It was like the last piece of the puzzle slotting into place.
It all made sense.
“Instead, you got me,” I whispered. A weak, half-starved human with an unpredictable gift.
Wrune went quiet.
Then he said, “Never before had I understood what my father meant. With other females, I had never felt in danger. I had never felt in danger of losing myself.”
A prick of jealousy pierced me but I knew that it had no place in this conversation. Thinking about him with other females, especially with Junira since I could put her face to a name, made my cheeks grow hot and nausea rise.
“But with you…” he started gruffly, a sharp exhale whistling from his nostrils. “With you, I lost myself.”
I swallowed, feeling that confession wind its way into my chest. But it wasn’t a happy feeling. It was one of understanding. Because I knew that Wrune had viewed that as a terrible, terrible thing.
“You know that already, Mina,” he said, reaching up to stroke my cheek, cupping it in the large width of his palm. “And when I saw you, I had the strangest feeling that I’d follow in my father’s footsteps. That you would be mine. That I would love you the way he loved my mother. And with that love, deep loss would also follow.”
Thatmade my heart race.
Love?
“But you don’t,” I whispered quickly, feeling those words fall from my lips like stones. Heavy and unwanted. “You…you don’t love me. We…”
I trailed off, uncertain what I would even say. We what? We know that our marriage isn’t like that?
Thinkingthatwhile straddling him naked felt like a small mockery.
Wrune regarded me carefully, those observant red eyes flickering back and forth between me. Did he see the way his words had made me flush? Could hehearhow my heartbeat throbbed?
The words hit too close to home. They made me realize, in that single moment, that Iwasin danger of loving him. He’d made it only too easy.
Wrune didn’t say anything. His hand left my cheek and settled back on my hip.
The tension between us was thick as I grasped for something to change the subject. But I knew what I wanted to know and so I settled on asking, “How did your father die? What happened to him?”
Wrune’s gaze slid past me and he stared up at the ceiling of thevoliki.
“After I completed the Trials, after I became aVorakkar, I returned home one last time before I would take to the wild lands,” Wrune said. “I saw my father. It was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d worked for, trained me for, and yet…he seemed so tired. I asked him to join my horde, but he said he did not want to leave my mother. He wanted to stay at thesaruk, where she was buried. I understood. I left shortly after.”
Wrune’s eyes flickered back to me as unease built in my belly.
“After a moon cycle out on the wild lands with my horde, I received a message from my grandfather. Telling me that my father willingly joined my mother in death, that he would be buried beside her.”
I bit my lip, feeling those words eat at me. More tears dripped down my face, ones that Wrune brushed away again.
“I’m sorry, Wrune,” I whispered, though the words felt so inadequate. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was what he wanted. To be with mylomma,” Wrune said, though his voice was gruff and dark. “Truthfully, it was a small relief for me too.”
I pressed a small kiss to his palm, holding it in my hand.
“I’d always known he suffered. All my life,” Wrune continued. “Now, he no longer does. And I think he was just waiting until I became what I was always meant to be before he joined her. His last promise to her fulfilled.”
A small, shuddering sigh released from me.
Such tragic circumstances. Such a tragic life.
I thought of words I’d said to him under the Dead Mountain, which seemed like a lifetime ago. How I wished for a world with no suffering, only peace.
