He stopped at her abdomen, nuzzling her, then laid his head down on her there, the braid sliding down to where her hand rested on the sheets. She freed the thong holding it, and then unraveled it, spreading it out so she could stroke it the same way she’d wanted to stroke the lion’s mane. But he’d told her it was dangerous to treat a wild animal like a trusted pet. Ever.

“Jeremiah and the rest saved my life.”

“Yes, they did.” He lifted his head.

“And you wouldn’t let me give Miah blood.”

“No, I wouldn’t. For one thing, you were too weak. For another . . .” He moved to her throat, only this time the purpose wasn’t comfort, but something altogether different. “I won’t take the risk of them third-marking you, linking your life to theirs. A third marking is a truly . . . intimate . . . exchange.” She drew in her breath at the feel of his fangs grazing her throat. His breath was hot there, stroking her. Not something you would share with a fledgling. Or a child.

For all that Mrs. Rupert asserted that males were simple and straightforward as fence posts, and usually thought with the part of their anatomy they optimistically imagined was most like one, Elisa thought they were a little more complex than that. The sheer possessiveness that entered his tone now, intertwined with his gratifying concern for her, was entirely unexpected. There was a missing piece of the puzzle here, but fortunately Mal was willing to enlighten her.

“Do you know when Jeremiah second-marked you?”

She drew back, pressing her head deeper into the pillow. “He hasn’t.”

“He told you he was sorry about killing Leonidas, right before you passed out. You remember that?”

“Of course. He said it to me.”

“Elisa, he was all the way across the compound, and I heard nothing.”

“But I’ve never given him blood directly.” At his look, her temper spiked. “I’ve no reason to lie to you. You can plumb my bloody mind, right? Look there for the truth if you’re not going to believe me.”

She tried to struggle up on her elbows, feeling at a sudden disadvantage like this. The sharp pain that shot through her was enough to steal her breath, but she didn’t want to be in this position anymore.

“Hold on, then. Stubborn girl.” He surprised her by helping her sit up, easing her into an upright position and rearranging her pillows behind her so she could manage it. She imagined she must look frightful. Seeing a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror, she was surprised to find her face was washed, her hair reasonably combed. The place where Leonidas had hit her was still bruised, but not as much as she expected, telling her how long she’d been out.

“Chumani came in and saw that you were cleaned up. I thought you’d prefer a woman to do that, though Kohana was all set to do it. He’s turned into a mother hen when it comes to you.”

“So why aren’t you off working and letting one of them watch over me?”

He gave her a look, but touched her chin, stroked his knuckles over her cheek. “Don’t avoid the question. Think. How could he have second-marked you, if you don’t remember it?”

He had to be mistaken. Jeremiah had never had access to her, except...

She closed her eyes. “After Victor. He took off and they had to go hunt him down. So when they found me, they didn’t know how long it was after the attack. I was on the barn floor, next to Jeremiah’s cage. Dev said Jeremiah was holding my hand, just inside the cage. I was a mess, a lot of wounds.” A lot of bites . . .

“He marked you through the wrist. And you didn’t know.”

“No. I . . .” She stopped, though, thinking about it. When things had been at their worst, she’d curled up into the tightest possible ball in her bed, her fist in her mouth. She’d hoped Danny wasn’t listening in to her tears, and that Mrs. Pritchett wasn’t feeling the trembling that shook her so hard the bed rattled in its frame. She’d shied from sleep until exhaustion made it impossible for her to do otherwise, and when she went under, she’d expected nightmares in that darkness.

Sometimes she did get those, but before they could break her, they would shift, and sleep became the one place she was soothed. It was gray fog and warmth, a soft touch on her brow, a stroking. A child’s voice would be singing to her, easy lullabies from her childhood as well as songs she didn’t know but would find herself humming when she worked around the station, keeping herself on an even keel.

She’d thought maybe she’d overheard the cook singing them, but then Mrs. Rupert had asked her what the song was, liking the tune.

It had been Jeremiah. Staying so quiet in her mind so she’d never know he was there. He’d been helping her stay together. It made so much sense now, why she’d felt so bonded to him, had never truly feared him the way she had the others. Was it a second mark, or . . .

“No, it’s a second mark. I’d have detected a third mark on you, and so would Danny. Because you were already second-marked by Danny, and Jeremiah is so much younger, his mark was far weaker and concealed by hers, so to speak.”

His expression was dispassionate, a closed book. Alarm trickled through her. “He didn’t do it to hurt me. He’s never spoken to me directly, not until what he said after Leonidas’s attack. Is he okay? Have you checked on him since you brought me here?”

Mal rose. “I’ll send Chumani in to look after you. I need to attend to some things.”

“Wait.” He was beyond the reach of her outstretched hand now. “You haven’t told me how they are. Is Miah okay? And Matthew and Nerida? Are the children all—”

“Goddamn it, girl.” Mal stopped in the doorway and turned to face her, right before she feared he’d been about to leave without another word. She wouldn’t have put it past him. One moment he was positively nurturing; then the next he was the bloody Wall of China. Of course, she thought she might prefer either of those confusing states to this, his anger suddenly pouring out on her like a hot western wind. “How many times do these fledglings have to nearly kill you for you to realize they’re not children? They’re not your personal pets or your mission in life. Should I just throw you in with them, let them mangle and violate you over and over, until it penetrates that thick, common servant’s head of yours?”

Elisa sucked in a breath, pain knifing under her rib cage. But he wasn’t done. He’d pivoted fully, stepped back into the room, his mouth hard and tight. Almost ugly.

“Why do you worry about them every moment of the day? Any other young woman would be pining for the mainland, for dances and boys and a record player in her room. You’re not their mother. You were given a job, to clean up after them and feed them their meals, to be their maid. The same job you’ve performed all your life. No more and no less. It shouldn’t mean more than that.”

A record player? His contempt and fury took the breath from her. In one vicious stroke he erased every kind or provocative thing he’d done toward her, painted everything in her life with the same brush, so none of it meant anything to anyone.

No, that was wrong. She managed to steel her trembling jaw, closing her hands into fists on the bedsheets again. “It means something to me.”

She barely got it out, but it didn’t matter. He was already gone.

The words that had come out of his mouth were vile poison. She hadn’t deserved it; he already knew that. It was like everything he’d felt at the fledglings’ compound—rage, fear and unreasoning jealousy—had suddenly overflowed. His gut churning, he took himself out of the house. While he pointedly ignored Chumani and Kohana’s condemning glances when he passed them in the kitchen, he curtly told them to watch over her.

His skin crawled with the impending dawn, beads of sweat breaking out as he drove through the night. He went to the shore, leaving the Jeep high above the tide line. Standing in that graying darkness, he defied the sunrise to reach out and touch him, suffering the discomfort of its near arrival as his penance.

It was the past, damn it. Well over a century ago now. But he remembered.

Remembered the beatings, everything that went into forcing him to be something he wasn’t. He’d resisted, but he’d been six, like Nerida. If a body and soul was starved long enough, they grabbed onto what was necessary to survive. When at last he was broken and turned into a “tame Indian,” dutifully willing to perform manual labor inside a world not his own, he’d lost his language, unsure of the syllables anymore. He didn’t remember his name. His fucking name. The faces of his mother and father, their friends and neighbors, had blurred.

He’d had more in common with those fledglings than Elisa knew, and that pale mirror had stuck in his craw from the beginning, hadn’t it?

He’d always told his staff they could not pity an abused cat. Just like when Nerida had dropped at his feet, expecting him to hit her, it was important not to react, not to reinforce or instill the idea that they were irreparably damaged. He’d claimed to be calm, impartial, but, blinded by his own emotions, he’d made that mistake with the fledglings, in a different way.

So caught up in the unnaturalness of their early turnings and their brutal circumstances, the dangers they posed to others, he hadn’t considered the curative powers of expecting them to act normal, and seeing if that helped them move toward normalcy, no matter what their physical handicaps were. Such as giving Nerida a simple command to take blankets across a compound.

Hadn’t Elisa suggested something along those lines from the beginning? Had he let his personal baggage, unloaded from that plane with the fledglings, make him that obtuse?

He thought again about Jeremiah meeting his gaze, telling him with undeniable dignity that they didn’t need anything. How long had it been since the boy had been treated as something more than a dangerous, unpredictable monster? Mal didn’t have to look far for the answer to that. Elisa had been treating them that way all along. She’d even tried to give that gift to Leonidas, as much as she could.