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I shoot to my feet, but the sudden movement agitates Vharax, who rushes at me with a threatening hiss.

“Ay’ńôck,” Idril commands, letting an arm drop to her side. When Vharax glances back at her, she points insistently at the ground, and her next words are far more forceful.

“Licht’ān, Vharax. Anour ay’ńôck.”

With a growl, Vharax returns to her side. Thinking we’re safe, I take a step toward her, but she throws up a hand. I slam to a stop.

“Stay where you are.”

I frown.

“I’m not under the impression we can keep from Bonding forever, but before that happens I need time.”

“Time?”

“To decide how to handle things between us moving forward.”

Vae scrambles to his feet and stands by my side. Idril’s shoulders tense and her eyes narrow in warning, but Vae doesn’t come any further. He throws up his hands in supplication, greedily raking his gaze up and down her form, taking in every inch of her and not even bothering to hide it.

“Idril,” he croaks, curling his hands into fists to keep from reaching out to her. This is killing him. I can feel his need to wrap her in his arms beating in sync with his heart.

Caelan and Soren appear to flank our Omega, one on each side.

Like two knights, standing guard over their queen.

Idril laces her hands together in front of her and smoothes her features into something more neutral.

But she can’t quite hide everything she’s feeling. I can see her pain so clearly, now. It’s in her eyes. The tilt of her chin. The tension in her shoulders. The slight tremble in her hands and the tightening around her eyes.

We hurt her. We hurt her, and somehow she’s still the one who’s paying for our cruelty.

“How long were you going to keep it from us?” Vae asks before she can speak. “A month? A year? Forever?”

She tilts her head to the side, like the answer’s obvious.

“If I could manage it, I would have kept the Bond a secret forever.”

Her answer hurts worse than any wound I’ve ever taken in battle. It’s physical. A physical pain that slams into my gut and makes me grunt at the force of it.

And while I’m struggling to remember how to breathe through the ache of knowing she never would have told us who she is to us if she could have gotten away with it, Vae breaks in a different way.

Tears pour down his face, and his expression twists with agony. He tunnels his fingers through his hair, yanking viciously on the strands. “Why?”

She hesitates, pressing her lips into a thin line as she searches Vae’s features, like she’s trying to decide whether he’s being purposely obtuse or truly doesn’t understand.

Finally, she sighs and shakes her head sadly. “If you don’t understand, then I can’t help you.”

He surges forward. Idril stumbles back as Vharax’s wings snap open, and she jumps eight feet into the air, landing between us and blocking Vae from our Mate.

She makes her displeasure known with a threatening roar that turns into a thin, controlled stream of fire. She aims purposely close enough to scare the shit out of us, scorching a patch of Earth three feet from Vae’s feet.

With a flap of her wings, she shoots into the trees where she lands on an overhanging branch with ease. Her curved talons wrap around the bark, claws digging into the wood for purchase like a hot knife into butter.

She releases a final warning shriek, then settles onto her perch, one eye trained on us and narrowed in warning.

I don’t even get a moment to get my breathing under control before Caelan steps forward, muscles coiled so tight he looks like he might snap under the strain.

“Don’t you fucking dare force this Bond on her.”