Pursued(136)

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Elise sat on the leafy bed and stared down at her hands. The hut was lit only by a pale blue flame in a light fixture hanging overhead, which threw shadows everywhere.

She shivered and it occurred to her that she was still naked, but someone—perhaps Mother-Healer—had left her robes by the side of the bed. Elise put them on and then sat back on the bed in the dim blue light.

Her hands were cupped in her lap and the shadows filled them like cool, dark water. She tried to make her mind a blank, tried not to think about what had happened, about the memories that now crowded her head like corpses raised from the dead. But she knew they would always be with her. Her days of living on the surface of life were over—from now on she would have to wake up every morning, get through every day, and go to bed every night with the memory of what had happened to her haunting her like a ghost.

It was almost more than she could bear.

“Here. Here it is.”

She looked up and saw Merrick holding the skrillix branch in one hand and a carved wooden cup filled with red liquid in the other. Immediately, she recoiled.

“Get it away from me! I won’t go through it again—I won’t!”

“No, no, baby,” Merrick soothed, sitting down beside her on the bed. He’d gotten his trousers back on though he was still bare-chested, and he looked very big in the dim light—like a shadow come to life. “You’ll never have to go through that again—I swear,” he said. “This time it’s for me.”

Elise looked at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember on our flight here, the first time you let me touch you—really touch you—and I told you I’d tell you about my scars when you told me about yours?” he asked.

“Yes,” Elise said cautiously.

“Well, this is it,” Merrick said simply. “You did more than tell me—you showed me. And I want to show you, too.”

Elise frowned. “I appreciate the offer, Merrick, but I’m not sure how that will help. I mean, just because we went digging through my horrible past doesn’t mean we have to go digging through yours too.”

“Yes, we do,” he said. “I need to show you, baby. Although I warn you…you may feel differently about me when you see.”

“You don’t have to show me,” Elise said gently. She put a hand on his knee. “Don’t do it, Merrick—you’ll be sorry. Believe me, I certainly am.”

“I’m sorry too,” he said roughly. “I never should have let you go through that. I should have offered myself right from the start.”

“No.” Elise shook her head firmly. “You’ve taken enough punishment for me already. Which is why you don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” Merrick growled. “I want you to know me the way I know you. I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us to keep us apart. This is the only way to do that.”

Elise was touched. He really cares for me. Cares so much he’s willing to re-live the worst experience of his life just to prove it.

“Goddess-damned right, I care,” Merrick growled.

Elise frowned. Was their bond so deep that he could read her thoughts now? But she didn’t have much time to speculate. Merrick pricked his finger with one of the wicked-looking skrillix thorns and let a single drop of blood fall into the carved wooden cup. Then he put the skrillix branch carefully to one side and looked at her.

“I’m going back, Elise. Back to when I got this.” He traced the jagged scar that bisected his eyebrow and ran down his cheek in a cruel, white line. “Are you coming with me or not?” He offered her the cup.

“Yes.” She took the cup, unable to refuse his sacrifice. “Yes, Merrick, of course I’ll come.”

And then she drank.





Chapter Thirty-three




Suddenly Merrick was back in his old home grotto of Lanash on Tranq Prime.

He looked down at himself, and saw that he was wearing a black tharp wrapped around his waist as well as black fur boots. His chest was bare and it was neither as muscular nor as scarred as he was used to seeing it. A glance upwards showed the vast stone roof arched overhead, too high to see at its peak. The columns holding it up were etched with the ancient Prime symbols for purity—racial purity, that was. And since Merrick was a blending of three races—Blood Kindred, Beast Kindred, and Tranq Prime, he didn’t exactly live up to the ideal. In fact, he fell so far short it was a fucking joke—one he didn’t find in the least bit funny.

He was on his way from the learning house, which had let out early that day, to the domicile he and his mother shared with Jonquil, the male she’d taken up with after they’d moved back to Tranq Prime. Merrick didn’t like living with Jonquil—he talked sweetly and pretended to love Merrick’s mother but Merrick could see the lie in his pale blue eyes. This Tranq Prime male with no Kindred blood in his veins didn’t care for his mother, not the way Merrick’s father had. But his father was dead and they couldn’t stay with their kin anymore. Though his mother’s sister had offered them the cup of hospitality to drink from, it was clear she didn’t want them in her domicile. Merrick knew why, too—it was because of him.