“You finish that sentence and I’m going toactuallybeat the shit out of you. Don’t you dare say that I don’t know my sister.”
Vael winced. The indignation bled out of him in an instant.
He’d overstepped and he knew it. With his instincts in a tangle, it was easy to let the possessiveness twist things in his mind, to make him believe that he was the only one whoreallyknew Hele. While it was true that he had spent more time with her in person than Artem had, seeing as the younger dragon had a mate and a child on the way across the country, he knew that he took his responsibilities as a brother seriously. Hele told him how they did family board game nights, and how Paloma and Artem wanted her to visit after the baby was born.
“I think I’ll wait a few months,”she’d admitted to him, her aquiline features drawn with worry.“I don’t want to accidentally shock a newborn.”
His Hele. Always so considerate and painfully aware of her differences. Gods, he loved her.
But Artem loved her, too. To imply otherwise was not just offensive, it was shameful. They were clanmates, for godssakes.
Vael rubbed his stinging eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”
“Iknow,but I don’t know where— wait.” He straightened and narrowed his eyes. Sharply honed hunting instincts prowled to the forefront of his mind. “You know where her apartment is, don’t you?”
A huffed breath came across the line. “Sure do.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
Vael’s tail began to whip behind him in quick, agitated strokes. “Why the fuck not? I need to fix things, Artem. And you know it fucking kills me to not know where she is right now. Youknow.If it was your mate, what would you do? How would you feel right now?”
“Actually, seeing as she’s very much not your mate, I don’t think you have any right to know where her new dwelling is.”
Nowthatwas too fucking far. Vael snarled,“She is my mate!”
“Sure doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“Why are you doing this? Don’t you want me to fix it?”
“No,”Artem answered, voice dropping into a low, threatening cadence. “What I want you to do is make up your fucking mind. Either you want her to be your mate or you don’t. It’s that simple, Vael. You don’t fuck around with someone like this. You especially don’t fuck around with my sister.”
Before he could defend himself, Artem continued, “So the way I see it, you have two options: either crawl on your knees and beg her to take you, or you leave my sister alone. For good. No more gifts. No more trips to the library. No more messages. You get out of her life so she can let you go. Let her find someone else.”
He felt the breath leave him in one greatwhoosh.Let her find someone else? The part of him that was more beast than man roared with furious denial.
Over his godsdamned corpse!
The idea of leaving her was so entirely unacceptable it could not be considered. She was his true north. His fallen star.His.Without her, his life was quiet, and dull, and cold. Without her he had no nest and no warmth. He couldn’t even imagine it. Herefused.
But that didn’t mean she was anymore ready for matehood than she was yesterday. Just becausehecouldn’t live without her, didn’t mean that he should force her into something she wasn’t ready for. That was the part that Artem just didn’t get. He wasn’t the one who caught her. He wasn’t the one who held her as her body spasmed, as she fought to communicate. He didn’t know how much she deserved tolive.
He didn’t know that Vael saw his own pain in her struggles. Artem was born long after the war, and likely had no idea that Vael, now the highest rank a dragon could achieve in the ‘Riik’s military besidesIsand,was once a lost, voiceless creature. He did not know what it was like to have your wings clipped and your choices stolen.
But Vael wasn’t a verbose man. He struggled to articulate his thoughts even when he wasn’t being choked by raw emotion. So he simply replied, “I can’t let her go. You know I can’t. I won’t.”
“Then I guess you’d better start crawling, asshole.”
ChapterSeven
The next day,Hele tucked another important life milestone under her metaphorical belt: after spending an entire night crying into her nest with her outraged sister there for moral support, she’d peeled herself out of the blankets, threw on a dress, and forced herself to go to work.
Any excitement she had for her appointment with the witchy duo on loan from the Coven Collective had popped like a balloon. While she rode the m-lev to Mackinaw City, where the western research hub of the ‘Riik government was located, she tried to untangle exactly what she felt. While the night before had been crushing disappointment, hurt, and confusion, this morning she just felt… worn out.
Hele of the boundless energy and curiosity had been utterly deflated by Vael’s rejection.
