No, not losing. You couldn’t lose something you’d never had. And he would never have her. It was better that way.
“It must have been difficult,” he said, groping for a way to keep the conversation going. “Finding work and a place to stay.”
“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy,” she said, glancing down at her hands. “It wasn’t too difficult finding work but keeping it has been a challenge. Most employers who were willing to take a chance on me got scared that they would get in trouble and invariably let me go.”
A sad smile creased the corners of her mouth, and Wyatt longed to reach over and smooth them out. Instead, he kept his hands locked in place at his sides.
“Finding a place to live was even more challenging. My condo is…well, it’s in one of the rougher areas of the city. It’s small and the rent is…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. If I can get papers then I can find somewhere better to live.”
Wyatt hated the idea that his mate might have suffered, but if her life had been so bad since she’d arrived then why wouldn’t she have gone home to Antarctica? She wasn’t like him. She had options. Options he would never take from her.
“Why did you leave the clan?” he asked.
She sighed. “Because my father is a bully.”
Anger boiled under Wyatt’s skin. That wasn’t the answer he had wanted or expected to hear.
“Did he hurt you?” he ground out, working hard to keep his jaw unclenched.
She shrugged. “Not in the way that you’re thinking, probably, but he was trying to force me to marry a man called Silas who not only do I not love, but I positively hate.”
“He didwhat?” Wyatt exploded.
The idea of her married to another man made the dragon inside him roar with fury and the beast’s strong reaction affected Wyatt, too. His hands clenched into fists, and he fought for control of his dragonandhis temper.
“Why didn’t you go to the elders?”
She snorted. “Because my dadisan elder.”
Wyatt stilled, ice seeping through his veins. “What’s his name?”
“Joseph. Joseph Blunt.” She took in the expression on Wyatt’s face then cocked her head to the side. “Did you know him?”
“Yeah,” he said, the name he hadn’t heard or thought of in a long time catching him off guard. “I knew him.”
“From the look on your face it’s pretty obvious that you didn’t like him anymore than I do.”
Wyatt nodded. “You’d be right about that. But what I don’t understand is how the elders could force someone to marry. I know it’s been fifty years since I left, but the mate bond has always been revered. It’s sacred. They don’t know I’m your mate. What if you met your mate after you were married? We live for a very long time, for all they knew your mate just hadn’t been born yet.”
Amelia nodded. “I know, you’re absolutely right of course. That’s how it’s always worked with our kind, but my father said that our species is in decline. There are so few dragons now that some might never meet a mate.”
The sadness in her voice made the acidic bite of his guilt carve through him tenfold. To imagine her slowly giving up hope of ever finding her mate, and then to finally find him, only to discover it wasWyatt?Fate was beyond cruel.
“My marriage was supposed to help ensure the continuation of our species. But his reasoning, his justification, is messed up.” She huffed out a laugh devoid of humor. “I’m nothing but a brood mare to him. He doesn’t care about me. How could he? What sort of man would force their own daughter to marry someone they hate? So I left.” Her eyes glittered with challenge, as if defying him to disagree with her action, but instead his dragon felt a fierce pride in her assertiveness. “I couldn’t have stayed there under those circumstances. There was no way I would marry someone I didn’t love.”
“Who is this Silas your father wants you to…marry?” Just forcing the words out made Wyatt’s fury rise anew.
“When we were kids, we were friends. Best friends, actually. We told each other everything. But as we got older, Silas changed. He became obsessed with me. He was incredibly jealous and would fly into a rage when he saw me talking to any other male dragon. He would constantly talk about us being together—about the life we’d have when we were older. I tried to distance myself from him, but he would follow me everywhere and the older we got, the worse he became.”
Wyatt’s dragon pressed itself close to the surface, lashing its tail in rage, and it took all of Wyatt’s carefully cultivated control to keep it in check and listen to his mate with a calm expression on his face.
“It was Silas who went to my father and asked for his consent to marry me. When my father insisted that I marry him, there was really no other choice for me but to leave. I couldn’t have stayed there anymore. Not with him. My life would have been a living hell. Although, if I’m being honest, it had never been my intention to stay there anyway. I always hated living in the clan.”
Wyatt scrubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t know what to make of the whole thing. But one thing was clear: Amelia could not go back home.
If our mate cannot return home…
His dragon was right. If there was no chance of her ever returning to the clan, the reason for him and Amelia not being together as mates was paper thin. He screwed his eyes closed, which only heightened his awareness of her intoxicating scent. He needed to get some control back. Air. He needed some air. Some time alone to think things through.
