“Not long,” he murmured.“I met her a rotation before the Plague hit.”
“The Plague?” she whispered, recognizing the term, but once again, refusing to dwell on it.
“An attack by our enemies.They unleashed a virus into our atmosphere ten rotations ago.It killed most our females.The rest were left infertile.”
“It killed Nitav,” she murmured, looking up at him.
The pain was written on his face, clear as day.He still wasn’t over her, she realized, and something crushed down on her chest at the knowledge.
“Tev,” he said.
“You loved her,” she knew.
Again, he inclined his head.“Tev.”
Taylor nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” she finally murmured, sad that he’d lost someone he’d loved that way.When her grandmother died, Taylor had been prepared, had slowly mourned her as the disease had progressed.
Still, there wasn’t a day that went by where Taylor didn’t feel her absence.
“You must’ve loved her very much,” Taylor commented, not quite meeting his eyes.“Even after all this time, you are still faithful to her.”
And he was.It made sense now…why he kept Taylor at a distance even though Cecelia had told them that the Instinct’s pull was irresistible.
“Female,” he murmured.
“I…” she trailed off, suddenly feeling a bit trapped and not liking it one bit.“I think I’m going to go to sleep now.It’s been a long day.”
Vikan watched her, but his shoulders had sagged slightly, long dark strands of his hair falling over his chest.
“Taylor,” he called, her name falling from his lips in a way that made her want things she shouldn’t…or couldn’t.When she met his eyes, he said softly, “I am trying.”
His words hit her.She knew exactly what he meant, but he didn’t realize that it didn’t matter, after all.She would be gone soon.He could go on mourning after his lost love and not have to feel guilty about desiring Taylor.
It was a win-win.
So why did it feel like Taylor had just lost something?
“Good night, Vikan,” she said quietly, before rolling over onto her side, her back to the fire, her back to him.
It took a long time for sleep to claim her, but by the time it finally did, Taylor realized that their impossible situation just became even more impossible.
TEN
VIKAN DIDN’T ENTER her dream that night.
Instead, he stayed up, watching over the fire since the temperatures began to drop and he didn’t want his female to get chilled.
Vikan stared into the flames, feeling like a stranger.There was no pain in his mind, no lingering pressure that ate at him.His body was at peace, so why didn’t he feel like it?
Across the fire, he listened as his mate slept.It had taken her a long while to find sleep, but her breaths had slowly evened out and, though her back was to him, he watched the gentle curve of her waist rise and fall with every one.
He was tight with need, his Instinct humming with it.It was unnatural for an awakened male to go this long without claiming his fated mate and his Instinct was making that fact known.There wasn’t a moment of the span he wasn’t hard and aching and he felt on the verge of madness.
How his warrior brothers wooed and courted their human mates, he did not know.
For one, it probably helped that they didn’t have a previous mate they’d mourned for ten rotations.
