I saw the look in her eye, the resolve.
My mate doesn’t want me.
A few more steps, and my back hits one of the tall pines ringing the clearing around the Veil. Spine resting against the wide trunk, I let my wings slump, let my head fall forward, my hands resting on my thighs, my breath too heavy and painful in my chest.
Goddess, it hurts.
I didn’t realize it would hurt.
Watching my mate leave and knowing I’m powerless to follow makes me feel as if the center of my chest has been hollowed out. Carved up, left raw and aching with nothing to do but stand here and feel it, to stew in my regret and replay every moment, silently cursing all the mistakes I made.
I should not have lost my temper with her. I should not have been so short with her.
I should never have suggested I didn’t want her as my mate.
But hearing her so callously deny what she most certainly could feel—at least in some measure, I saw that much truth in her eyes—cut right to the core of me.
A mate’s rejection is a rare thing. Not unheard of, but rare.
Rare enough that I’ve never known someone who’s experienced it, much less known to expect how much it would hurt to hear my own mate reject me.
Still, I should not have spoken as I did.
You think I want this any more than you do?
My own shameful words echo through my head.
What caused me to hurl them at her, I don’t know, but even with as much shame as they bring me, they don’t ring entirely untrue.
I’m not fit to have a mate.
I haven’t earned it, don’t deserve it, would never want to tie a partner—human or demon or otherwise—to the rootless, sparse existence I’ve been living.
My emotions were too scattered, too chaotic. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t accept what was happening or comprehend the magnitude of it.
Still, I should have acted differently.
I should have been gentler with her, not the miserable, surly creature I’ve let myself become.
Over and over, the silent recriminations swirl. Every cursed moment plays itself on a loop in my mind, a terrible spiral I’m only jerked out of by the sound of heavy footsteps from the woods.
Pytri huffs and puffs his way up the path. He rests an elbow on another tree trunk just beside mine when he reaches the clearing around the Veil, looking at me like I’ve grown a second set of horns.
“What in all the thirteen realms got ahold of you back there?”
I grunt, unable to come up with any sensible reply.
“Did you catch up with our little spy?”
“Aye,” I allow, and my chest aches again. “I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
I inhale and nearly retch.
Goddess, he reeks. No wonder I wasn’t able to pick up on the witch’s scent earlier back in the tavern.
