He swallows. I watch his throat move, watch him force the sound back down.
“Are you…” My voice drops to a whisper. “Are you going to make that sound now?”
I can see that he’s holding his breath. My eyes move to his lips. I can’t help it. They’re tight, pursed. He’s fighting himself so hard, and I find it fascinating. Endearing. Restraint is… arousing.
“Is that what this is? You cough all the time, you lock yourself in your room, avoid me… Am I your fated mate, Osric?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He forces the words out.
It’s not a yes. It’s so much more than a yes. I feel something fluttering in my stomach. My grip on the chair eases, and what I feel is close to relief, which makes no sense at all.
“Maybe it does matter,” I tell him. “Maybe, if I’m your mate, we shouldn’t be running from it. I’m not saying I’m ready. I’m not saying I’m not scared, because I am. But maybe, we take our time. Maybe I get used to the idea.” I came here planning to leave, and now I am offering to stay. “Maybe we try.”
I wait for him to soften, to close the space between us, tell me this is all he wanted to hear. I am so sure this is what he wanted that I’m already imagining him saying it.
“You need to leave today.” His voice is cold now, more certain than before. “Both of you.”
I blink at him, not believing I heard him right. Maybehedidn’t hearmeright.
“You’re not making any sense,” I say. “I just told you that I want to stay. I will try to be… with you. I want to.”
I stop, because I suddenly don’t know how to express myself. I’m an educated woman; words have never failed me before.
“You want me. I know you do. And the second I say I want you back, you throw me out?”
“Because you don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into. What you’re asking of me.”
“Then make me understand.”
For a moment, I think he will refuse me again. Then his shoulders drop, his fists unclench, and he takes a step back and averts his gaze.
“A bond isn’t a promise,” he says. “It isn’t sacred. It doesn’t make people good, and it doesn’t make them stay. It doesn’t turn into love just because two bodies lust after each other.” He fixes his gaze on an indefinite spot above my head. “My mother and my father were fated mates. The way everyone says it’s supposed to be. There was the call, then they did the hunt, the claiming, all of it. It was done right, witnessed and blessed by their families and the elders of Vaara. My father still betrayed her. A mated male, betraying his mate. It’s almost unheard of. It broke something in her that couldn’t be fixed.”
There’s a hint of despair in his voice that makes me want to reach out to him. I stop the impulse. He looks like he’s far away, lost in the past.
“She made a poison,” he says. “From the venom of three different species. It’s one of the few things that can kill us. She would’ve had to work at it quite hard and consistently. She would’ve had to want it enough. When the mixture was done,she used it. I was twelve.” He lets out a heavy breath. “I haven’t said any of this out loud in years. My mother is gone, and my father is still in Vaara, but I don’t talk about him. I don’t even think about him. He lost the right to be remembered.”
He’s panting a little when he finishes. I fill a glass from the jug on the counter and hold it out to him. He looks at it, then takes it and drinks the whole thing fast, his eyes closed. When he sets it down, his hand is not quite steady.
“The bond isn’t everything,” he says. “It didn’t save my mother. It doesn’t erase what a person chooses to do. You don’t owe me to try just because my body decided you belong to me. You’re not a thing I get to keep just because of biology.”
There it is. I understand him now. He’s not rejecting me because he doesn’t want me. He’s refusing to be one more man who takes a woman’s choice away and calls it destiny, or duty, or fate. He’d rather send me away than become his father, or become the men I ran from.
It should make me let go of him. It does the opposite.
I cross the space between us before I can think better of it. I place my hands on his chest. His shell is warm under my palms, warmer than skin should be, near hot, and I can feel the strain in him because he’s holding himself so very still.
“I hear you,” I say, looking up at him. “I do. But you don’t get to make this choice for me. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I can choose you despite everything you’ve told me.” My voice is not as steady as I want it to be. “I’m scared, and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I want to be with you. Whatever happens, let’s do this together.”
I can feel the moment when his clicking starts under my fingertips, rising through his chest and into his throat. It sounds inhuman. Beastly. It’s the sound a predator makes when it spots its prey.
Heat drops low in my belly. My pussy clenches around nothing. I feel my juices soaking my panties, my skin buzzing with desire and anticipation. I press my hands harder against him. I want to be closer to him.
His eyes drift shut, his head bows toward me, and I see how close he is to giving in. I think… there, this is it, he’s finally mine. He’s going to kiss me.
Then he swallows the clicking down, his hands close over mine and peel them off his chest, and he moves away from me so fast that his push knocks me half a step sideways. I stumble and catch myself against the table, quickly straightening back up.
He sees it and flinches at what he’s done, but he doesn’t reach out to steady me. He hides his hands behind his back instead.
