie had given him on the weather station three weeks before.

He turned it over in his hand. He’d never dared to look at it for fear that it would weaken his resolve to keep his distance from his family, that it would break down the painfully constructed barrier of indifference that he’d built between them.

Was it weakness to cut himself off from all he loved lest it hurt him more than he could bear, or was it strength? There was no easy answer; he knew because he’d searched for one during many a long, lonely night.

He had his life back now, with that pardon, and he’d not even considered what he’d do when this war was over, assuming they all survived it.

The crystal was warm in his hands now as he reached for his mug and sipped the herbal brew. Before Carrie, he’d been alone. When she came into his life, so had many painful consequences—and many more good ones, including new friends he now trusted with his life. Alone, he’d been vulnerable. With his Leska had come strength, the strength to travel to the past for the right to start his own Clan, to become the sword-brother of Kaid, their Third. Yet he’d turned his back on all this, tried to retreat into death and turned away friends and allies because he believed he was weakened by them, that he was stronger alone.

Kaid had been alone for ten years, by necessity, not choice. His sword-brother knew the value of bonds of friendship, the Brotherhood, and family, especially once he accepted he’d found his.

Finally, he realized he was playing into the hands of those trying to manipulate him by isolating himself as he had. His family strengthened, not weakened him, and they could protect each other more easily than he could protect them all alone.

He opened a small recess in the strap of his wrist comm and inserted the crystal, turning it to watch the images on the small screen. Kashini had grown so much and was so like Carrie now. And the twins—Layeesha was Kaid writ small—so like the child he’d been in the far past when they’d walked the Fire Margins. As for Dhaykin, he was smaller, looked fragile, yet his strength of mind reached out from the small screen, as he seemed to stare directly at his father.

As he watched, he heard Carrie stir behind him. Her hand stroked his ears briefly, making them lie down against his skull as a shiver of pleasure ran through him.

“Dhaykin isn’t as fragile as he looks,” she said quietly. “At first he was, being born a few weeks premature, but his will to live and thrive is great.”

“You were right. I thought I was being strong when all I was doing was making myself more vulnerable and hurting those I love,” he whispered.

“I can see you did what you thought was right at the time,” she said, leaning against his back and resting her chin on his shoulder. “There is no clear-cut right or wrong in life, Kusac, no black or white.”

“Only shades of gray.” The cube finished playing, and he removed it from its niche and stowed it safely in his pocket again.

“At least you know where you went wrong. I love you, Kusac, whether or not you have your Talent. You, the man,” she said, using the English word, “I love with all my heart. You’re half my soul.”

He could feel the warmth of her body pressing against his through their tunics. Her fingers pushed the braided hair on his neck aside, reaching for the skin beneath. But it was the hot touch of her lips and the flick of her tongue there that undid him.

Turning, he pulled her into his arms, his mouth covering hers in a deep kiss. Her tongue met his with equal intensity. Electricity leaped between them, setting their senses on fire, but it lacked the full contact of their Leska Link.

Kusac pushed her back, breathing hard, his eyes pools of black surrounded by a narrow amber ring. A full restoration of their Link was there, his for the taking because of his enhanced abilities.

“Carrie, you know I want you, but I want you as my Leska. If we make love, I’ll not be able to stop myself.”

She reached out for his ear, pulling his face closer, her lips feather-soft on his until her teeth closed briefly on his lower lip. “Sometimes, you talk too much,” she said, releasing him, then pushing him over onto his back and sitting astride him to attack his weapons’ belt.

“Trousers,” he muttered, trying to reach past her hands to undo them. “You should wear Sholan tunics with nothing under them, like our females.”

“And have all you horny males after me? I think not,” she said, running her hand down the seal of his tunic.

Pushing himself up, he flipped her over onto her back and began to remove the offending garments.

“With Kaid and me as your husbands?” he mock-growled. “No one would be that brave—or foolish!”

Kneeling between her legs, he leaned forward to touch her face, lowering his mental shields completely as he did. Her mind touched his, and as he drew his fingers down her cheek to her jaw, he felt the magic begin to flow from her to him.

He sucked in a breath of pleasure as she touched his thigh, her fingers tracing patterns of fire there until she touched the still tender scar tissue and he flinched slightly.

Gods, Kusac, that was a horrific wound,
she sent as she gently traced its outline on both sides of his thigh.

“I survived it,” he said gruffly, pulling her hand away from there to lie against his hip.

Light-headed at the emotions and sensations running through him, he put his weight on his forearms and caught hold of her face, licking and nipping at her cheeks and ears, feeling the heat begin in her belly and spread outward to ignite him.

I never thought to feel this again,
he sent, kissing her frantically, tasting her by pressing her tongue to the roof of his mouth.