“It’s your father.” A single tear ran down her cheek. Even though Zara hadn’t even known his parents and she knew he was the one that had basically ripped his father from power, death was painful for her. Especially when she felt a mated pair being ripped apart. It was why she hated war so much. “He’s dead.”
She could feel a mixture of emotions run through him as the news hit him on several levels at once. There was grief, but there was also a kind of relief mixed with it. He knew he had horribly crippled and weakened his father in the fight between them, and his father’s existence for the last month had been one of almost constant pain. “How is my mother?”
Just the memory of the pain and grief that his mother was going through enticed another tear to slip down Zara’s face. “I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
He nodded and put a hand on her shoulder, since he could feel just how affected she was by it. “I’ll see her. Keep your distance.” He stepped back into the room where his Guardsmen were still waiting for him, but didn’t go back to his place at the head of them. “My father is dead. Instruct your people concerning the funeral services tomorrow.”
Zara sniffled and wiped at her face as the guards walked out and past her to do as they had been commanded. She waited patiently for him as she looked down at the ground, still thinking about the moment she had felt the connection between his parents shatter. For a Heartborn close by, it was always a horrible experience, but not as bad as the experience for the surviving mate.
He left after all the guards were gone, and stayed with her for a moment before making any move to go to his mother’s house. “Are you alright?”
She nodded slowly but she still refused to look at him. “It’s so painful.”
“They were mated for a long time. The bond between them was always deep.” He couldn’t remember a time that his mother and father had ever been on opposing sides of anything. They were like two halves of the same person, even if that person, in hindsight, was ruthless and cold.
“As soon as he was gone…it was like your mother’s whole body broke down. She can barely grieve because she’s so cracked without him.” Mated wolves were connected at their souls, their essence. Rarely did one survive long without their other half, especially if they were old wolves.
“You can leave if you want to.” He said with a hand on her shoulder. “If distance would help.”
Zara seriously considered it, but she shook her head. They weren’t even her parents. He shouldn’t be helping her. “I’ll be fine. He’s your father. I should be trying to help you.”
“I’m the one who killed him. There is no helping me.” Nick replied flatly, despite any emotion he felt.
She looked up at him and, since there was no one around to see, she reached out and touched his face for a moment, but only a moment. “He raised you to take his place with a fight. He never intended to give it to you.” She had been close enough to hear his mother’s thoughts as her mate died, their son having taken a place they had assumed he would be too distracted being a Council member to take for himself.
“I suppose not.” He held her hand against his face, wanting to lighten the wound she felt vicariously through his mother. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Zara looked into his eyes, her own still filled with tears as she nodded again. “Somehow I always forget how powerful a mating bond is. Or maybe it’s not that I forget, maybe it’s because it feels worse every time I have to feel someone else lose the other half of their soul.”
“What does it feel like to witness one being formed, though?”
Just thinking about it brought a smile back to her lips, although it was a weak one in the moment. He could feel through her touch just briefly how intoxicating the pleasure was to witness a mating. It was the joining of two wolves in a way that was so much a part of their power and intimacy that it could only be broken by death, and then, one death typically destroyed the other wolf simply by how deeply woven the two ended up being. “It is incredible.”
“I can imagine.” He smiled just as weakly and started walking with her. “Are Heartborn able to? I’ve often wondered how that would even be possible.”
Zara didn’t touch him again as she walked by his side, but she did walk a little closer to him than usual. “Yes. We can. It’s complicated, though. We always have to go first during the process of the mating, and we have to be separated from everyone at least three days prior. Locked in a room. Alone. Thick walls, no outside contact. The payoff, I’ve seen, is that the sex is incredible afterwards.”
He almost stumbled at her frankness over the subject, but then he realized he shouldn’t have been shocked. “I…would imagine.”
“So many people are terrified of us.” Her tone was filled with genuine sadness. “But we’re the ones that love completely. The ones who live to make people happy, the ones who want people to get along, to feel connected. Somehow we’re the enemy, and I’ve never understood that.”
“You invade people’s minds and steal their thoughts, often without their permission.” He looked over at her with a slightly apologetic look on his face, although he was also being frank. “People aren’t generally open to that kind of thing.”
She sighed and looked away from him. “Sometimes it’s hard to survive. We steal thoughts as easily as Ironborn steal gold. It’s not right, but it’s how we survive. I can’t change it.” She said softly, although she was
