Nikos nodded soberly, then turned to her, his gaze warm. Sympathetic. Understanding. “The world needs more like him,” he said, sincerity obvious in his tone. “I can see why you loved him.”
“I did,” Jen said. “Very much.”
However . . . she had sensed it all along, but had never seen it until now, this day, at age fifty-five, thirty-some years after she first encountered Robert in the Stanford library. She sat in the house she and Robert had shared, her body alight with the touch of another man’s hands, aware that she had loved Robert. With a single-minded admiration when she was in college, sometimes more, sometimes less, as the years had streamed by, until love had become more of a habit that she was careful never to look straight at.
Because she would have seen the truth: she had loved Robert—everyone who knew him had loved Robert—but she had never been in love with him.
What do you even do with that?
SIX
NIKOS
Our mate wants us, the unicorn trumpeted.
Yes.
Nikos wasn’t even going to try anymore. Useless now. He’d known it was useless the moment she shot him a little grin at the beginning of that scrap with Cang’s minions, and he’d seen the young Jen in that grin.
They had fought as partners. No, they’d fought as if they had trained together all their lives—which shattered his old assumption that a mate would have to be protected at all times.
Then there was the powerful love in her voice as she talked so briefly about teaching village children, a love made poignant by the longing she tried so valiantly to hide. She seemed to need to speak. It was his honor to acknowledge that need as she talked about this man she had lived beside for so long, gone these four years. Nikos sensed that this talk might be a path to emotional healing for her—whatever happened between the two of them.
It is more regret than love that I hear in our mate’s voice, the unicorn observed as Jen gave Nikos a wide-eyed, startled look, her pupils huge. She was clearly one breath away from flight.
Nikos responded, I’m no longer denying the bond. It’s too strong, at least from me to her. But we’re not going to do anything except be there as much or as little as she wants. Right now she’s torn between the old loyalty and the possibility of a new.
His unicorn—always straightforward the way animals were—tossed his head. But she wants us. And with that came a vivid image of a unicorn mare prancing about in a field, flirting her tail as she looked back at a likely stallion.
In the world of horse-related creatures, the next step was obvious. But Jen was a human, and Nikos was in his human form. Humans are complicated, he reminded the unicorn for what felt like the thousandth time. What our bodies want might not be what our minds need. Both have to be in sync. Whatever is going on in her mind is not in sync.
Human minds are full of noise, the unicorn sighed, and then came that internal head-toss. But our mate is still our mate, he stated. And you knew I was right all along.
Smug is not a good look on a unicorn, Nikos retorted, and the interview on the laptop changed to loud clapping, then ended, leaving him sitting in silence with Jen.
He’d known the moment he began working on her smooth, strong muscles that he was going to follow this bond to the end, whatever the cost to himself. He could handle that cost, the way he’d handled everything else life had thrown at him so far. He’d call a halt the moment he risked hurting her.
He watched as she bit her underlip, sensing that she was poised to withdraw. As her gaze flickered to the laptop in uncertainty, he said, “Thank you for sharing this video of what was truly a valiant deed. I enjoyed it.”
And he had.
Her expression brightened. Her gaze touched his then slid away before she reached to slam down the laptop lid. Then she said, “I’ll get at those sandwiches—”
At the same moment, his phone buzzed. The vibration was loud in that silent room.
His hand dived toward his pocket, then he snatched it back.
“Please, go ahead and get that,” she said immediately. “It might be Cleo and Petra, though I’m sure they’re having a great time.” She got up and headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll be in here making lunch.”
Nikos pulled out the phone, and recognized from the local number that it was Joey Hu. “Nikos here,” he said in the dialect of Chinese he had learned when doing his Eastern Medicine studies, as he knew Joey spoke it.
“Where are you? Did you stay with Jen?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. I made certain we were not followed.”
Joey let out a sigh of relief. “That was unfortunate. Not her help, which was excellent. But neither of us wanted Cang’s gang seeing her. Also, we weren’t able to nab at least one of the minions to be taken to the imperial city for questioning.?
?