“Yes,” I said.
Kaldur actually laughed, but it wasn’t unkind. “Dallia, I don’t know a single soul who doesn’t like you.”
“Velle,” I said. “Lydrasa. To name a couple.”
“They don’t count,” he grumbled, the mere mention of them souring his mood. He sighed. “You have nothing to worry about. Besides, this is Thaine. He’s the most sane perhaps out of any of us, next to Kythel. What is it, really?”
I put down my pencil in the seam of my notebook. I bit my lip, judging how to express what I felt. Finally I settled on, “Sometimes I still feel like an imposter in your life.”
Kaldur scowled.
“Someone who doesn’t quite belong, though circumstance—and a child, on Raazos’s blood—brought us back into each other’s lives. We’re so different, you and me. We couldn’t be more different.”
“And that’s a good thing,” he said. “You think I want someone like me? I would go mad. As for you, I think you need someone to fill your life with inspirations for your stories. And I’ll take that responsibility very seriously.”
“I’m being serious,” I said.
“So am I,” he said simply, turning my cheek so I looked him in the eye. “You belong in my life like you’re my family. All right? I don’t want to hear this because it’s simply not true.”
My heart fluttered. “You don’t think your brothers or Kalia will take issue with the fact that I used to be a keeper in your House? Or that I have no legacy, no ancestry of my own?”
“Of course not,” he rasped. “But I realize you can’t know this for yourself until you meet them. I was the bastard who gave you these fears anyway. And my brothers’ mates? Gemma was the daughter of a disgraced war hero who turned out to be a murderer and gambled away his entire fortune. Millie was found abandoned on a transport colony and then later worked at adyaanas a server. That’s where Kythel met her.”
“She was?” I asked. Millie had been abandoned too? And she’d worked at a blood-giver establishment? I hadn’t known that. I’d known Gemma had come from a noble House from the New Earth colonies but not that her father had nearly lost them everything.
Kaldur blew out a sharp breath. “I’m not saying Kythel rejoiced in the fact that Millie wasn’t connected to a noble family. He had planned to marry the daughter of the family who owned the Three Guardians in Erzos. He thought it was his duty, the fucking martyr, to marry for apurpose,for the betterment of his people. As for Azur, well, I’ve told you my feelings on what he did before.”
“You’re not making me feel any better,” I couldn’t help but point out.
His shoulders shook with the dryness in my tone. “My point is that none of that mattered. It’s simple. They love their mates, even though that love didn’t come easily. Mistakes were made. Very terrible mistakes. But in the end, they chose each other, regardless of circumstance or class or old wounds. Because they knew that they couldn’t live without each other, nor did they want to.”
My throat went tight again. Kaldur was looking at me with that familiar look I’d become accustomed to: one of softness, of ease. And whenever he looked at me like that…all I wanted was to throw caution to the wind and fall into him.
The silence that lapsed between us made me hold my breath. His lips parted, and he pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. Then when a snowflake fell on my cheek, a brief burn of icy cold, he trailed his lips to where it’d fallen, warming me again.
When he pulled back to look in my eyes, my heartbeat spiked.
“Just like I can’t live without you,” he said quietly. “I love you, Erina.”
My tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of my mouth as I stared at him. Below his wide, firm palm, I felt our daughter move again.
“I know that you know that,” he continued, tilting his chin down slightly so that our foreheads touched. “I also know that you’re not there with me yet, and so I don’t want you to say anything right now. But I just wanted to tell you…I’m not going anywhere. You’re all I want.”
I breathed out, my gaze going to his lips as they formed these beautiful little words that I wanted so desperately to claim as mine.
“I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you again. I think we both know I can be a stubborn, hardheaded bastard, and I intend to live a long life with you. In terms of time, the odds are against me there. But Icanpromise that I will always choose you. I won’t ever turn my back on you. Never again. Because I see you now, Erina Denoren. And I never want to look away.”
I couldn’t help the tears when they started. They came on softly but then began to stream as I absorbed his words. He told me not to say anything, and so I didn’t. I only pressed my face into his chest as I cried.
The last barrier between us was only my refusal to give himmy heart again. That last small decision. One that would be so easy and effortless because he’d made it easy to love him. Again.
These last two weeks, I’d beenhappy. Except for this one small thing that I couldn’t allow myself to give.
“The moon winds are always a time for rebirth. A fresh start,” he murmured into my ear, wrapping his arms around me.
Maybe it will be ours,I thought.
CHAPTER 46
