was unstable? Mentally?” She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “Or…like the people your mother worked with?”
“My mother’s interest in her field started with Cilji’s problems as a child. She’d improved a great deal, but when our parents died, she slipped beyond my abilities to help.” He struggled to draw breath, pain streaking through him at his own helplessness. Laying this bare was like dosing the wound with acid. “I’d hoped when she found her One, it would help her regain control, balance her out. If he was in control, even if he had lesser powers, it could have anchored her. In fact, at the time, I thought it would be preferable if he had fewer powers.”
“It wasn’t?”
Each beat of his heart was a heavy thud, and his throat closed. He had to clear it twice before he could speak. “Her One was Eetash Sajan’s twin brother.” He swallowed. “No good has ever come of that family. Barely more than animals, some of them.”
“It sounds like she and her One probably shouldn’t have bonded.” She drew in a deep breath that lifted her breasts.
Anun, but he’d rather have his hands on her soft curves than continue this story. “No, they shouldn’t have. But it would take a great deal of control to stop it.”
“And she had none.”
“Very little.” He closed his eyes, praying that someday he could think of this and not feel as though he were drowning. “But her One…blamed my mother for his twin’s death, said the Arjun family was responsible.”
“Oh, shit.” Bren rose to her haunches, her whole body tensing.
“Yet, he wanted my sister. How can anyone not want their One?” His hands lifted, his fingers spreading. “He wasn’t certain they should bond, though. She was an Arjun, and his grief made him even more unstable than he might have been normally. It was a toxic combination.”
He looked away, still unable to believe how quickly his family had gone from whole and happy to shattered, broken, and on its knees. “Cilji bonded with him anyway. Against his will. She was vastly more powerful than he was, and she couldn’t control it. She just…needed her One. It’s what the Kith were made for. She loved him and thought bonding with him would change his mind about…”
“About blaming your family?”
“Anun, why?” He covered his eyes with his hand. “How could she do such a thing? It violates one of the oldest tenets of Sueni law.” Twenty years later and he still couldn’t fathom it. He’d loved his sister so much, but he would never understand what she’d done. Meeting Bren had only made what Cilji had done more abhorrent to Farid. “Sajan was…very angry about her bonding with him without his consent.”
“Understandable.” Bren gave in to whatever internal struggle she’d been having, rose, and walked over to his side of the fire to kneel beside him. She didn’t touch him, and for that he was grateful. “Did he hurt her?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. He brought no physical harm to her.” He swallowed but couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t bear to know if she condemned his sister or forgave her for her crimes. He still wasn’t sure which he felt most. Nuances, as he’d told Bren, were the key to understanding. But love muddied all of it for him. “Cilji should never have bonded with him against his will, no matter how powerful she was. If she couldn’t control herself with him, she should never have touched him, should have removed herself from the situation. I would have helped her in any way I could.”
Bren’s tone was neutral. “She didn’t ask.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “She was impetuous. Impulsive. Wonderful and funny and sweet.”
“She was your baby sister.” There was the slightest bit of wistfulness in her voice, reminding him that she had never known any family of her own. Which was preferable? To have had it and lost it like he had, or to have never known it at all? He couldn’t say.
But a smile curved his lips when he thought of Cilji. She had been like a comet that had burned too brightly and was gone too soon. “She was, and I loved her dearly.” His smile faded as the old guilt stabbed at his soul. “My parents expected me to protect her.”
“You can’t save someone from themselves.” Bren’s fingers brushed over his shoulder.
“No. No, you can’t.” He certainly hadn’t been able to save his father. Or his sister. He wasn’t even going to be able to save Tylara. Another one lost to the Sajans…to love…to the One bond. Everything came back to that, no matter how he might run it around and around in his head. No matter how much he might like and desire Bren, he could never find a way around the simple fact that he would lose his One someday as he had lost everyone else. And he knew he’d never survive it with his sanity intact. He would be as his father had been. Lost, bereft, empty. Nothing.
He heard Bren swallow, sensed her hesitation. “If Sajan didn’t hurt her, how did Cilji die?”
“She killed herself.” His voice went bleak, flat. “He was angry, he went back to the wild, erratic ways of his family and left her behind. He betrayed her with other women, many of them, trying to rip free of the bonds between them.”
Her hand squeezed his arm. “It didn’t work?”
“No, a bonding can never be undone. Only death will free you, if that’s what you want.” He leaned into her touch, some deep, unspeakable part of him craving the comfort she offered.
She stroked her fingers down his bicep, petting him. “So she killed herself to be free of him.”
“Yes, but he couldn’t live without her.” His body reacted predictably to even her most innocent caress and he had to force himself to focus. “They were bonded whether he wanted it or not, no matter what psychic walls he might have built in his mind to defend himself again her.”
“He committed suicide, too?”
His lust died as renewed rage fisted in his belly. “Yes, and he’s lucky he did.”
Her voice was as flat and cold as Farid’s. “You were going to kill him.”
“I wouldn’t have made it the fast, painless exit he ensured for himself.” He snarled, the beast unappeased about the loss of one of its own. “I wanted to see him eaten alive from the inside out the way she had been. Whatever she had done, she didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m sorry.” Both of her hands cupped his cheeks, turning his face toward her. “Jesus, I’m so sorry, Arjun.”
“Call me Farid.” Anun, he needed her now. Snapping his hands around her waist, he pulled her into his lap and brushed his lips over hers.
She caught his shoulders as her legs straddled his, her jeans abrasive against his naked thighs. A dart of excitement shot from her to him, and he could smell how her body readied itself for him. “I don’t think—”
Smothering her protest with his mouth, he kissed her again, hungry for her after that one small taste. His cock hardened at the feel of her soft curves pressed to him. He moved his lips over hers until she moaned, until her fingers dug into his shoulders, until she arched and writhed against him.
He
