pdf - Honor Within.PDF by Linda Eberharter

Author:Linda Eberharter [Eberharter, Linda]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-08-12T14:49:02.226000+00:00

Epilogue

She found him at the end of the hall, leaning with one arm braced high in the

overlook. He was nude, and she admired the strips of muscle in his back and down his

thighs, the tight, high curve of his ass. Putting her lustful thoughts away, Nomi laid her

hand in the middle of his back. Drifting down the valley of his spine, she snuggled into

him, her heart easing as his arm came instantly around her.

“Nightmare?” she asked quietly.

He nodded.

“The Cat?”

He nodded.

Cro, the mate of the Clan’s Alpha, had told Nomi that their mating should act as an

anchor for Burke. He wouldn’t have to fear going rogue. It was entirely possible he’d

now be able to pass the Council’s mage training easily. He’d never asked to go back.

Nomi knew it was partly because of her, and her horror of what River Mountain was like

at all other times besides Autumnal—teeming with hordes of people.

But partly, it was because Burke was still at war with Mountaincat. She’d find him

sitting in his great-grandfather’s wolf chair, face closed while his fingers smoothed over

the snarling wolf heads. Or he’d ask to go home to visit his parents, and then be

distracted and distant for days. Often on the new moon, when the forest was at its darkest,

he would have horrible nightmares. The small sounds of her stoic warrior in distress

terrified her as much as the uncontrollable convulsions he suffered after he woke.

It hovered on the tip of her tongue, to ask him to change, for her. Just to end it, and

prove that he would return to himself fully. But it wasn’t her war. So they stood on their

lower balcony, watching the sky bleed pale, dusty blue before dawn. She simply waited

for the day he’d stop hating that part of himself, knowing that the day might never come.

He loved her. He protected and honored and served her. There was no complaint she

could make, although she sometimes had the itching yearning to feel what short, dense

Mountaincat fur felt like.

They’d tried to remake her in the image of a Farm daughter, when water called her to

wander away. She would not do the same to her man. There was no requirement that said

you had to be furry in order to be a good person.

“It will be hot today. I won’t patrol until dusk.” His hoarse, tired words were an

apology, an offering to continue on as they worked around his pain.

“Want to go to the waterfall?” Her hand drifted down over the curve of his very fine

rump, testing the muscle and the fine, downy hairs there.

He rubbed his cheek over her hair, his morning bristles catching on the strands.

“Sounds good, mate.”

They’d made the waterfall together last winter, as well as the dam that created the

small pond at its base. It had been big magic, and some hard labor. Burke’s parents,

grandparents, and two wolf friends had helped. Now a torrent cascaded out of the cliff

one third of the height up, pouring in a thundering rush of white into the deep pit below.

The roar of it was clear from where they stood.

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