“Guard her,” he snarled to Tor and the Nephilim warrior flanking the doorway as he strode, almost running, down the long corridor.
“Where is Tristan?” he barked at a young Blue, who flinched and then hesitantly pointed toward the library.
Mathos ripped the door open, leaving it hanging wide as he stormed into the opulent room. His heart was broken, and his beast had gone insane. It thrashed and railed inside him so forcefully that it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
His friend was standing alone in the massive, book-lined room, looking out through the large bay windows toward the grassy lawns that had once led to formal gardens and now led to the lapping edges of the moat. Tristan turned to look at Mathos, his own beast rumbling loudly.
“What the fuck have you done?” Mathos gritted out, trying to stay in some semblance of control.
Tristan took two massive strides forward until he was close enough to reach. Close enough to punch. Close enough for him to hear Tristan growl low and menacingly as he replied, “Be careful, Sergeant.”
All the grief, all the confusion, that hideous feeling of being completely out of control, focused itself into fiery hot rage. He clenched his fists, ready for the fight. Ready to take off the head of the man he loved like a brother.
A brother! Can’t you hear yourself? That’s a fucking relationship.
He shook his head to clear it. He had followed Tristan unhesitatingly into battle a hundred times. He would have followed him anywhere. Except in this.
Tristan was now the man who had committed Mathos to a lifetime of pain, stuck in the palace with Lucy. “How could you do this to me?”
“Do what, Sergeant?” Tristan’s face was a mask of cold green scales surrounding eyes that glittered with fury. “Is it that I rode beside Lucilla as she stood up for herself and this kingdom for the first time, taking the place that could—should—have been yours?”
Tristan looked him up and down with a sneer. “Are you genuinely refusing your duty as a Hawk, or is it really that you can’t bear to face the truth of your own feelings and you think we should all be punished for your behavior along with you?”
Mathos snarled, only vaguely aware that his scales were flickering and sliding in confused turmoil. “How could you move us here without discussing it first? How could you force me to live… here?”
“I don’t have to discuss anything with you, Sergeant. I follow my queen’s orders, and you follow mine.”
“I don’t want—”
Tristan cut him off with a mocking laugh. “You don’t want—gods, can you hear yourself? Who is spoiled now, Sergeant?”
“No, Commander.” A quiet voice spoke behind him. Her voice. Lucy had followed him. Despite everything he’d said, how badly he had hurt her, she had still followed.
Mathos felt as if the world paused. Like that moment before battle, when all you could hear was your own beating heart and the knowledge, deep in your soul, that you might not last the next ten minutes.
He turned to look at her, her full robes rippling around her in a waterfall of dark red velvet shot through with golden thread. The knot in her hair had come loose, and thick waves fell around her pale face. She had never looked so regal, or so vulnerable.
Her voice was quiet but clear as she turned those deep, dark eyes onto Tristan. “I would like to hear this.”
And then she looked at him. “What is it, exactly, Sergeant, that you don’t want?”
Not Matt. Not even Mathos. No, he was merely “Sergeant” once more. His beast roiled in his belly as his scales flickered in slow waves up his arms and over his shoulders.
There’s still time to fix this. Fall to your knees and apologize. Tell her that none of what you’ve just said was true. Tell her that you love her.
No. He was not made for this. The pain was already unbearable. He didn’t want it.
You do want it, you stupid asshole. It’s worth it for her.
He didn’t. He wouldn’t.
He was not ever taking that risk again. He would never be sent away again. This time, he was going to walk out before it got worse.
“I don’t want to stay here.” He swallowed, looked her in the eye, and forced himself to say it. “I don’t want to stay with you.”
She didn’t say anything for long moments. The room was so quiet that he heard the shudder in her breath as she inhaled and then slowly exhaled.
She reached out and took his hand, and for one agonizing moment, he thought she would refuse his stupid, hurtful words once more. But she didn’t.
