Cage reached out and took her hand. “I want to know whatever you want to tell me. When you’re ready, I’ll be ready to listen. Until then, it doesn’t matter. We’re what matters.”
She lay back down with her back to him, and he held his breath, waiting to see if she’d continue. He wouldn’t press her, but he desperately wanted to understand her.
“My sister Wren is two years younger than me.” Her voice was muffled and had fallen into a soft, Southern twang different from her usual sharply clipped accent. “We lived south of Dallas in a town where there were lots of eagle shifters, and she fell in love with this guy, Kevin, who was the nephew of our Goia.”
She stopped, and Cage rolled over and pulled her into his arms, holding her, thinking about the strong protective streak she’d shown over Nik and over him. “Things went badly with him?”
She shifted her head slightly, which he interpreted as a nod. “He beat her. Belittled her. She became this scared, anxious person I didn’t know anymore.”
He waited, willing her to go on. When she spoke again, her voice was strained, filled with pain. “I killed him, Cage. I went to their house to try to talk Wren into leaving him, and she was unconscious. Covered with blood on the floor of their kitchen. He was sitting in the fucking recliner watching a football game while she bled on the floor.”
“You were just protecting her, love. That’s what you do.” Cage pulled her against him more tightly and let her cry for a long time. When her body stopped shaking from the force of her sobs, he asked the question whose answer had made Robin the woman he’d come to love.
“What happened? With your family? With your Goia?”
Robin rolled onto her back, so she could look at him. “Wren hates me. She defends the bastard, even now. The Goia demanded payment in kind: my life for his son’s.” The tears had started again.
“But what about your parents?” The sister’s reaction didn’t surprise him; victims of abuse were indoctrinated to blame themselves and not their abuser. That much hadn’t changed from his human days.
“I broke their hearts.” Robin had stopped crying and now looked simply sad. “If they defended me, they lost their place in our community. It meant too much to them, so I slipped away. They’re duty bound to turn me in if they find me, so I stay on the move.”
Cage brushed his fingertips across her cheek and kissed her forehead. “No one will ever find you here, little bird.” And if they did, whether it was family or Goia or a posse of eagles, they’d have to go through him to touch her.
She pulled away from him, and the old fire had returned to her brown eyes. “Penton has to survive. Aidan’s improving, but we don’t know if Krys will wake up, or Britta. We have unfinished business if we’re going to make this a safe home for all of us.”
He nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing. Now that he was back on his feet and Nik had recuperated enough to drive, they needed to find Matthias. And then he wanted Fen Patrick and the dickhead who’d set all this in motion, Frank Greisser.
“Nik can help us,” Robin said.
He hated to ask the guy to use the Touch when he’d barely recovered from his run-in with Shawn. “Nik needs some recovery time, love.”
Oh yeah, she was definitely back to normal; her jaw was clenched, and her eyes had narrowed. “Nik doesn’t need recovery time; he needs a chance to help. He’s just waiting for you to give him the go-ahead.”
Which was all well and good, but he wasn’t in charge. “It’s not my call to make.”
She kissed his shoulder, then slapped it. “Aidan’s out of commission, and until he’s back on his feet, that means Mirren’s running on low batteries. Which, in turn, means that you and Will are in charge.”
Well, shit. “That is quite a frightening scenario, then. Two half-lame vampires with bossy women by their sides.”
“Exactly. So move it.”
First, Cage needed to talk to Will, who’d also been feeling peaked since getting in close proximity to Aidan; their theory was that Cage’s steady diet of shifter blood was somehow making him invulnerable to the bonding energy leach—yet another reason to appreciate Robin.
He held Robin until she finally fell asleep, then walked down the hallway to find Will sitting with Aidan and Krys, whose room in the lieutenants’ quarters had become a makeshift hospital bay. Aidan had awakened a couple of times, briefly. Krys hadn’t stirred. She was still breathing, though, and where there was breath, there was hope.
“He wake up?” Cage propped against the wall next to the bed. Aidan’s head was heavily bandaged; the rest of his injuries had healed like a vampire should—fast and clean.