Chapter Seventeen
Torran
“We have two problems,” he growled as they watched the women go into the kitchen.
Sandy was treating Lilly like she was made from the finest, most delicate porcelain, guiding her friend in and asking if she needed ice, or water, or bandages. Lilly stoically put up with it, but she hadn’t stopped staring at him, even while she talked to her best friend.
Torran didn’t want to let her out of his sight, but he didn’t really have a choice. He needed to talk to Palin about things that he couldn’t say around Lilly. After they were settled he pulled the other dragon into one of the other rooms.
“Let me guess about one of them,” Palin said, his eyes looking back out the door toward where Sandy was, probably thinking about his reaction if something similar had happened. “You revealed a bit too much.”
“Yes,” he hissed, knuckles popping as he bunched his hands into fists. “I had no choice, Palin! I couldn’t. You saw the wreckage. She would be dead. Hell, I would be rather uncomfortable after that sort of impact.”
“You don’t need to justify it to me, my friend.” Palin clapped him on the shoulder. “I would have done the exact same thing. The question is, how do you handle it from here on out?”
“Somehow I have to tell her, obviously. She’s already questioned me.” He spat. “I took the coward’s way out.”
Palin lifted an eyebrow.
“I reminded her about her unborn child to distract her.”
The other dragon shifter visibly winced. “Ouch. That must have hurt.”
“I feel like a piece of shit,” he said bluntly. “The fetus is to small and young to be affected by that. I got us out of there before the car could do anything more than flip one time. She will be okay, I could tell. But I needed to get her attention off what she’d seen. It was the most efficient way.”
“I’m sorry it came to that,” Palin said emphatically.
“Me too.” He looked up, his eyes hardening. “And it never would have come up if someone hadn’t cut our brake line.”
Palin’s face closed off. “You’re positive of that?”
“I smelled her ex on the bottom of the car,” he snarled, keeping his voice down low. “I fucking smelled him, Palin. That asshole tried to murder my mate and her offspring. Where is Rowe? We need to discuss this.”
“He declined to come,” Palin said. “He told me he’d be arriving here in a few days, and didn’t want to go back and forth.”
“He’s coming back? He visited me in the middle of the night a few days ago.”
“Two nights ago for me,” Palin said. “He is confused, and though obviously he won’t admit it and I won’t call him on it, I think he is feeling unsure of himself as well. There is something eating away at him. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Same.” Torran tried to sound engaged, but his mind was elsewhere. He kept picturing Damien. “I need help figuring out what to do, Torran.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lilly is bearing this man’s child. Yet he tried to kill all of us. Who does that sort of thing? I’d begun to revise my opinion on humans after meeting her, but this…this doesn’t help. I—”
“What doesn’t help your opinion on humans?”
The two men spun. Lilly was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips. In the background Sandy was shuffling from side to side, looking extremely uncomfortable. Torran was aware Palin had clued her in to his heritage, so she must feel bad about not stopping Lilly from listening in on their conversation.
“Well? What does that mean? What are you talking about? Who speaks like that? ‘I revised my opinion on humans,’” she mocked. “You’re lying to me, Torran.”
“No,” he said softly. “Not lying. This is what I hadn’t told you about.”
“You’re an alien.”
“That’s preposterous. I was born on this planet.” He looked at Palin for help, but the other shifter just shrugged and backed away, until he’d put Lilly between them. His point was clear.
This was Torran’s issue to deal with. Fine, he would deal with it.
In the background Palin and Lilly faded away.
“Lilly, listen, I—”
But he got no further as his mate all but threw herself into his arms and began to shake. Confused, he wrapped his arms around her instinctively, holding her tight as she sobbed into his shirt. It took him a moment to realize just then she must have come down off the adrenaline. Her brain was going into shock, essentially.
“I’m sorry,” she started saying over and over again.
“Why are you sorry?” he asked after getting her to hush. “You haven’t done a single thing wrong.”
“I never meant to put you in danger. It’s my fault we almost died.”
Torran’s growl filled the room, silencing her immediately as the structure shook under the bass. “Do not say that again,” he stated with absolute conviction. “You did nothing. This is all Damien’s fault. He chose to do this.”
“Yes, but I knew he wasn’t a good person. I should have just left on my own, without involving you.”
“That is enough.” His voice cracked like a whip. “I chose to involve myself. At his house. At the ranch. Those were my choices. Not yours. Not his. You have nothing to apologize for.”
Lilly looked up at him, stunned at being spoken to like that. “I still feel terrible. He knew I didn’t have a car, and so after he tracked me down he saw the truck show up, and he must have realized it was yours. So he cut the brakes.”
“Maybe. It’s entirely possible. But that’s not what happened, Lilly. He almost killed you too, and if he knew you didn’t have a car, that makes it entirely likely you would accompany me places. Which means you are in danger as well.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “He wouldn’t intentionally try to harm me.”
They both knew that was horseshit, but he didn’t call her on it. “You needn’t worry about me,” he promised. “I will be fine.”
“Yeah,” she said, sniffling at the few remaining tears. “Because you can do whatever it is you did today, can’t you?”
Torran nodded, kissing the top of her head repeatedly. “If I need to, yes. Whether it’s to save myself…or to save you.”
She shivered and clung to him even tighter.