He knew. From the first morning, he knew I didn’t plan on staying and the way he reacted to it was to just try—and fucking succeeding—on making me fall in love with him.With this place. Now, I still had to leave, but I’d have to go heartbroken.
“Maybe he went to deal with Jerakeh,” she mused.
“Probably not,” I said, burying my head back in my arms.
She scooted closer and wrapped her arm around me. “He said he will be back, then he will. No matter what your fight was about, Ghauro does not take his oath to you lightly.”
She slid her hand in my hair, catching and removing the flowers, one by one, silently. It took time. I didn’t realize he had placed so many…That must have been why his whole family looked at us strangely. I had given him only a handful, while my whole head had been covered.
“Whatever plagues your mind, Melanie…you will find a way.”
There was none. I couldn’t have both of the people I wanted most in my life. I had to make a choice, and even though it broke my heart to leave Ghauro, Granny was more vulnerable. “I don’t think I can.”
“I meantyou, as a mated pair. Your issues are now his issues, and it goes both ways.” She paused, probably finished with the flowers in my hair. “Does it have to do with the fact that he…has not claimed you?”
I grunted. “In a way.”
“Okay…Is there…something wrong on an anatomical level?” she asked, cautious.
“What?No!”
She leaned back as I pulled my head away from my arms and lifted her hands in surrender. “I am just asking! Youseem so defeated that I feared like…maybe you were not compatible in that way.”
“It’s nothing like this.Hedecided to wait. I—wanted to hurry, but for the wrong reasons. Now I’m lost, and confused by the mixed signals.”
“What mixed signals? I think Ghauro is doing a pretty good job telling the whole world how he feels.”
It felt too personal, talking about what Ghauro and I had shared the past week. About how he had initially said he wouldn’t fuck me except during my heat. Learning that, unlike the Tauri Female, human womencouldhave sex outside of their fertility window didn’t make him change his mind. The whole week we spent all over each other was just that—superficial.Insanely good, but with only mutual pleasure in mind.
“I know this was all some sort of arrangement,” I explained, my voice breaking. “But he gave me hope.Hope that I shouldn’t be having, because this whole marriage is doomed. BecauseIfucked it up, thinking he only wanted to breed me—although I’m still unsure what he wants from me other than that…”
He’d been hurt that I wanted to leave, that part had been obvious before he took off. Zhari hummed, shaking her head softly as she looked outside through the large door.
“I mean, it is obvious for those who see…You just have to open your eyes.”
I turned my head, just enough to see her face. She wassmiling. Was this whole thing just a joke?
“Open your eyes, yes, but alsolook.” She gestured to the ground surrounding me. To the dozens of pale pink flowers that looked like lilies scattered on the floor.
“Baraghu…” I whispered, remembering the name the woman at the stall had given me. The way my hand had hovered above the nearly empty basket only to pull away, plagued by my own thoughts and insecurities. The name of this shed, too…
“The flower of love,” Zhari said with a dreamy sigh. “Why do you think our mother nearly had a heart attack? She wasnotready to see her precious last born son so infatuated with the human bride he did not want two weeks ago. Thanato told meallabout Ghauro’s change of heart the second you stepped foot in that room.”
The flower of love. There were at least twenty and no other except for the single Bakarut that he had placed over my ear. No wonder everyone had looked at me with wide eyes and Jerakeh had looked so fucking hurt by the mere sight of me.
“No matter what your fight really was about,” Zhari continued, “you guys will get through it.”
“How do you know that?”
She gave me a cheeky smile. “Because I know my brother. And I am pretty sure the only reason you were not entirely covered in Baraghu was because there were not enough flowers.”
Zhari had left me shortly after the big revelation.
I wasn’t sure how long it’d been but the festivities had started to quiet down and the sky wasn’t as dark anymore, the sun starting to rise behind the dense forest.
I hadn’t slept, unable to calm my heart and anxious mind enough to even close my eyes. Eyes that were unable to look away from the twenty-three baraghu flowers scattered on the floor.
Twenty-fucking-three. I had counted. About a hundred times, just to be sure and because my insomnia was leaving me with too much time on my hands but nothing better to do.
