Page 211 of Ashborne: Defiance

That pull in my chest that day hadn’t just been Koa. It had been him?

I hadn’t planned to strike him. I didn’t like violence. But when he just stood there, gaping, and I realized all the ways he’d lied. He was offensive to me. Then, while I ranted and shouted and he stared, all those pulling, tearing pieces in my chest demanded an explanation.

“Why? What is it about me that is so abhorrent that you cannot stomach the idea of me as a mate? Why don’t you want me?!”

He flinched—then that fire blazed in his eyes. “Don’t want you? Don’t want you?!” He swore, looming over me. “Are you fucking joking?!”

“I would never joke about you, Voski,” I hissed.

His eyes went wide. “Don’t want you? Is that what you’ve told yourself?”

“That’s what you’ve told me. You’ve shown me!”

His jaw went tight. “You want the truth?”

“Yes!”

He leaned over me and hushed the words, his lips peeling back from his teeth with the fire of his fury. “You have been a torment to me since the moment you appeared. You drag at my soul. Everything in me pulls, aching, hurting. Even my bones want you. Your presence haunts me. Your smile cuts my skin. Don’t want you? Ha!” he spat. “I wish I didn’t want you! I wish I could breathe without thinking your name, or seeing you in my mind’s eye. I wish I never cared, watching my brothers touch you. I wish your laugh didn’t slip under my skin—I begged God for that freedom!”

He continued, but those words echoed in my head.

I begged God for that freedom.

All my anger, all the fury that had driven me out here, fizzled and died in the face of that. Those words… so hard. And passionate, from a man who could be so cold. My vision began to blur, but I swallowed the tears back. Made myself listen. Made myself hear him. Because maybe, finally, I could be done with wanting him.

“…don’t want you? That’s a fucking joke. I don’t want you, I need you. Like air to breathe. I’ve battled to stay away. Fought a fucking war. Don’t want you? That is the biggest pile of steaming bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

I blinked. Then swallowed.

He stood over me, panting, his face red, and eyes ablaze. Then he shook his head.

I need you. Like air to breathe.

“Is that true?” I breathed, struggling to parse out his rage from those words. Because they were words that wanted to fill the gaping hole in my chest. The thoughts I’d prayed to hear one day. Yet they’d been spoken with such venom. “Voski…” Softening, I reached for him.

When he flinched, the tiny thread of hope that had sparked to life, died in my chest like a suffocated ember.

It was the final blow.

My tears came from nowhere, but I didn’t even bother to wipe them. “Not again. Please,” I begged him. My voice cracked and his brow pinched. His hands twitched like he’d reach for me, but his eyes were black. “Please,” I begged him. “Please don’t walk away again. I can’t take that any more.”

He clawed both hands into his hair and took another step back, but then stopped dead, shaking his head, his fingers fisted in his hair.

And I realized, I could feel him. Sense him. That hole. That ache deep in my chest, it had a shape. It had a form. And now that he stood in front of me, I finally fit the pieces together. The pull.

It was shaped like him.

It sounded like his voice.

It felt like the circle of his arms at night when he held me and soothed my fears.

Why had he done that if he didn’t want me?

My breath rushed out of me, then refused to return. My chest pumped, but I had no air.

Voski looked miserable. “Grace—” But he cut himself off.

I inhaled sharply, finally. “What?” I croaked. “Just tell me. Please, explain.”