“But it’s allowed to. I want you to know I won’t judge you for finding your happiness where you can. Even if I think he’s a prick.”
“Well, he is a prick,” she said, smiling. “I won’t deny that.”
Then again, sometimes he wasn’t. Sometimes he was sweet and sad and just as broken as she was.
But none of that mattered. She’d spent a decade fueled by her anger and hatred, and it had gotten her this far. She needed to remember that. Now more than ever. She’d worry about the rest when the chief commander was dead.
When she went back eventually, she lay down a few feet away, trying her best to keep her distance from Fox. But as she woke later in the middle of the night, she couldn’t help but notice that at some point, her body had found his.
She feared she might always be pulled back to him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
FOX
He hated crawling into the furs alone. They felt cold despite the heat of the cave, and his chest ached with an emptiness he couldn’t explain. How could he miss something he truly hadn’t even had? The sound of soft snores and the crackle of the fire filled the cavern. It might have lulled him to sleep, but his mind was racing too far and too fast.
He’d betrayed everything he’d ever known, abandoned his mother, and for what? A taste of belonging he didn’t deserve and could never earn? She wasn’t his. She would never be his.
You have nothing. You are nothing.
His father’s voice was bitter in his mind.
Perhaps he was nothing, but he wouldn’t stop trying to protect Sofia. He needed to know that she was safe.
“She’ll be safe,”Chalia’s soft voice cut into his mind, and he gave only the slightest wince.
“Were you eavesdropping?”he asked, hoping his mild annoyance came through.
“I was listening to Sofia and overheard your very loud projecting.”
“Right,”he said,“sorry.”
“You care for her.”
He didn’t respond.
“She cares for you.”
“Don’t mix up sex with feelings, Chalia,”he said, a sad smile twisting his lips.“It’s a good lesson to learn early.”
Sofia barely liked him. Perhaps she was slightly beyond tolerant, but there was no caring there. There couldn’t be. He knew who he was, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. He was the son of the man who had stripped her back. He was a soldier of a kingdom that had taken everything from her and her people. He was nothing. To her, he wasless thannothing.
“I care about you,”Chalia said, so firmly he winced at the words prodding at his mind.
He almost laughed, biting it back.“Thanks.”
They sat in silence, her presence lingering in the back of his mind.
“Have you ever been in love?”he asked.
Chalia didn’t answer immediately.“I don’t think so. Relio is cute, but his father and my father don’t get along. So, we don’t talk a lot.”
Fox did laugh at that, a soft, airy thing that he hoped wouldn’t wake anyone nearby.
“I get that.”
And he did. He knew what it was to like someone he wasn’t supposed to.
