“People like me?” Sawyer asked.
“Such an idiot.”
Sawyer shoved Dakota’s chest, forcing him to take a step back. “Tell me.”
“Mating, asshole. Mating is your power.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Exactly. Why do you fucking think most of our kind can’t find their mates? Because you fucked off with all the power and basically fucked over every single one of our kind. Oh, except those lucky few I guess. But the rest of them? Fucked over. All because you threw your power away without thinking of the consequences.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Of course, you don’t. What a surprise. Can you say anything except I don’t know or I don’t understand?”
“Stop being a fucking asshole,” Sawyer snapped. “I don’t know why I made the decisions that I made before. I’m trying to do my best now.”
“Bullshit. You’re being cautious, letting your mates guide you. You’re the one who has to fix this shit. Of course, why would you bother? You have all of your mates now. Fuck everyone else.”
Sawyer ignored Dakota’s accusation and tried to think.Mating.The amount of mates had been rare for a long time. He’d said so to the mother that night on the beach. It was all connected. But the dial hadn’t been turned down slowly as he’d originally thought. No, he’d turned it down on his own when he made the decision he made.
“Is the fertility thing my fault, too?”
“Such an idiot.”
“Answer the damn question.”
The ground began to rumble. The ravens swirled around. Sawyer forced himself to calm down.
“No, your highness. You handled mating; your brother handled fertility. You fucked it all up, though, didn’t you?”
Theyour highnessthing pushed Sawyer one step too far. He used one of the many skills Andvari had taught him and swiped Dakota’s feet out from under him. He hit the ground with an oomph of pain. Sawyer shook his head and walked away.
“Where are you going?” Dakota asked.
Sawyer ignored him and moved to the edge of the trees. The ravens cawed, and he looked up at them. There weren’t any answers hiding in their sounds, though. Not this time.
“Sawyer,” Dakota said.
“What?”
“Where are you going?”
“Go inside, Dakota. You wanted to hurt me. You did. That was your one shot. You don’t get another.”
“Sawyer.”
“You think putting your hands on me hurt? No. Letting me know that all this is actually my fault, that people have suffered for years, longed for mates they never found and children they couldn’t have all happened because of a decision I made? That hurts, Dakota. Mission accomplished. Now I need to think, and I can’t do that when all I want to do is scream.”
“So scream.”
Sawyer sucked in a breath, and then blew it out. “That won’t fix this. I have to figure out how to fix it, and me losing control isn’t going to be how it happens. I need to think.”
Dakota ignored him and stepped beside Sawyer before leaning back against one of the trees. “It was stupid, what you did.”
“So you’ve said. Several times. I get it.”
“But you were trying to save the Mother.”
