“How long?” I ask, yanking my hair back through my hands. I’m not better than her mug at this point.
“Not long.” Which is vague enough to drive me to insanity. “I just need a little while to catch my breath. Everything is changing so fast. I’m in a storm, and I need the eye of it. Just that moment of silence before the storm continues raging.”
“I’ll be there. That’s what mating is. I’m your port. If there’s a storm, hold on to me.”
“No, Sky.” She says so quietly that I don’t need our rings to read her. “You’re not the port in a storm. You are the storm.”
I stop. My hand tightens around the phone. Then I look at the chipped mug again. Some things are not mine to fix before she asks. Damn that mug.
“I will not come,” I say.
On the other end of the line, her breath catches. Not fear. Relief. Pain moves through me, fast and clean.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I hate this. I will worry.”
“I know.”
“The ring will tell me if you are in distress.”
“The ring is a snitch.”
Despite everything, my mouth curves. “I will not act on every data point.”
“You’d better not.”
I lean one hand on the desk, looking at the mug, at the study full of her books, at the home I prepared as if it were permission. It is not.
Silence. This one hurts less.
“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” she says.
I can’t force the words out to tell her,okay. How can I?
The bond warms. Only a little. Enough.
Then the line goes dead.
***
Time becomes torment. I do not go to her. I do not send a chair. I don’t send my mate anything she needs, and it damn near destroys me. At one point, I do draft an apology. Then delete it. She would see through it in a heartbeat. See that I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I’m not sorry I brought my mate’s things home.
It’s where they fucking belong.
So, I work.Poorly. I review the Athena budget, approve two vendor contracts, deny one idiotic promotional expense, and sign off on the Real Women launch schedule with only half my attention. The other half remains across the city, sitting on a floor I want to rip from the building and replace with somethingworthy of her. When her ring settles, my lungs finally work correctly.
Then Martin’s message flashes across my screen. Marked urgent. I nearly deny the emergency meeting request until I see the subject line.
MacArthur release withdrawn.
The meeting room fills too slowly for a disaster. By the time Martin, two legal representatives, Loora, and the campaign director enter the conference room, I have read the forwarded message from Professor MacArthur’s office twelve times. She received information about a possible conflict of interest. She’s requesting full disclosure regarding editor Beatrice Watson’s mating to Skylor Ak Layn. She trusted Bee when she had Bee’s personal reassurance that the Athena article would be independent of Layn’s corporate interests. However, her personal guarantee is now insufficient.
How could she dare to fucking question my mate’s integrity? I want to rip her apart for even thinking Bea would betray her ethics for anyone. Even a mate. But she’s not the enemy.
I don't read Todd Childs’s name anywhere in the email.
I see him in every word.
