Kodiak Chained by Doranna Durgin

Author:Doranna Durgin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Paranormal Romance
ISBN: 9780263903928
Publisher: Mills & Boon
Published: 2012-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Ruger saw it happen—the understanding in Mariska’s expression, and the change from resistant conflict to...

Resignation.

Maybe even a little bit of hope.

“Okay,” she said. “We can do this.”

He couldn’t help but laugh out loud. She huddled shivering before him, skin pebbled and toasty complexion paled in a way that only highlighted the unnatural flush high along the strong bones of her face. He felt every inch of the slice along his back, every cut and scrape of their escape.

But together, they possessed such an accumulation of stubborn determination, it was hard to imagine anything but success.

“Just nudge,” he reminded her, and settled to sit cross-legged with his back to the rock and the slope spreading down before him. Overhead, the next round of rapidly shifting clouds rumbled a distinct warning; the rain wasn’t done with them.

“Go slow,” she warned him. “So I have the chance.”

In answer, he held out his hand. She took it, her fingers wrapping without hesitation around his. “Is it easier this way?”

“A little,” he told her. “Mostly I just want to hold your hand.”

She might have smacked him then; he saw it in the press of her lips, the spark of her eye. But in the end she squeezed his fingers—and maybe there was even a hint of a smile.

Ruger closed his eyes, shutting out the world. He took a moment of indulgence to feel the nuances of her hand in his—the faint pressure of strong, short nails against his skin, the calluses on the knuckles and edge of her palm, the rough skin of a recent scrape. Her fingers twitched with passing restlessness, and that made him smile, too.

From there he slid not to healing, but to awareness. He started with the sharp pull on his back—feeling it as a healer would, and practicing the balance of perceiving without acting.

Harder than he’d thought, that balance.

Harder yet when he sought out Mariska—deep aches, gripping chill, insistent wrongness—and especially at the ice pick of a headache clamped down in her head.

Generalized healing. That’s what he needed. Nothing fancy; nothing too targeted. Nothing that would eliminate the amulet working from her system, and just enough to spill over to his back.

Just enough to help.

He groped for the energies, struggling for balance—struggling to push his way through the thick wall of dead energy—but without shoving. Without falling into lifelong habits of reaching.

It used to come with such ease, this energy did. It used to flow like silk, not mud. It used to wash around the wounded like a cool balm. Now he grappled with sticky energy sludge, making little headway until in his impatience he yanked—

He startled wildly at the stinging slap against his face, his head hitting the rock behind him. “Son of a bitch!”

Mariska knelt before him, facing uphill with her knees nearly touching his, annoyance at war with grim concern. “You should have saved some of that shirt for your face.”

“Nudge!” he told her, at a loss for words.

She rose up on her knees, pulling the

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