Warrior, Renewed: Book Two of the Comhairle Chronicles

Chapter Fourteen: The World Stopped Spinning

Watching Eallair flee left a pit in his stomach; a hallow feeling that slowly filled with anxiety. What if the trainee didn’t come back? What if he did? What if he ran like Deòthas had done? Should he stay there and wait or should he return to his own room and give Eallair space?

Gods... Why now, after so long? Why now, when I don’t know if I have the strength to stand any more?

He rubbed his eyes, somehow feeling even more tired than he had before. He’d asked Eallair to bring him to life and for a blinding moment, the trainee had done so. Then reality caught up. Reality that said he was very old, Eallair was very young, and they might just be too different for what the gods had planned. If the trainee even survived the trials.

Fuck! The trials! Most applicants die!

A bolt of terror shot through him. How many centuries had it been since the thought of sending a recruit through the trials elicited real fear? He’d grown accustomed to it a long time ago – the cycle of tempered hope and bitter disappointment – but part of the reason they’d kept trainees and warriors apart for so long was to protect the warriors. It disheartened to see friend after friend die in an effort to pass the trials. It seemed easier not to extend the hand of friendship until they could welcome a new ghaisgeach as a brother-or-sister-at-arms. Yet he’d gone and not only extended a hand of friendship, but fucked a trainee, shared blood, did everything needed to awaken a bond he’d never expected to have offered. Not to him.

Eallair might not even want him. In fact, that seemed likely considering he didn’t do relationship. Yet Tancred already feared sending him into the trials. An instinct he’d never possessed previously screamed at him to cancel the trials, to prevent Eallair ever becoming a ghaisgeach if only it avoided risking his life. The idea of watching the Taghadairean kill his mate, taking him permanently beyond reach, terrified Tanc more than he could say, with an irrational fear that came from some biological quirk of the bhampair species. Every possessive and protective instinct he had fired inside him, too much and too potent, until iron bands of dread wrapped around his chest, squeezing so tight that every inhale hurt.

What had he done?

Why had he done it when his former owner might be coming for him?

Ambustus!

Ambustus had reappeared and Eallair now had Tanc’s name tattooed to his cheek! If he thought he'd felt terror at the prospect of the trials, it was nothing compared to how he felt at the possibility of that monster getting his hands on his mate. In his head, he heard Pakhom’s screams as he burned to death, only they merged and changed, becoming Eallair’s voice instead. The iron bands around his chest tightened still further until he couldn’t breathe at all. His lungs refused to expand, while his hands covered his ears, trying to block out cries of pain that only echoed in his head.

Panic, real panic, had him freezing up where he sat, his body refusing to obey his command, and that only made his panic worse. He’d never had a panic attack before and for a brief moment he thought he might be dying. He thought the whole world had stopped, leaving him in that blinding moment of dread. Then his brain caught up, remembering that his lungs couldn’t just stop working. He was a bhampair, for Torrann’s sake.

He took a gasping breath, feeling more than foolish. He’d fought for the Comhairle for longer than it had been called the Comhairle. ‘Fear’ hadn’t been in his vocabulary for a long time and yet he feared Ambustus finding Eallair more than he’d ever feared anything. It was irrational. He barely knew the trainee, not beyond his training transcripts. One tumble shouldn’t be enough to change things so completely.

Only that was the point wasn’t it? Where sacred mates were involved, one tumble could change everything. The stories said the bond heightened every drive; attraction became a raging need; admiration became an unshakable adoration; the urge to protect overrode even self-preservation. Everything was on overdrive. He often suspected that was why so few ghaisgich ever had mates, because it would divide their loyalty when they had to put the Comhairle above anything else. Plus, if anyone lost their mate, as Seren had, it could send the surviving partner into such a deep depression that they might as well have succumbed too. Seren had been empty after Einion died and that had lasted for decades. Even now, sometimes he feared they’d still lose her.