Page 10 of Bound

But he’d attended the market before. He needed supplies, the same as anybody else.

And he hadn’t seen. Hadn’t known.

And the thought curdled in his belly, that he might have overlooked her. Perhaps she had recognised him ages ago and was now too hurt and angry to accept him for his obliviousness.

Surely, if that had been the case, she would have sought him out. Would have told him and made him see, to see her for what she was. To insist upon her due.

There was the pull. The reminder. That all was not as it should be because she was not near enough. He should follow. Forget the team, forget the order, and find her.

Should he care she was of half-blood? The tone of the stall-keep suggested it was some sort of failing on her part. As if she had any control over the circumstances of her birth.

And yet, it troubled him. As his thoughts turned fiercely back to her, even as he hired a more qualified team. As he listened to the droning from the Proctor. From the other merchants that approached and gave him an earful before they went back to doubtlessly tell tales of the event to any that would listen.

He thought of her as he brought the logs to their destination. Wondered what might put such an expression of unreserved glee upon her face. He tried to remember back to when his sister had found her mate. If Cyrras had utilised gifts and favours upon their initial meeting, Braum could not recall. What he remembered most was the wide smile his sister wore whenever Cyrras would come close. How she would fling herself into his arms, rest her forehead against his, as if there was no one else present. Most particularly, as if there was not a brother in attendance which did not care to see such displays when his sister was involved.

So he’d stopped looking. And eventually, he’d stopped attending the fetes at all, and even Kessa had ceased her insistence that he continue to try.

He hadn’t listened. Which meant she was... somewhere, and he’d been too stunned by her utter lack of reaction to speak with her properly.

It shamed him. Which settled poorly with the anger he felt toward himself. The situation. Of gossip and half-formed wings and a woman that was supposed to know him.

And didn’t.

He rubbed his hands over his face as he left the city behind him. Pretend that he considered that his home rather than the woodcutter’s cottage that held most his actual possessions. Visit Kessa and tell her...

What exactly?

That it had happened. That she’d been right all along and there was a mate for him after all and he’d...

Failed.

Already.

With Wren.

His stomach tightened. His hands curled. And he flew instead to where he’d left her. Fool that he was. He should have pushed, should have insisted all the while she...

She’d been bleeding.

Insisted she was fine. And yet...

Were those not the most rudimentary responsibilities from one mate to another? To care for. To protect.

He landed where she’d stood.

There were stories. Tales of mates that could feel one another across great distances—heroic nonsense that he’d loved as a boy. The ones he would urge his mother to repeat over and over. Not for the talk of lovers, but because there was war and battles and couldn’t she better describe the axes?

But Kessa would insist on the rest of it. And their mother would sigh and remind both of them that the point of such stories was to help them fall asleep, not to send them into yet another argument.

So he’d hear it anyway. That it was good and nothing to be frightened of.

A gift.

He’d stopped believing it a while ago. Or maybe he’d shoved it down so far because it became more than apparent that gift was not for him.

So he worked. And laboured. And he slept outside the city walls, away from the house he’d crafted with a faceless mate in mind.

But even now, with so short a time between them, he could see her. The unhappy set of her mouth, the tense line between her brows. Because she’d been in pain. Because he’d listened about family and opportunity and let the idiot Jamen do more than he could handle properly.