Shadow Wings (The Darkest Drae Book 2)(80)

I heard what he didn’t want to say: Tyrrik wasn’t sure he could shift and fight them off. He didn’t want to admit he was weak.

“We won’t walk,” he continued. “We’ll need to run.”

I felt like someone had kicked the backs of my knees. Tyrrik grabbed my waist and lifted me over the side. I dangled for a second until he lowered me from above.

A moment later, I hugged the rocky wall of a narrow ledge. The path curved around the cliff face before reaching the wide expanse of a steep slope covered in a sparse thicket of low trees. I inched my way along, turning back in time to see Tyrrik drop to safety where I’d been standing seconds before.

He tilted his chin again, and I took the hint, side stepping along the ledge until I was able to scurry into the woods.





31





The smell of Druman was growing, and so was the cold sweat on my forehead and palms. We edged down the almost-vertical pass as quickly as Dyter could quietly move. Dyter couldn’t contain his labored breathing as the ground began to flatten out, and we sprinted and jumped over rocks and hidden gaps in the rough terrain.

Soon, Tyrrik’s breathing was labored, too. This run shouldn’t have been tiring me, but my chest was tight, and my breath wouldn’t completely fill my lungs. I kept seeing my dungeon cell with its solitary drip of water, the sharp rocky ground, the dank smell.

Believing that the scent of Druman was truly lessening took a long time, at least until the ascent of the next mountain. Eventually, even I had to admit their smell had disappeared.

Tyrrik kept us in the foliage as much as possible. Our pace slowed as the ground sloped upward once more.

Dyter held up his hand for a stop and pulled out the now stone-cold roasted rabbit and the water skin.

“You guys need to eat, too,” I puffed, hands on my knees. I felt absolutely wrung out. Like I’d been sprinting for days.

After some insistence, the two men took a third each of the rabbit.

Tyrrik took the water skin from Dyter after the old man had a few gulps. The Drae handed it to me a moment later. I guzzled back the nectar Tyrrik offered and then focused for a few seconds before passing the water skin back.

We continued our climb, our pace slowing further as fatigue settled in. Dyter puffed as he led the way, stopping to consult his compass more frequently as afternoon settled in.

“Are we going to make it?” I asked. My question wasn’t to anyone in particular, and the answer didn’t even matter, not really. The silence was driving me crazy, and I wanted something to fill it. The silence. I hadn’t noticed Tyrrik in my head since the moment by the fire.

I whirled around and stared at him.

Why aren’t you in my head? I pushed my thought at him and couldn’t help the tone of accusation that leaked with it. Usually, when the Drae was conscious, I could feel little spikes of his emotion, and usually, he spoke to me several times even when I didn’t want him in there. What had changed?

He lifted his head and met my gaze. His face was lined with exhaustion that made my heart ache.

“It’s an invasion of your privacy for me to be in your head without your permission, and I shouldn’t have done it before now. Not without asking you if that was okay,” Tyrrik said; his sad smile touched the deep recesses of my heart. “I’m sorry, Ryn,” he said in a weary voice. “I want to say I never meant to take advantage of you, but that would be a lie because I wanted to establish a presence inside you. I forced my way in when you were vulnerable in the castle. I gave over to my mating instincts when I should have tapered them. But I . . . don’t want that to be how we start, how we might go on. Not anymore. You were right. We’re not in the castle. I’m not under a blood oath. I need to stop acting that way.” He released a shaking breath.

I blinked. Trying to make sense of why his reasonable statement and thoughtful apology made me so unreasonably angry while simultaneously breaking my heart.

I faced forward and asked Dyter’s back, “Did you tell him that’s how I felt?”

“No,” they chorused.

I turned back to Tyrrik.

He watched me, inky eyes pools of darkness that seemed to mirror his soul’s secrets.

I located the source of my anger as I stared into his eyes, and it wasn’t what I’d expected. I was oddly thankful Tyrrik had forced his way in, against my better judgment, because how would I have ever opened that door between us? Now I’d experienced that mental connection, I could appreciate all the comfort having Tyrrik in my head had to offer. If the choice had been mine to speak in Tyrrik’s head first? I probably would have resisted it with everything I had. Even saying that, I knew on some level I’d clearly accepted our telepathy or I’d be fighting it still. Was that what I was doing with the mating bond? Was I resisting it just for the sake of resisting? Maybe Tyrrik’s behavior since being released from the blood oath wasn’t meant to be manipulative. Maybe he was just wary of giving his trust, too.

I opened my mouth to say something, but rational thought fled when I smelled them. My body flooded with terror, and I whispered, “Druman.”

Tyrrik’s face blanched and his eyes widened as he inhaled me, my fear. His face hardened, his black eyes gaining a wild edge as he reacted to the terror seeping out of my pores.

I blinked, and in less than a heartbeat Tyrrik was Drae.