Divine Beginnings

Chapter Eight

“We’ve shared blood,” Tegan said.

“I know that, and while it’s disgusting it doesn’t make this understandable.” Aine pointed to her ankle where the pain that had spiked through it was fading, but still entirely too real to have been a hysterical hallucination.

Tegan looked away from her, sighed, and then reluctantly met her gaze. “The sharing of blood is part of how my people mate. It binds us together.”

“That is not possible.”

“Listen with your heart and you will know the truth.”

“Listen with my heart? That’s ridiculous.” But even as she spoke Tegan’s eyes seemed to trap her. Aine felt pulled within their amber depths. Before she realized what she was doing, she’d taken a couple steps towards him. She came to herself suddenly and stopped so abruptly it was as if she’d slammed into a glass wall. “This can’t happen.”

Tegan cocked his head to the side, and gave her a sad, slight smile. “Do you find me so repulsive?” He hurried on. “I thought you a goddess when I first saw you.”

“You’re a demon. If there’s a bond between us it’s an evil spell you’ve placed on me.”

Tegan sighed, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m too tired to place a spell on you. Evil or otherwise.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you admit you worship a dark god.”

Aine thought she saw something flicker in his amber eyes.

“I do not worship darkness.”

“Why should I believe you? You did just try to kill me.”

“I did not try to kill you. I’m sorry I drank from you uninvited, but my intention wasn’t to harm you-it was to save myself.”

“At any cost.”

“No. Not at the cost of your life. I stopped before I…” he trailed off, unwilling to continue.

“Before you killed me. And then you did this to me!”

“I’m sorry,” he said somberly. “But what I did can’t be undone.”

“What! You mean I’ll always feel your pain?”

He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he finally did that rich, musical tone was back in his deep voice. “It isn’t only my pain you can feel, Aine.”

His voice…his eyes…they drew her. Aine took another step forward. And then another.

“This bond we’ve forged,” he said. “It’s not so terrible. It’s how my people mate-how they love.”

The attraction Aine felt for him was raw and strong. Even lying there, wounded and battered, she could see the powerful male creature he was and be drawn to the mystery of him.

It’s because I drank his blood! Aine took a step back, shutting her mind to the fact that even before he’d forced her to drink from him she’d been intrigued enough by Tegan that she’d chosen to help him.

“I’ve done all I can for you. Leave. Return to wherever you came from. Just hurry because as soon as I get back to the castle I’m going to send them after you.”

Aine closed her mind and her heart. Resolutely, she turned her back on him and began to retrace the short path to Maev’s pyre.

She’d taken up the reins of the cart and had pointed the horse’s head down the road to the castle when the first of the pains speared down her leg. Aine gritted her teeth and clucked the horse into a sluggish trot.

The next pain made her gasp. He’d fallen. She could feel it. He was trying to walk and he couldn’t. Not by himself.

“You shouldn’t care.” Aine told herself. But care or not, she was a Healer, and the suffering of others affected her-it always had. “Epona!” She called into the night.

“Help me. What should I do? Did you lead me to him so that Partholon could be warned or so that he could be saved?”

The silence of the night was her only answer.

Aine closed her eyes. She did her best to shut out the phantom pain from Tegan. I need to follow my instinct. So what did her instinct tell her to do?

The answer came at once with all subtly of a rampaging wild boar. Her heart, her soul, her body, all were screaming at her to return to Tegan.

It was only her mind that called her a silly, stupid girl as she turned the cart around and urged the horse to take her back to him.