“No more secrets, Ash,” I breathed, shifting on the chair as his lips continued their assault on me. With reluctance, I pushed him away. “I need to go slow. I … it’s going to take me a long time to get back to where we were.”
If we ever could.
Asher’s eyes shuttered as he took a deep breath. “I understand.”
In an almost monotone, he started to tell me everything. About his mother, how powerful she truly was, and how she would try to destroy anything or anyone who got in the way of her plans—plans that included Asher. He’d been trying to stop her from ever knowing that I was important to him.
“Were you planning on keeping it up forever?” I asked, sarcasm spilling out. I hated when people “protected me for my own good.” Such a bullshit copout.
Asher’s eyes were begging me to understand, but I wasn’t there yet. “No,” he said with a sigh. “I was trying to figure out a way to take her out. Same as I did with Shera. That’s what we’ve been doing since I got back to the Academy.”
“And the guys…?” My voice broke, because their betrayal hurt almost as much as Asher’s.
“She wants them too,” he admitted. “None of us were willing to risk you. We just needed some time to formulate a plan.”
A plan I was clearly not part of. “You should have trusted me. You should have told me about this plan and let me decide if I wanted to be protected.”
Gods, I was angry.
“I don’t know if she has spies in the Academy,” he said. “She was awfully quick to send me back during this trial. She does nothing without an ulterior motive. I still haven’t figured hers out.”
With a snort, I leaned away from him, staring out the window at the cloudless sky. “She probably wants the library.”
Asher’s head jerked toward me and I stilled. When I turned to look at him, I felt dizzy as all the blood drained from my face. “You didn’t know,” I said softly. The guys hadn’t told him…
Suspicion wormed its way inside of me and I wondered then if I’d been a fucking idiot falling for Asher’s long game. Was he double-agenting all of us for his mother? She was certainly powerful enough to control him.
“You found the library?” he asked.
I tried to backtrack. “Nope. Haven’t found it. I just meant that we know it’s somewhere in the Academy vicinity.”
Asher didn’t seem to buy it. “If you’ve found it, Maddi, I need to see it. There might be vital information in there to take her down. To take all the gods down.”
I kept my face blank. “Yeah, I know. But I haven’t found it. No luck.” He was watching me closely, and I was doing the same, and I saw the hurt on his face. I almost faltered, but Asher was still too much of an unknown. I couldn’t cave until I knew for sure. “We should look for it, though,” I said, because that’s what I would have said in normal circumstances.
His lips quirked, just a little, and my heart ached. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Our silence was heavy. “If you were trying to protect me,” I finally said, sounding tired, “then why have you been back on the ‘we’re-true-mates train’ the past few days?”
Asher didn’t even have to think about his answer. “I wasn’t strong enough to stay away. It’s been killing me. I don’t sleep, I barely eat. I just train and hunt and research. And in the time I’ve pushed you away, I’ve learned exactlyzeroabout fixing this fucking situation.”
The ache in my chest was deeper than ever.
Asher took my hands. “I was dying without you, Maddi.”
Me too, without him.Every fucking day.
We were nearing the end of the flight now, and I was still tired. Asher opened his arms and my first instinct was to jump up and run, hide from the possibility of letting him in and getting hurt again. But … my legs didn’t move. I’d barely slept since Asher was taken from me—seemed I was codependent that way.
And this was so tempting.
“Come on, water baby,” he said softly. “Both of us could use a few minutes’ peace.”
A single tear trickled down my cheek. I closed my eyes before deciding he was right.Peace.I’d been chasing it for months, and it was more elusive than ever.
The moment his arms wrapped around me, I felt it return.Home.
We were coming in to land, but I drifted off, unable to stay awake. I stirred when I was lifted and carried, going in and out of consciousness, content to be in his arms once more. It was almost scary how much I didn’t want to burst the bubble of my time with Asher.
