I snort. “Mated?” I question. “We fucked and somehow we’re tied together, but we’re not mates, Ryn. Not in the way that word is supposed to define a relationship. There’s nothing sacred or special between us. We’re strangers, ones that don’t even like each other.”
The crystalized bark of the tree digs into my back as Ryn flattens his body against mine. My breasts are pressed tightly against his muscular chest, and his leg settles between mine. He runs his fingers down my hair, and I despise that I don’t want him to stop. I should push him away, crush his effort the same way he’s pulverized my trust. I should leave him hurt and wanting, the way he and the others have left me too many times. The only problem is...I don’t want him to leave. I want him to show me why fate has kept us locked together. I want him to prove why I shouldn’t break the bond.
My mind and body war with what I want versus what I deserve, and I’m lost to the confusion of the battle. He feels good against me. He feels right. And in a world and time where everything is so wrong and uncertain, I need this.
“We started off badly, there’s no denying that, but it doesn’t change what you are to me, Falon. I know I hurt you, but if you’ll stop running from me, I can show you how I can make it better. I can do things the way I should have done them from the beginning. I can show you why we’re right for each other. Don’t you want that?” he asks me, his lips so close that I can taste his desire. “We don’t have to be strangers if you’ll just accept me.”
Ryn’s tone is molten and pleading, and I hear a hint of sorrow laced with the heat and the hunger.
“Ryn...” I breathe out heavily, and I can’t tell if his name on my lips is an invitation or a chastisement.
I can’t get the image of him holding our severed bonds to his chest and desperately trying to reattach them. The pain in his face haunts me, but so does everything that’s happened between us. The mistrust and accusations, the fighting and betrayal.
I don’t know if it’s possible to come back from that.
His lips are on mine, and I’m opening to him before I can question what I’m doing. He kisses me and throws me off my axis, just like he has from the first moment I saw him on the balcony in the Eyrie. He cups my face and devours me, mind, body, and soul, and as much as I question coming back from all the awful things that have happened between us, I know in this moment, that there’s no coming back from this either.
As hurt as I’ve been. As lost and as broken as he’s made me feel, you can’t kiss someone with this much passion if you have no hope for more.
He can’t sear his lips and soul to mine, pour his sacred promises into my mouth, caress his passion against my own, if I don’t feel all of those things too.
I pull away from Ryn’s lips, panting and confused. His thigh rubs against my sex, and I’m practically grinding against it as the rest of me tangles around him. I don’t drop my hands from around his neck or open my eyes, because I’m not ready for this moment to be over...and it has to be over.
I can feel Ryn’s unspoken apology in his kiss, his words, and in the way that he’s holding me right now. I’m woman enough to admit that as much as I don’t want there to be anything between us, there is. But if I accept him, then I know Zeph and Treno will come too, and I’m not there.
“Ryn…I can’t…” I start, but his lips steal my words.
“You can. You just choose me like I’m choosing you, and we fight for that,” he tells me, as though it’s all that simple.
“If it were just you, Ryn, then that argument might work, but it’s not.”
“I need you.Weneed you, and you know you need us,” he argues.
I sigh and try to pull away from him. “Whatdoyou need, Ryn? Because I need trust, respect, and validation. I need to feel important and cared for, and I need to be understood. All I get from the three of you is venom, blame, and resigned affection. Suspicion laces your every word to me, and your loyalties are divided, Ryn. You can’t decide if your Zeph’s Altern or my mate, and I deserve more than the scraps you three throw my way to keep me compliant and pliable.”
“We know that, but you won’t even look at us,” he tells me, ducking down so that his eyes are at the same level as mine. “We’re trying, Falon, but you don’t see any value in it. You want to cut us out of your essence instead of letting our tenuous connections grow into more.”
He huffs out an exasperated breath.
“We didn’t do things right, but they’re done. No Ouphe magic in the world will allow us to erase it, but why are we irredeemable to you?” he asks quietly, and the sorrow in it hurts more than I thought it could.
“I don’t know, Ryn, why was I never worthy of any of you in the first place?” I ask as I fervently try to blink back the emotion welling in my eyes. “You refused to see me from the beginning, to trust me, to acknowledge our connection and what it meant. You three all taught me very important lessons about what the termmatemeant to you,” I lament. “You can’t get mad at me now for simply taking your lead and learning to see things the same way.”
“Falon, you’re not seeing, you’re hiding. Zeph is wearing your runes even though they haunt him. He’s trying...for you. Treno says you need time and space, that we owe you that much, but I think you need to wake up. Navigating the current between us is never going to be easy, but you wouldn’t want it if it was. We made mistakes, but we called to you for a reason, and you called to us right back. We fit. It may not be pretty or look the way you thought it would, but we fit all the same. You need to admit that to yourself and accept it so we can move forward.”
“I need to go,” I tell him, wedging myself out between his warm body and the tree behind me.
“Don’t run, Falon.”
“I’m not, I just need to think...and to sleep, and to not be drunk when I’m trying to figure shit out.”
The image of Wekun’s tent and my bed of pillows pops up in my mind, and the next thing I know, I’m not standing with Ryn in the brush bordering the Gryphon camp, but I’m once again in Wekun’s tent.
“Fuck,” I snarl and run my fingers through my hair.
I pull at my roots, as though that will activate an instruction manual for these fucking runes and what they can do.
It doesn’t.
