“And it doesn’t feel nice to be left in the dark, does it, Kirov?”
She held his eyes as she said it and watched his jaw tighten at her unspoken message. She’d stopped asking about his father because there was only so much rejection she would take before she learned to keep her mouth shut.
Kirov was silent, the lab completely quiet. The conversation had started out innocent enough, but had ended in a much different place. But Lainey felt like it needed to be said.
Lainey waited for him to speak, to sayanythingreally.
Say something, she pleaded in her mind.Hold me, tell me you love me, trust me, confide in me about your father.
But he never did. He never did any of those things.
The old Lainey would’ve lashed out at him then. Would’ve tried to push him away, to hurt him…simply becauseshefelt vulnerable.
Now, however, she had no desire to do that. Not to Kirov. She wanted to be better for him. She didn’t want to be the old Lainey.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fresh tears continuing to fall from her eyes. “I’msorryI haven’t told you these things until now, Kirov. But you keep things from me too. I’ve tried to act like it doesn’t hurt, but it does. And until we’re more honest with each other, until we can trust each other with these things…I just don’t know where we stand. You’re asking me to give up everything I’ve known for you, you want me to bond myself to you during theravraxia, but you won’t even introduce me to yourfather. Don’t you realize how that makes me feel?”
Kirov flinched, turning away, running a hand over his horn in frustration.
Until they sorted their shit out, until they were open with one another…she didn’t know if they could have a future.
That realization hurt worst of all.
“You do not understand,” he finally said.
“Then make me understand, Kirov,” she pleaded. “Please.”
She waited. And waited.
But he remained silent.
Finally, he said, “It is late. We should return to the dwelling now.”
Feeling deflated, emotionally raw, vulnerable, Lainey’s shoulders sagged.
And for the rest of the night, she couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Ifear it is lost,” Vaxa’an confided, through the Com screen in Kirov’s personal lab.
“Cruxan has yet to locate it? It has been almost half a lunar cycle since it was taken,” Kirov said, reading the frustration on the Prime Leader’s face.
“No,” Vaxa’an replied. “The male who took it was brought in for questioning, stripped of his warrior rank, but he handed it off before Cruxan got to him. We are still debating punishment.”
“Who could he have given it to? Other warriors in his unit have already been questioned,tev?”
Vaxa’an hesitated. He’d been doing that more often lately and Kirov knew that it stemmed from his own actions when he’d stolen Lainey from the Golden City. His friend and warrior brother no longer trusted him like he used to. He probably never would again.
“It was revealed during questioning of the warrior’s unit that his blood sister had gone to theMevirax, to join them.”
Kirov cursed.
TheMevirax. The Others.
They were a dissenting group of Luxirian warriors that had rebelled during Vaxa’an’s sire’s rule, long ago. Their exit from Luxirian society had been a bloody one, but they had taken their possessions, their females, and offspring and had gone to live in the wild lands of Luxiria, starting their own tribe. They were rumored to live near the cave of thePevrallix, a sacred place.
No one spoke of them. No one dared to.
