His Mate to Keep by Ivy Sparks

17

Merrit

My eyelids fluttered open,and for a second, I wasn’t sure where I was. I felt fine, and my arm wasn’t in the sling anymore. It didn’t hurt when I moved it.

I looked around and discovered a human woman smiling down at me. “How are you feeling?”

I tried to sit up. “Xavier! I have to…”

She laid her hand on my shoulder and pressed me down. “He’s fine. He’s in another house with my mate, Garath vas Turra.”

I blinked at her. I knew that name. She said it before. She was… I scrambled to put the puzzle pieces together.

“I’m Daphne,” she repeated. “My mate Garath is Clan King of this colony of refugee Kavians. We found you in the jungle. Remember?”

I sank back on the blankets. “Now I do. Where are we?”

“We’re in Caverncall, a haven for Kavians. It’s safe here. We’re inside a hollow mountain, so nobody can see the village from the sky. And on foot, it’s even harder to find.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Your mate Xavier tells us you were held captive in a lab and experimented on.”

I stared up at her. “My what?”

“You and Xavier. You’re fated mates.” Daphne’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know?”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I suspected, but to hear this woman speak about it so nonchalantly…

Mates. Fated mates. I had heard about this on the Starglider, but Xavier never mentioned it. Why? Maybe he thought I would scream and run if I thought he was trying to tie me down. And he wouldn’t be wrong to worry about that, given my pirate life.

Daphne picked up a wooden bowl from the floor nearby and bent over. She touched my neck with some kind of minty paste. “You got scratched by a Xibian vine. It’s poisonous and would have killed you, but the cure seems to be working well. You’ll be up and about in no time.”

“Xavier…” I tried to look through the tent flap. “He got hurt. He needs…”

“Xavier is doing well. He even carried you all the way here, but that isn’t unusual when a Kavian is protecting his mate.” She studied me. “Would you like me to explain the mating bond to you?”

I nodded, still too stupefied to answer.

“The mating bond is always there between two mates—probably from birth—but it has to be activated when the pair mate for the first time.”

I jerked around, staring at her. “But can it work between a human and Kavian?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’m living proof of that. I didn’t think it was possible, either, when I first met Garath, but it’s true. We even have a child together.”

My jaw dropped. A child—with a Kavian? A wave of nausea overwhelmed me and I turned my face to the wall. The experimenters—they put me and Xavier together to produce offspring. They said we were compatible, but I really didn’t think it’d be possible…

Daphne squeezed my arm. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t look at her. My voice shook when I struggled to put my thoughts into words. “This child—your child—is it… Is it healthy? Is it… normal?”

“Yes.” She smiled, her face lighting up at the thought of him. “He’s a beautiful, intelligent, loving, happy little boy. He’s the most beautiful child I could ever wish for.”

I fought back tears. “This child—your son… Could I… Could I see him?”

Daphne’s eyes glistened. She looked almost ready to cry herself. She pressed my hand even tighter. “You will see him. You’ll see that everything is fine when a human mates with a Kavian.”

“You don’t understand,” I croaked. “You don’t understand how it is… between me and Xavier…”

“You can tell me if you want. If you don’t, I won’t mind, but you might feel better if you told someone.”

I swallowed hard. “The lab… In the lab, they…”

“The experiments must have been terrible,” Daphne murmured.

I shook my head fast. I had to get this out before it killed me. “They put us together. The experimenters said we were compatible. They put us together, and forced us to… to breed. They said they were going to use the offspring in the next phase of their testing. That… that was the first time… the only time he and I…”

Daphne pressed her lips, and her eyebrows turned up in sorrow. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. It must have been terrible.”

“It wasn’t! Xavier, he…” I broke off. “He was… But what if it wasn’t real? What if it didn’t count because it was forced?”

“It was real,” Daphne breathed. “It doesn’t matter the circumstances. You two are mated for life. There’s no doubt about that. If you don’t believe me, ask Xavier. He’ll tell you. The bond between fated mates—the love between them—it’s unstoppable. Once it takes hold, there’s no breaking that bond.”

I glanced toward the door again. I didn’t have to ask Xavier. I already knew it was true. I’d seen the unstoppable nature of that bond, and I felt it myself. Something happened to me in that lab. It bound me to Xavier with something more than friendship, something more than love itself.

As if summoned by my thoughts, the tent flap whipped open and Xavier ducked inside. He stood over me for a second, and everything else vanished. He dropped to his knees and grabbed my hand away from Daphne. “You’re all right! They told me, but I didn’t believe it. I had to see you…”

Daphne moved toward the door. “I’ll see you two later.”

I gazed up at Xavier with a thousand competing emotions struggling inside me. Mates—could we really be bonded like that? I always believed in the back of my mind that he would disappear from my life one way or another once we were no longer being forced together.

Everybody in my life had left me. My parents had disappeared from my life before I could even remember them. Members of my pirate crew were rarely permanent. And Captain Wynter, the closest thing I had to a father, died protecting me.

I half-expected these bonds to be short-lived, and I had been proven right. Could things really be different with Xavier? Would he not tire of me, especially now that he was with his people again?

For this moment, I chose not to think about it. Instead, I held Xavier’s hand as we both experienced this moment together, where we were both finally safe.