He'd killed the bastard. Shot her captor right through the head, dropping him like a stone. Then he and Darius had packed her into a carriage and headed back for her family's house. The plan had been to return her to them. Take her to her blood.
Give her to those who by all rights should have helped her heal.
Except when they'd gotten close to that stately mansion, she'd bolted out of the carriage even though the horses had been going at a clip. And he'd never forget the sight of her in that white nightgown, streaking across a field, running like she was being chased even though the capture part was over.
She'd known she was pregnant. That was why she'd taken off.
She'd had the limp then, too.
That had been her only attempt to escape. Well, until the one after the birth, the one that had worked.
God. . . he'd been nervous around her during the months they'd stayed together at Darius's. He'd had zero experience with females of any worth: Yeah, sure, he'd grown up around them while he'd been with his mother, but that had been as a child, as a pretrans. The instant he'd gone through his transition, he'd been ripped out of his home and thrown into the sink-or-swim pit of the Bloodletter's training camp - where he had been too busy trying to stay alive to worry about the whores.
He hadn't even met Wellsie in person at that point. His promise to her had been an obligation his mother had assumed for him when he'd been twenty-five, before she'd even been born -
With a jerk, he hissed, and Manello looked up from his needle and thread. "Sorry. You want more lidocaine?"
"I'm fine. "
No'One's hood shifted position sharply as she glanced over. After a moment, she resumed her broom work.
Maybe it was the alcohol kicking in, but he suddenly didn't give a shit about pretenses. He let himself openly stare at the female as the good doctor finished up on the palm.
"You know, I'm going to have to get you a crutch," Manello muttered.
"If you tell me what you need," No'One said softly, "I shall bring it here for you. "
"Perfect. Go to the equipment room at the far end of the gym. In the PT suite, you'll find the. . . "
As the guy gave her instructions, No'One nodded, that hood of hers moving up and down. For some reason, Tohr tried to picture her face, but it was hazy. He hadn't seen her properly in centuries - that brief flash just now didn't count, because it had been from a distance. And when she'd done the reveal to Xhex and him before the mating ceremony, he'd been too rocked to pay full attention.
But she was blond; he knew that. And she'd always liked the shadows - or at least, she had in Darius's cabin. She hadn't wanted to be looked at then, either.
"Okay, doing good," Manello said as he inspected his repair job. "Let's wrap this and move on to the next. "
No'One returned just as the surgeon was taping the tail end of the gauze in place.
"You can watch if you like. "
Tohr frowned until he realized that Manello was addressing No'One. The female was hanging back, and sure as if that hood of hers was a face with expressions, he could tell she was worried.
"Just a warning, though. " Manello moved downward. "This is worse than the hand - but the palm is more important, because that's what he fights with. "
As No'One hesitated, Tohr shrugged. "You can see anything you like, assuming your stomach's up for it. "
She went around and stood behind the doctor, crossing her arms into the sleeves of her robe so that she looked like some kind of religious statue. Except she was very much alive: When he winced as the needle went in with the anesthetic, she seemed to burrow into herself.
Like his being in pain affected her.
Tohr shifted his eyes away for the duration.
"All right, you're done," Manello said sometime later. "And before you ask, I'll give you a 'yeah, probably. ' Given how fast you guys heal, you should be good to go tomorrow night. For fuck's sake, you're like cars - take a beating, go into the body shop, next thing you know, back out on the road. Humans take so damn long to get over things. "
Uh-huh, right. Tohr wasn't quite ready to put himself in Dodge Ram territory. The exhaustion he was lugging around with him meant he needed to feed - and that these relatively minor injuries could take a while to repair themselves.
Aside from that one session from Selena, he hadn't taken a vein since -
Nope. Not going there. No need to open that door.