Vael had been a soldier for over one hundred years. He’d been shot, stabbed, clawed, and imprisoned. He watched his small clan die when their roost was shelled in the final days of the war, and he’d spent months recovering in a ward, the delicate bones of his wings shattered almost beyond repair and his voice lost to smoke inhalation.
Heknewpain.
This was a different sort of agony — and utterly unbearable. Knowing that he had hurt his Chosen when she had graced him with an honor unlike any other, and then hearing herlock herself away from him…Vael would have picked fucking disembowelment over that.
“Idowant your feelings.” He stepped closer and raised his wings so that they had a small amount of privacy, though he was careful not to embrace her — no matter how much he wanted to. Lowering his voice, he said, “I’m sorry,t?ht,but you didn’t give me a chance to explain last night.”
He watched her blink several times, but still, she would not look at him. “You don’t have to explain.” The skin around her mouth pulled taut. “I don’t want to hear about how you Chose a dragon, or that you don’t want me because I’m… me.”
Vael balked. “Chooseanother?”
The words made sense on their own, but strung together they were impossible to understand.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, speaking more sharply with her than he ever had before. Normally he tried to soften his hard edges around her, but couldn’t manage it on top of everything else. “Tell me,t?ht.Explain.”
Hele’s eyes finally swung up to meet his gaze. They were two completely black pools. No whites. No irises or pupils. Pure, unbroken blackness that conveyed everything and nothing at all. “I thought that you wanted to Choose me, but you didn’t. Why else would you say no? You must want someone else, or you think I’m too strange.” She shrugged once. It was a quick, jerky movement terribly at odds with her usual grace. “I amdifferent.”
Vael reeled. His heart, already aching, twisted again.I’ve wounded my mate.
He knew how hard she tried to fit in, how she’d worked herself to exhaustion to learn their language, to understand their culture. He knew that she felt like an outsider sometimes. He also knew that she was self-conscious of the differences he loved so much.
To know that he’d clawed a sensitive part of her so clumsily was horrifying.
Vael lifted his hands, but stopped himself from taking her into his arms at the last moment. Heneededto hold her. The pounding instinct to touch, to soothe, made his hands shake. And yet he did not embrace her. She told him not to, and he would not cross that line until she gave him permission again.
Instead, he fisted his hands by his thighs and grated, “I donotChoose anyone else.”
Hele’s eyes widened. Her soft mouth, so pretty and round like a little cushion, parted with surprise. “What? But you said—”
“I said that you could not Choose menow.”
She made a distinctly dragonish little growl of frustration. “I don’t understand.”
“T?ht,I haven’t Chosen anyone else. I don’twantanyone else.” His throat threatened to close around his next sentence, but he forced it out anyway. “I want you, myHele. I have since the moment I caught you. You are mine.”
He watched her expression clear. Wonder made her eyes round in her aquiline face. “You… want me?”
Do I want you? My gods, Hele, if I wanted you more, there’d be nothing left of me.
“Yes,” he rasped, daring to lean closer. She stood still, allowing him into her space, as he slowly began to fold his wings around them. It wasn’t quite an embrace, but if she gave the word…
“YouChooseme?”
“Yes,t?ht.”
He hadn’t really had a choice. The moment he felt her slight weight in his arms, the look she gave him when she opened her eyes… Vael wove his life with hers without hesitation or regret. It was as natural as flying home. He knew the way instinctively. He knew Hele just the same.
He watched her angular brows — white, with a faint undertone of purple just like her skin — bunch together as she tried to make sense of what he told her. “Then… then why did you say no to me?” Her gaze darted back and forth across his face, seeking answers. “I don’t understand you.”
Now comes the hard bit.
ChapterNine
Vael feltsweat begin to gather under the loose collar of his t-shirt. He could practically feel Artem’s warning lingering over him like a dark cloud. But he couldn’t do either of the options the younger dragon suggested.
Accepting her or leaving her to find another — both were impossible.
“My Hele…” he cautiously began as he tried to find the right words. “I didn’t mean to reject you. I would never do that. You… youhonoredme.” Vael wanted to touch her so badly, the urgeburnedhim. Instead, he pressed his palm flat against his racing heart and continued, “You can’t imagine how badly I want to be your mate. It’s all I think about.”
