Page 14 of Fate
He paused, not expected her terse reply.
It was all the encouragement she needed.
“I do not know your family,” she responded tightly. She wasn’t yelling—hadn’t even raised her voice. But she would be heard. “And you most certainly do not know mine. Thus far, you’ve accused me of being some sort of... lurk-about, preying on—what I can only assume—are the wealthiest of us all?” She did not bother to pause long enough to hear him confirm it. “I went to that fete tonight in good faith. Because I wanted my mate, and I’vewaitedfor my mate, and I knew he had not come through the circuit to find me as heshouldhave done.” Her hands formed tight fists, and he was glaring at her—oh yes, it could be considered nothing else.
“You mean asIshould have done.” It was not a question, and he did not bother to present it as such. But it was dripping with all the disbelief that she should hold him accountable foranything at all, that she took a step nearer to him, her chin held high.
“You were always going to be mine,” she reminded him. “Always. There would be no other. Not in a tower, not in a fish-vessel. Just me. A smithy’s daughter that wanted nothing more than to meet you. To love you. All in good faith.” Some of her anger seeped out of her as she finished, replaced with a sorrow that was bone deep.
She wanted to go home. Wanted to collapse into her mother’s arms and apologise for not believing her. For holding so tightly to the idea that everything could be good and perfect andeasyfrom the start, no matter how she’d tried to warn her.
But the bond wouldn’t allow that, would it? It would itch, at first. A niggling, worming distraction that all was not as it should be. Then there was the ache. The one she’d had since she was young. Too young. Lying in her bed with talk of how much her someone would be missing her in turn.
Nothing about Lucian suggested he’d pined. That he’d wanted her at all.
Not when there wereexpectations.
She wiped at her eyes, although they were mercifully dry. Watched his tense form as he looked at her, his own hands balled at his sides to match her own. “Why are those other expectations more important than mine? A mate comes first. Always.”
“Do they?” He leaned toward her, eyes still too hard. “This is a different household you’ve mated into. Responsibilities. And what if the cost of being my mate was that you had to sever ties with that family of yours? To fit in, with as little fuss as possible, into this world that you were so eager to climb into?”
She opened her mouth, her heart beating too quickly, her throat too tight to answer.
He was serious. Perfectly so. She could not find any sort of pleasure in the words, nor in the panicky feelings they elicited in her. But he’d said them, and there was a part of him that meant them, and she took a measured step backward.
“I never imagined a mate could be cruel,” she answered, her voice a little softer. “Yet there you are.”
She turned back to the window. She thought she’d known pain before. Thought she’d understood what it was to ache and want and long for something that might never happen at all.
This was worse.
This was disappointment so deep she wasn’t sure how to bring herself out of it again. It was resentment and rage and theunfairnessof it all.
She’d sought this? Wanted it? Craved it with her heart and soul and...
She was clear of the window. It was an awkward sort of lurch that meant she dropped briefly before she could settle her wings into proper movement.
Only to lurch harder still when she felt her ankle grabbed. As if she was a wayward child instead of the incensed and devastated mate she truly was.
She turned, and she was out of doors so she could yell truly now, but he was looking at her, not with that hard and angry expression she associated with him, but with all the desperation she felt to be away from him.
“Wait. Just... wait. Please.”
She was never particularly good at hovering, so she either needed to wrench herself free or land again.
The bruised pride insisted she return home. Let him come fetch her when the ache grew too great for the both of them. Let him humble himself by coming to hermodestabode and petition her with apologies and promises that he’d no longer be wretched to her.
She was not his enemy. No matter how he’d looked at her.
It was the second, softer, “Please,” he offered to her that brought her back. Gentle. As if he’d already resigned himself that she would go and they would not see one another again. As if such a thing was possible for either of them.
He gave her room as soon as she’d stepped back into the guest quarters, and she would not stand lingering at the window, even if it would prove her most efficient escape. They were mates. This could be mended.
She had to believe that.
So she sat on the edge of the bed where he had been.
She didn’t huddle. She didn’t curl up, drawing up her knees and tucking them under her skirt, no matter how naked and nervous she felt. Instead, she sat with her back as straight as she could make it and smoothed down what fabric she could, mindful of how it had wrinkled slightly during their flight here.