Sebastian (Bowen Boys, #5)(30)
“So how do we keep him from taking Ama from me?” Ama wanted to know that as well. “If he comes here again, how do I kill him? Because I get the feeling that’s going to be the only way to stop him.”
“He’s afraid of you.” Ama started to speak when Jacob raised his hand. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I just left the council. They’ve given permission for you to have a visitor. He…he isn’t well, so please be careful of him. He is—”
“Right here, you idiot.” The man that seemed to suddenly appear stood tall and seemingly very weak with something, possibly an illness. But as he walked toward her, she could see that he was hurt. He favored his left leg, and one arm seemed not to work as well as the other. He stood in front of her but spoke to Sebastian.
“I’d like your permission to hug your mate please, Lord Sebastian. But you should know that I’m going to do it anyway, so either get over it or give it to me.” He smiled at her. “You’re more beautiful than your mother.”
“You knew her?” He nodded and cupped the back of her head and pulled her to him. “I don’t understand, how did you…? You smell like her, like I remember her smelling.”
“I would yes,” he said, his voice full of emotion, so much that she looked up at him. “You’re my daughter, Amarizi. My only child.”
She felt Sebastian come near them and the man holding her stiffened. “I won’t…we were told that you were dead. And coming from a man that said he couldn’t lie to us, we believed him.”
Ama pulled back and looked up at him. There was nothing at all in her memories to make her believe what he said was true, yet she believed him. Helping him to the chair next to the couch, she watched him try and get comfortable. She realized then that it wasn’t just the injuries that made him uncomfortable, but the people in the room. She introduced them to him.
“I’m Lord Fryda, faerie. I’ve been…damn it all the hell; I thought this would be easier. Why did you think that I’d be welcome here?” He glared at Jacob. “I think it’s time I went back to—”
“Oh, hush up and sit still.” Corrine handed him a pillow. “Put that under your thigh and be quiet for a minute. Reed, go and get the heating pad out of the bathroom and bring it back to him. George, give him that footstool. He won’t ask for it. I can see where your daughter gets her stubbornness.”
“Madam, do you know that I can turn you into a pixie with the flick of my finger?” He shoved the pillow under his thigh when she pointed at it. “I’m a powerful faerie and a man of my own rights. I’m not accustomed to being treated as a child.”
“Then stop acting like one and I’ll think about not treating you like one. Maybe you are a powerful faerie, but right now you’re on my turf, and I say you’ll hush up.” Corrine looked at Ama. “No wonder it took you so long to agree to be Sebastian’s mate. If this is the gene pool you’re coming from, it’s a small wonder he ever got close to you.”
Reed came back with the heating pad, and Corrine plugged it in and put it on Fryda’s arm. Ama could see the shocked look on his face when it started to warm the area that hurt. Her dad mumbled a thank you and Corrine nodded and sat down. He looked around the room.
“You’re all good people. We—the other beings and I—have heard great things about you. The facts that you’ve taken on so much and have helped so many of us notwithstanding, you’re also polite, most of the time, and you have good heads on your shoulders.” He laughed a little. “I suppose you want to know why I’m not dead. Well, you can thank Jacob over there. When he found me after Wanera tried to kill me, laying there near death I was. He protected me while the earth healed me. Took it a long time, too.”
“You didn’t want to live.” Ama let the words slip out before she could stop them. “I’m sorry, but you seem so bitter about him saving you that I thought that…”
“You’re right. I didn’t want to live. But he made me. Said you’d need me someday, and I guess he was right. And if you knew Jacob as well as I do, then you’d know that him turning himself into a panther was a great honor for me. He doesn’t care for shifting.” He looked at Sebastian, who was still standing so close to her. “You think you’ve got something to say? Then do it. I’m too old and too beat up to have you standing over me like some sort of protector. I can take care of myself.”
“You didn’t heal because you gave her all your powers.” Her dad looked up at Sebastian sharply. “You were dying and you sent her everything. You were thinking you’d just die so she’d be safe. That’s why you haven’t healed yet. You don’t have enough left in you to do so.”
Jacob laughed. “I told you he was sharp. Yes, my lord, you’re correct. He’s a stubborn bastard—pardon my language—that won’t let anyone help him. So he suffers. And we all have to hear about it. Daily. Almost hourly.”
“Now see here. I saved her, didn’t I? He couldn’t take her from her mother, could he?” Her dad looked at her. “I had to make sure you and her were fine. I couldn’t fail the two of you again.”
“But she wasn’t fine, was she? She died a broken-hearted woman because you left her.” Ama stood up. “I’m not sure how I feel about you coming into my life after all this time. The people in this room have been far kinder to me than any other person has been in my whole life. You left us when healing. You could have kept my mother alive and well until she died. Well, I don’t really care for you, or for that matter, know why you’ve come here.”