Raven found her voice. “What in the world were you doing out there? How did you get out there?”
The priest smiled smugly. “It wasn’t hard. Mrs. Galvenstein is a member of the Church. She knows Mikhail and I are close friends. I simply told her Mikhail was engaged to you and that I needed to deliver a message. As I am old enough to be your grandfather, she thought it safe enough to allow me to wait on the balcony until you returned. And, of course, she would never pass up an opportunity to do something for Mikhail. He is very generous and asks very little in return. I believe he made the original purchase of the inn and allowed Mrs. Galvenstein to make much smaller, more reasonable and manageable payments to him.”
Raven kept her back to him, unable to stem the flood of tears. “I’m sorry, Father. I can’t talk right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He reached his hand over her shoulder to wave a handkerchief at her. “Mikhail was worried this night would be… difficult on you. And tomorrow. He hoped you would spend it with me.”
“I’m so afraid…” Raven confessed, “and it’s silly. There’s no reason to be afraid of anything. I don’t know why I’m behaving so badly.”
“Mikhail is fine. He’s indestructible, my dear, a great jungle cat with nine lives. I have known him for years. Nothing will keep Mikhail down.”
Sorrow. It invaded every inch of her body, crawled in her mind, lay heavy on her soul. Mikhail was lost to her. Somehow, some way, during those few hours he was apart from her, he had slipped away. Raven shook her head, her grief so deep and wild she was strangling on it, unable to get enough air to breathe.
“Raven, stop this!” Father Hummer caught her small, bent figure and guided her to the edge of the bed. “Mikhail asked me to be here. He said he would come for you early this evening.”
“You don’t know…”
“Why would he have gotten me out of bed at such an hour? I’m an old man, child. I need my rest. You need to think, use your intellect.”
“But it feels so real, as if he’s dead and I’ve lost him forever.”
“But you know it isn’t so,” he argued reasonably. “Mikhail chose you for his own. What you share with him is what his people share with their mates. They take the physical and mental bond for granted. They cherish it, and from what I have learned over the years it is so strong, one rarely survives the loss of the other. Mikhail’s people are more of the earth, wild and free like the animals, but with phenomenal abilities and a conscience.”
He surveyed her tear-ravaged face, the grief in her eyes. She was still laboring to breathe, but he felt her tears lessen. “Are you listening to me, Raven?”
She nodded, striving desperately to latch onto his words, to regain her sanity. This man knew Mikhail, had known him for years. She could read his affection for Mikhail, and he was certain of Mikhail’s strength.
“For some reason God has given you the ability to form a mental as well as physical link to Mikhail. With that comes awesome responsibility. You literally hold his life in your hands. You must get beyond this feeling and use your brain. You know he isn’t dead. He told you he would return. He sent me to you, afraid you might harm yourself. Think; reason. You are human, not an animal crying out for its mate.”
Raven tried to grasp what he was saying. She felt as if she was in a deep hole and couldn’t claw her way out. She concentrated on each of his words, forcing them into her mind. Deep breathing forced air into her burning lungs. Was it possible? Damn him for putting her through this, for knowing it would happen. Was she really that far gone?
Raven brushed the tears from her face, determined to pull herself together. She was determined to push the grief aside enough to let in rational thought. She could feel it eating at her, waiting on the outer edges of her consciousness to consume her. “And why can’t I eat or drink anything but water?” She rubbed at her temples, missing the alarm that spread across the priest’s weathered features.