On the second day I decided enough was enough. I couldn’t keep living like this. Couldn’t keep wallowing in misery while pregnant. It wasn’t good for me or the baby.
I hired a part-time employee. A college student named Emma who needed flexible hours and seemed responsible enough. She was thrilled to work in a bookstore and didn’t ask questions about my personal life.
I paid my friends for all the time they’d spent running my shop. They protested. Said they’d never accept money for helping me. But I insisted and eventually wore them down.
Then I decided I’d been locked up long enough, trapped in my apartment or my bookstore for weeks when I needed fresh air and space and to not feel like the walls were closing in.
I walked through the woods behind the bookstore to a riverbank I’d discovered years ago. It was quiet and peaceful, and the sound of water flowing over rocks was soothing in a way nothing else was.
It was chilly outside but I didn’t care. I really needed the vitamin C, so I spread out a blanket on the grass near the water’s edge, put on sunscreen even though I was fully clothed because pregnancy had made my skin more sensitive, then I lay down and closed my eyes, letting the sound of the river wash over me.
Sadness crept in again. Tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them.
“Stop,” I said out loud to myself. “Just stop. Deep breaths, Wen. Deep breaths.”
I focused on breathing. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. Tried to find that inner peace I’d been searching for. Tried to quiet the chaos in my mind.
I was barely starting to feel calm when a shadow fell across my face. Something was blocking the sun.
Please don’t let it be a bear, I prayed silently. Please don’t let me get mauled by wildlife while pregnant.
I opened one eye cautiously and would’ve fallen flat on my ass if I wasn’t already lying down.
“Mal?”
It couldn’t be real. My brain was playing tricks on me. Stress hallucinations or something.
But it was real. My mate was standing there dressed in casual clothes I’d never seen him wear before. Jeans that fit him well. A plain shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show his tattooed forearms and the scars from battles. His hair was shorter. Much shorter. No longer reaching his shoulders at all.
I felt a pang of sadness at that. I’d loved his long hair.
“What are you doing here?” My voice came out confused. Wary.
“I came for you, little mate,” he said. His voice was rough with emotion.
Then he fell to his knees beside my blanket.
I sat up awkwardly because five months pregnant meant nothing was graceful anymore. Stared at him kneeling in the grass. “What are you doing?”
“Begging,” he said simply. “Groveling. Whatever you want to call it.” He took a deep breath. “I love you, Wen. I have loved you since the moment you threw that book at my head in your bookstore. I love your sarcasm and your strength and the way you see the world. I love how you care for your friends and your customers. I love how you fought back even when you were terrified. I love everything about you.”
I opened my mouth to interrupt but he kept going.
“What I did in that throne room was the hardest thing I have ever done. Rejecting you. Saying those horrible things. Watching you break apart and not being able to comfort you. It destroyed me, Wen. Every word was a lie designed to keep you safe. Andreas and his supporters were planning to kill you. The onlyway to protect you was to make them believe you meant nothing to me. To send you away where they could not reach you.”
“You called me a whore,” I said. My voice cracked. “A plaything. You said I disgusted you.”
The devastation on his face was immediate. “I know. And I will regret those words for the rest of my life. I was trying to be cruel enough that no one would question the rejection. But saying them felt like ripping my own heart out. You are none of those things. You are my mate. The only one I will ever have.”
I felt his emotions through the bond bleeding into me. His sincerity. His pain. His desperate hope that I would forgive him.
“This past month without you has been hell,” he continued. “I could not sleep. Could not eat. Could barely function. All I could think about was you. Whether you were safe. Whether you hated me. Whether I had destroyed any chance of us being together.” He gestured to himself. “I’m a fucking mess, Wen. Barely holding myself together because half of me is missing. You are half of me. And I cannot survive without you.”
Tears were streaming down my face now. “If you’re here, who’s ruling Ravenor?”
He blinked at the question. “I am taking a year off. Leaving my guard captain in charge. My successor. If a year passes and I have not returned, he will stay on the throne permanently.”
I stared at him in shock. “What? You’re abandoning your kingdom?”
