with his jeans. “It happened like this with Daughtry and Cody.” A beat. “And Alex and John. And Gabby and Mason.”
Fingers fumbling as she pushed back her hair. “They didn’t know each other for decades. Not like us—” A sharp shake of her head. “They saw each other and bam! They were bonded.”
It hadn’t been quite that quickly, from what he’d heard from the Rengalla gossip train, but Suz was right. The other bonded couples hadn’t spent decades knowing one another without a single inkling that there might be more between them—more being the potential of a magical connection that linked their minds and powers forever.
That was different.
But he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Because a mate was a gift.
And maybe he’d always kept his distance because deep down he’d known this would happen, maybe part of him had understood Suz for what she was to him and knew that if he would have gotten close, this would have happened, and he wouldn’t have been able to bear letting her go off and find her feet.
Or maybe, Dee and Cody bonding had changed something, made it possible so the ritual, the connection his people had long thought dead, was able to make a reappearance.
Or maybe . . . he was wasting time thinking because Suz was fully dressed and taking off for the hall while he was standing there like a statue wondering about the grand schemes of the universe.
Dumbass.
He snagged his shirt and took off after her, tugging it over his head and trying not to notice the cold tile under his bare feet.
“Wait,” he said, snagging her arm.
She shook him off, kept walking toward the door.
He grabbed her arm again. “Firefly.”
“Fuck. Off,” she snapped and though the words were sharp and caustic, the tone wasn’t what stung. Instead, the riot of emotions—fear, terror, and horror—battered at his brain, nearly strong enough to make his eyes water.
“No,” he snapped back. “We have to talk about this. Suz—”
She spun to face him, glaring at his hand where it was holding firmly to the top of her arm, and he felt a boiling anger rise up in her mind, moving toward him like a tidal wave. She opened her mouth—
A knock pounded on the door to the infirmary.
That anger banked immediately.
No, it wasn’t quite banked, so much as locked behind a wall of calm. Mentally, he poked at that sheet of ice, able to see flickering flames of fury beyond it.
“Stop,” she hissed, yanking her arm free, her mind shoving him out of hers.
Graham retreated, pulling back from her thoughts, not because he or his magic wanted to, but because he was aware of exactly how gross an invasion of her privacy it was.
He was trespassing where he shouldn’t.
Not intentionally, necessarily. The bond had opened up a channel.
But she didn’t want him in her brain, so he shouldn’t be there—even if every part of his body was telling him he should be ingrained on her mind, etched into her heart, permanently tattooed on every cell.
Which was crazy, he got that.
Thus was the power of bonding, he supposed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not touching her again but moving closer, crouching a bit in order to meet her eyes. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
That ice in her mind melting slightly. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just—”
The knock came again.
She jumped and winced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It could be—”
He slid past her, reached for the doorknob. “Don’t apologize for doing your job,” he told her. “It could be an emergency.”
A blip in his mind—a grenade of emotion that exploded and splintered . . . and then that emotion was gone before he could process anything more than it was intense and laced with some deep-seated memories.
His eyes met hers.
“Please, just find out who needs help,” she whispered.
He opened the door.
Five
Suz
Thank God for emergencies.
Emergencies of this sort anyway.
Because this one was solvable. This one would be finished in approximately twelve hours—or, if Felicia was lucky, a little less.
Today, her baby had decided to make an appearance.
“It’s too early,” Felicia said, gasping as another contraction had her huddling over.
Suz glanced at her watch. That was closer together than expected.
Only two minutes apart. From five minutes to two in—she looked at her watch again—under thirty minutes.
Okay, so this labor would probably be quite a few hours less than twelve.
Felicia cried out, grabbing tightly to the bedrail.
“It’ll be okay,” Suz told her, pushing away from the computer where she’d stepped away to