Zahur turned on the bed and took her hand. “Evie, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” I watched, my pulse in my ears as there was no response, just the flicker of her eyes moving under her eyelids. She wasn’t responding to Zahur.
I moved to the side of her bed and put my hand on his shoulder. “Move.”
Zahur didn’t argue as he got up and I took his place. I picked up her hand and rubbed my thumb over her knuckles. “Evelyn, answer me. Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” My voice wasn’t soft or gentle. It was demanding and rough. Her fingers gently squeezed mine. Shit. “Evelyn, if you’re still in pain, squeeze my fingers again.” Her fingers squeezed mine weakly. “She’s hurting.”
Zahur moved to the dresser and went through his medical bag. “Some sedation will practically paralyze you instead of putting you out. With us, it’s a different drug for everyone.”
He drew up a new dose and injected her with it. I watched her face, worried it wouldn’t work. When her face finally relaxed, I sighed in relief. She wasn’t hurting anymore. I stayed where I was and kept her hand in mine.
"Everyone else out,” Zahur ordered, "she needs to rest."
"Sorry excuse for a Match,” Ranulf muttered as he got off the dresser and walked to the door. I didn't argue, he was right. Falk said nothing as he followed him out the door.
Zahur drew up several more syringes, capped them and set them out on her dresser. “She’ll wake up in a couple hours. Give her one shot. It’ll knock her back out.”
I nodded, though my gaze was on her chest, watching the rise and fall with every breath.
“Call if she gets a fever or she starts streaking,” Zahur told me. I nodded again. “She’s going to be okay.” He left and the room fell into deep silence.
I traced her fingers gently, not wanting to disturb her.
During the long hours of the day I memorized her face, her eyelashes, her lips, even her nose and ears. She was stunning. Kind, funny, sweet… and much more than I ever deserved.
Cyrus called my phone three times in the following hours. Each time I let it go to voicemail. I needed to think, not listen to his bullshit. And that’s what I did.
During that time, I thought about everything Cyrus had ever taught me, what I could remember of my parents. They were loving, and respectful to each other. I remember Mom arguing with Pa, but there was never shouting. It was always a calm discussion. I wanted that with Evelyn. I blinked as I realized it. I’d made a decision. I’d do whatever it took to be the Mate Evelyn deserved. Fuck Cyrus.
Around three o’clock sweat began to roll down her skin, she whimpered in her sleep. I called Zahur. He came in and checked her out. She had developed a fever due to the regeneration. Zahur pulled out several bags of herbs and a jar of his general salve. He began grinding a mixture of herbs together. When he was done he handed me the jar.
"Rub that into her skin; forehead, neck, and inside of her forearms. It'll take a little while to kick in so she's going to burn for a bit. It’s normal.”
“I still don't like it,” I told him as I started to gently rub the salve on to the skin of her forearm. Zahur pulled his stethoscope out of his bag and moved around the bed to listen to her heart. I focused on getting her to cool off.
Zahur took off his stethoscope and straightened. "Her heart is doing great."
I moved to her neck. "Good."
Zahur left. I continued to rub the salve into her skin whenever she started sweating again.
It was getting dark when Falk came in with a container of Chinese takeout. He said nothing as he handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, leaving it to sit in my lap. He smacked my shoulder. When I turned back to him he pointed at the container in my lap. “Fine, I’ll eat.” I let go of her hand and started eating.
When I was almost done, she whimpered. I instantly handed him the container and checked the time. It was time for another shot. I grabbed a sedation syringe and was cleaning her arm with an alcohol swab when she opened her eyes.
“Atticus?” she whispered. Her glazed eyes found mine. “I... don’t feel... well….” She closed her eyes, as if that was all the energy she had.
“I know,” I said gently as I used the needle on her arm. “I’m fixing it, luv.” My accent slipped through. Her lips twitched at the corners before she was still again. I tossed the syringe in the trash and started cooling her off with the salve again. The heat coming from her regenerating legs was intense. I applied the ointment to her thighs above the cut line. She sighed in her sleep. I made a point to keep covering her legs as well.
Eveyln
The pain was gnawing, burning bone deep. I shifted on the bed. A cool hand touched my face. I opened my eyes. Atticus? His face was worried. It must be bad if he was worried…. The sharp jab of a needle barely registered with the amount of pain I swam in.
“Eve,” he said softly. “I just gave you another dose. It’ll take effect any minute.” I nodded. That cool hand worked something cooling into my forehead. It felt so good.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” he said quietly.
I turned my head and met his eyes as the pain started to ease. “Why do you hate me so much?” I asked, my voice cracking.
His face grew pained. “I don’t hate you. Far from it,” he whispered. That cool hand held my cheek, it felt so good. It settled something inside me. I snuggled into it as everything disappeared.
11
December 19
Evelyn
I woke up slowly. My body didn’t want to move, I didn’t even want to wake up. But once I started waking up there was no going back. I reached down and scratched my leg.
My legs! I opened my eyes then lifted my foot to examine my leg. It looked good; no scarring, no hideous deformities. Just a normal leg. I wiggled my unpolished toes to make sure they worked. They did.
“Checking to make sure all your toes are there?” Zahur asked quietly. I smiled as I brought my leg back down. He got off the dresser.
“Maybe,” I said innocently. He chuckled. I looked up at him, not bothering to move. “Thank you for taking care of me.” His amber eyes were warm as he smiled.
“I didn’t,” he said. Huh?
“Then who…?”
“Atticus took care of you,” he said. “He wouldn’t leave your side until your legs finished regenerating.”
I rubbed my eyes with one hand. “Why... why would he do that? He hates me.”
Zahur smirked. “It is what Mates do,” he explained as he moved around to my side of the bed. “And it wasn’t hate I saw yesterday.” Before I could ask about that he took my hands and pulled. Suddenly I was sitting on the side of the bed. His eyes ran over my face. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Sore and a little groggy, like I got my legs chopped off,” I muttered, deciding to put that new information away for now.
“Good, but I still want a look at your legs to make sure the nerves regenerated correctly,” he told me. I raised an eyebrow.
“That sounds like doctor speak,” I pointed out. He smiled.
“Probably, because I am a doctor,” he admitted.
“Really?”
“Yes,” he assured me. “I graduated in nineteen twenty-five, nineteen fifty, nineteen seventy-six— “
“Alright, alright, you’re a doctor. An old one at that,” I teased.
“Says the female who is almost two hundred years old,” he chuckled. I looked up at him.
"Says the two-thousand-year-old male,” I countered. He grinned down at me.
“Respect your elders, child,” he told me as he knelt in front of me. Both his hands took my right foot off the floor.
“Can you wiggle your toes for me?” he asked in a professional voice. I wiggled my toes for him.
“Good.” He put that foot down and lifted the other. “Again?” I wiggled those toes. “Good, any pain?”
“Nope,” I answered. His eyes met mine.
“I want to check the nerves in your
legs,” he said. I nodded. His examination was made up of tapping on my legs and asking if I could feel it. By the time he was done I was feeling the need for a shower.
“Everything looks to be in good working order. You're cleared to go back to your normal routine,” he said. "And I have some business in the Ether to take care of.” He got up and headed for the door. He paused and turned back to me. “Don’t let Atticus scare you off. He needs you more than he knows.” Before I could reply he left my bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.
Feeling disgusting, I went into my bathroom and took a shower. I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair when Zahur's words ran through my mind. Atticus had taken care of me. There was no reason for Zahur to lie to me, so he must have. I didn't know what to think of that. Atticus had stayed after I told him to go, what did that mean? Did he want to try? Or was it just the Matching forcing him to stay? I didn't want to ask. Maybe I really didn't want to know. And what was that about Atticus needing me? I wasn’t going to find answers hiding in here. I quickly finished my shower.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and a teal long-sleeve shirt. I blow dried my hair, left it down and headed out my bedroom door. Atticus was in the living room. He was looking at the books in my bookcase again. He was his ever-pristine self in a gray suit and a white dress shirt. His hair was perfect, as usual. Was Zahur wrong? He seemed perfectly fine. Not knowing what to think, I headed into the kitchen.
I went to the full coffee maker and poured a cup of coffee. I was stirring the cream and sugar when he spoke.
“Evelyn, can we speak?” he asked, his voice polite. I turned back to him. There were bags under his eyes, and his mouth was a tight line. Maybe yesterday had hit a nerve?
“Yes, we should probably talk,” I admitted. I moved into the living room area and sat on the couch. Atticus hesitated only a moment before he walked around the coffee table and sat on it in front of me. The silence grew longer as I sipped my coffee, waiting for him to start. I finally looked up at him. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again with a grimace. I waited. After several more attempts to speak, he growled in frustration before he met my gaze.
“The things I say never quite come out correctly with you,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’d like you to enter my mind, so that this time I can show you.” I blinked at him in shock. He wanted to give me access to his mind? To everything he was? I couldn’t believe it.
“Do you understand what that means, Atticus?” I asked gently. “Are you prepared for what I might see?” His eyes were piercing as he held my gaze.
“You won’t look without permission, that much I do know about you,” he said. I weighed the pros and cons. On one hand, I might get a better understanding of Atticus. On the other, I might learn that he hates me. But all my debating melted away when he spoke again. “Please?”
“Alright.” I set my mug on the floor, then scooted forward a bit more until I was close enough that my arm wouldn’t hurt while touching his face. My knees ended up between his thighs. I met his gaze again and reached up. He wrapped his big hand around my wrist and brought my palm to his face.
I closed my eyes and focused. I slipped into his mind gently, like slipping into a lake.
I was standing in a room, a giant room, with blank white walls and fluorescent lights above. Everywhere I looked there were filing cabinets. Some were open, the contents spilling out, some were closed. Papers and files were stacked high on top of some of them. The floor was littered with papers. It was a mess.
“You’ve worked with a telepath before,” I said, not knowing where he was. There was a creak behind me. I turned. Atticus was getting out of an old wooden desk chair. His inner mental projection was shocking. His hair was disheveled. His face had at least a two-day growth of stubble. His grey slacks were wrinkled, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing the tattoos that ran down both arms to his wrists. He leaned against the old wooden roll top desk and ran his hand through his hair.
“Yes, once. She taught me how to make it easier to communicate with a telepath if I ever needed to,” he admitted. I was still stunned by the way he looked. His gold eyes wandered around the room. I walked over to stand in front of him. “This is my mind since I met you. Everything was fine, orderly, I had control. Everything had a place and a purpose. Then you came and everything is….” He turned his head to meet my eyes with his. He was lost behind those eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you yesterday,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about all my criticism. I’m sorry about the way I’ve been with you since we met.” His eyes dropped to my legs. “Is there any lasting damage?”
“No damage,” I assured him. “I’m just sore.”
He looked away to the room of files again. “I thought keeping you away would help me keep control. Keep my emotions under control. But it hasn’t. It’s just made it worse.” My heart ached. In here, I could feel the strain he’d put himself under.
“There’s control, Atticus, and then there is too much control,” I said softly. “You can’t control every emotion. You can control how you react to it, but-”
“You don’t understand, I have to have that control,” he said softly.
“You can’t control whether or not you have an emotion or a feeling. If you’re stabbed with a blade, it’s going to hurt. There’s nothing you can do about that, it’s a fact. All you can do is deal with it,” I told him. His shoulders sagged a little as he exhaled.
“Why not?” His voice was barely a whisper. I moved closer, reached up and cupped his neck.
“Because you have a heart, Atty,” I whispered back.
“But I have to have that control, otherwise… my family….” He stopped and swallowed hard. “I’m the most powerful male of our species.”
“Could you end the world?” I asked. He blinked at me. His eyes clearing.
“No.”
“Then why not let yourself feel?” I said softly. His hands moved to my waist as he pulled me closer, until I had to tilt my head back to see his face.
His eyes were on me but not really seeing me. “I grew up being taught that emotions were dangerous. That I had to control them or I’d hurt anyone I cared about.”
“You were actually told this?” I asked, incredulous. Who would tell a child that?
He nodded. “Often, and if I forgot the lesson … there were repercussions.”
“What kind of repercussions?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. I moved my hands to his chest.
He looked over my head, his lips tight. “Once, when I was eleven, I found a rabbit. It was young, hurt. I took it home, kept it secret and took it to a healer. They fixed its leg.” His eyes met mine, pain filled them. “That’s when I got caught.” My heart dropped. “The man who adopted me wanted me to kill it. And because I refused, he killed it, cooked it, and then forced me to eat it with him for supper.”
Horror tore through me. “Oh my God.” Atticus clenched and unclenched his jaw as he took deep breaths.
“He taught me that caring for the animal was wrong, that being upset that he killed it was weakness, that being forced to eat it was good for me.” He met my eyes. “He taught me everything I felt was wrong and that I shouldn’t feel anything.”
“That's cruel, Atty,” I said gently, my fingers reaching up to stroke his jaw. “Emotions are normal. They make life worth living. Otherwise it’s just-”
“Dull, and never ending,” he finished for me. “The only emotion I’ve felt for so long was anger. It was the only one I could hide.” He met my eyes. “Then I followed you into an alley, shook your hand”—his hand cupped my jaw, his thumb caressing my cheekbone— “and everything I’ve buried came back. Now I have no idea how to deal with it.”
“Atty….” I didn’t know what to say. In here, I could feel the stress and pressure he felt himself under. The confusion, the war inside him. In here, I could see him. The one who recited quotes in the car. The Atticus who kissed me in the warehouse, the one I first m
et in the alley.
“I’m sorry. For everything.” He swallowed hard. “Am I too late, Eve? Have I fucked up too much for you to even consider…?”
“Atticus, you hurt me a lot,” I admitted, looking at his chest. “I didn’t want to be hurt by the things you said, but I was. In here, I can feel what you’ve been dealing with. It doesn’t make it okay, but I do understand.” I toyed with my locket before looking up and meeting his eyes. “So, no. It’s not too late.”
I was crushed against him, his arms around me, his nose buried in my hair. I smiled, wiggled my arms free and hugged him back. He let out a deep breath that made his body shudder.
“Just be honest with me, okay? If you’re having trouble, tell me,” I said quietly.
“I’ll try,” he whispered into my hair. He held me for another few heartbeats. “Alright,” he said, letting me go. He was all business Atticus again. “We should get back. We have things to do.” I stepped back, gave him a smile and slipped out of his mind.
I was sitting on the couch again. Atticus was still across from me, perfect as usual. Only now I saw it for what it really was. Control, too much control. Before I could move my hand away from his cheek, he turned and kissed my palm gently. My heart skipped a beat at the brush of his lips.
Atticus didn’t say anything as I scooted back onto the couch. He got to his feet and buttoned his suit jacket.
“Let’s get going, we have an appointment,” he announced. I looked up at him and wondered where the real Atticus was.
“What appointment?” I asked. He looked down at me, his face blank.
“According to Falk, I owe you a pedicure.”
I smiled. He was going to get me a pedicure? That was sweet. I got to my feet and met his eyes. “I would love one, but I have to go open the store. Give me a few days and I can take some time off.”
His eyes became hard, his shoulders rigid. He was pulling back already.
“Honestly, I want to go. The shop is just slammed,” I told him quickly. His eyes searched mine.
Found (Books of Stone Book 1) Page 15
