[This post is from Cameron’s point of view.]
Lara recoiled, her hands shaking as she dropped the reins of Cameron’s mount. Cameron stiffened, reaching for her arm. “Lara?”
“All the stories said that was a power long dead,” she whispered as Cameron’s fingers closed around her arm and squeezed. She sucked in a pair of breaths, her face pale. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“It’s all right,” Cameron said. “This kind of reaction isn’t anything I haven’t seen before, trust me.”
A weak laugh escaped her and she nodded. “See to your horses. Then I’ll—I’ll explain.”
Cameron squeezed her arm again before letting go. “You don’t really—”
“No, I do. I really do.” She took a deep breath. “There are things you should know about Leviathan, stories that have come down, stories that were lost once upon a time and remembered by only a few. His appearance isn’t good, Dragon. Especially not now, not with the way the world is now.”
After a momentary hesitation, Cameron nodded. His stomach already felt like it had fallen down through his feet to the ground, but now it was sinking even lower.
This is the world Neve and I are bringing children into, that Thom and Marin are bringing a child into, that Tala’s already brought her twins into. What sort of world are they going to inherit from us someday?
He grimaced as he turned back to tending his mount and the pack horse.
It’d be a better world than this one if he had anything to say about it.
• • •
Lara seemed only marginally calmer when he joined her later. She sat in the same little house where he’d first met her, her elbows resting against her knees as she stared into a mug of tea that looked as if it had long gone cold between her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said again as he entered. “I reacted badly.”
“For a good reason, I’m sure,” Cameron assured her, sinking down into the chair that sat across a low table from hers. He picked up the teapot from the cast iron warmer that it perched on and poured some tea into the second mug on the table, letting her gather herself. “I wasn’t there when he showed up on our doorstep back home. I didn’t see him myself.”
“Unless the tales are wrong, he’ll be terrifyingly normal on first blush except for the power he carries,” Lara said softly. “Much like the princes of the Aes Dana but…not.”
“Princes of…?”
A laugh escaped her, weak and broken. “The Aes Dana. Seamus and his family?”
“Oh,” Cameron said, rubbing at his temple and wracking his brain, trying to remember if Neve or her brother had ever mentioned the term. He couldn’t, but in a way, that didn’t surprise him, either.
A lot’s happened in the last few months.
He was going to be a father.
What the hell am I doing here when she’s pregnant back there?
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve just never heard them use the term, to be honest.”
Lara smiled crookedly and nodded. “It’s all right. It’s just the name I’m familiar with for them, that’s all.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” He glanced down into his mug. “They’re just…family, I guess, for me.”
That’s really it, isn’t it? That’s why I’m doing this, why I’m doing all of this.
They’re my family and this is what they need me to do.
Lara smiled weakly. “It’s good to have family.”
“Yes,” Cameron whispered. “Yes, it is.”
