Healing Ties (Ties, Book 2) | ✓

Chapter 16

Yore woke up the next morning to find Fanner tucked in against his side closer than he needed to be in the large bed, still asleep. Yore reached his hand out to gently brush the hair away from Fanner's face, but he stopped himself before he made contact. It wouldn't have exactly been a molestation, but sometimes when he travelled with Slone they slept close together and he never would have done that to him.

He carefully extracted himself instead and went to get dressed. He would let Fanner sleep for a little longer, but they needed to make it all the way home today so they couldn't delay too long.

Yore braced for pain as he did his morning stretches, but to his surprise it was actually less painful than usual. Fanner hadn't been kidding about being good at massage.

Despite Fanner's assurances, Yore had been a little worried the whole massage thing had just been another ploy to seduce him. It wasn't that he distrusted Fanner personally. He hardly knew him. He had met a few other Companions in the last three years, though, and every one of them had been desperate for sexual validation.

Well, except Lucas, but he didn't count as a Companion in Yore's opinion. As Lucas often said, being a Companion was a state of mind, not a matter of genetics. He was still incredibly horny when it suited him, of course, but his libido and his sense of self worth weren't particularly connected.

Yore was typically not too much of a tempting target for lonely mages because they couldn't get energy from him. Hamish, as one of the few humans who lived with the mages and someone who was naturally caring, got the worst of it. Despite his general promiscuity, he was incredibly careful about which mages he would have sex with.

Yore had pondered whether Fanner's unusual behaviour might be related to his unusual powers, but he'd decided that if it was it was probably indirectly. Danya had described Fanner as shy, soft spoken, distractible, and impulsive, which were certainly things Yore had seen in him, but he'd also said he was charming and gently flirtatious which didn't really fit with the young man he'd met. Charming, maybe, in a sense, but flirtatious? No. His single seduction attempt had involved a rather, ah... direct approach.

Most likely that particular change in his personality was related to him going missing for a year and turning up badly injured, related to the information Lucas had passed on to him about Fanner being tied down and hurt to test his magic. It seemed he had already begun to disconnect himself from the idea of being a Companion, and not in the healthiest of ways.

Yore heard Fanner stir and looked over to see him sit up and rub his eye.

"Good morning," Yore said. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, um. Good, thank you, sir." Fanner made a face. "I don't think I'm supposed to call you sir. Am I?"

"I honestly don't mind if you do or you don't. Werewolves address one another by name regardless of rank so it's certainly not something I expect you to do. Sometimes mages and occasionally Lucas' human friends do address me that way, though, and it doesn't bother me."

Of course, Fanner didn't actually know there was any real reason he should give Yore special respect. Yore had deliberately skipped formally introducing himself with his titles. Fanner would find out from the others soon enough, but they had such little time left together that it would only needlessly complicate things. Fanner was intimidated enough by him as it was.

"Well, um... maybe I could just call you by your name?" Fanner offered. "Not because I don't respect you! I do, but I'm trained to only call humans by their names and I think I'd like to— I think in my head I'd like to categorise you as not human."

"I think that's a good idea. So that we can be friends, right?"

Fanner ducked his head as he smiled and nodded. "How, um, how are you feeling this morning?"