Page 87 of Bound

And he’d denied her. Made her think things, feel things.

Made her trust him, if only a little.

“After,” she decided. “That first day you came here. You might have told me then. Saved all this bother.”

He turned his head, his wing shifting against the trunk of the tree and coming a little too near to her. It was dark—almost the colour of ash. They suited him well, the feathers long and sleek. A fitting compliment to his burly frame. “You’d have taken that hatchet to me. Do not deny it. I might not have let you get too many hits in, but the intent would have been there.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she shrugged again. He would have deserved it. For lying to her. Pretending. Or worse, if he was sincere.

They were quiet for a while. It might have passed for peaceful at another time, but her insides were too twisted up. Her shoulders were tense, her wings tight against her back as they added to the harsh curl of her frame. She couldn’t spread out like he did. Legs outstretched, boots crossed at the ankle. As if he wasn’t crumbling inside.

But she’d seen his eyes. He hurt. Perhaps not as she did, but... he did hurt.

“Tell me a story,” he said at last. “Not about you. I certainly wouldn’t want to hear about that. But a story about why a bond-mate could frighten a woman. A strong, capable woman with a home all her own. With animals that adore her. With a sturdy roof over her head. Tell me a story of how that woman could think something as inconsequential as a bond could ruin all that.”

She was crying. Didn’t quite know when it had begun, but her heart twisted along with her stomach, and the tight hold she kept on her compartments was loosening. No matter how she scrambled, how she raged and grappled and tried to shove it all inside, she found herself answering.

Her voice raw.

Her tears streaming.

He didn’t deserve it. To know. To hear anything at all.

He wasn’t her mate, after all.

No one was.

Ever would be.

She felt strange. As if her limbs were not her own, and the words weren’t either. Because she never would have answered him. Not for anything. And yet she was aware that someone was speaking, and it wasn’t his low timbre, so then it must be her, mustn’t it? But it couldn’t be, because these matters were private. Secret. Because they were confessed aloud, then it had happened. And it didn’t. Shouldn’t have.

Perhaps he was indulging her, calling her strong. Finding her capable. She hadn’t always been. This girl that wasn’t her. A wraith that moved about the land, tending to chores because... because there was no one else to do them. She’d always be alone after... after she found her mother dead.

Animals needed feeding. Plants needed tending. Milking had to be done or else there would be no more milk, and then what?

She’d been at the market, because that was what she did. She sat, and she handed out little pouches that were not sewn with the care like they used to be. Some even asked why the girl was there alone, and was she all right? Because she did not look very well.

She’d said it once. The words choking in her throat, but she’d managed it. And it had spread. Up and down the stalls, that the human woman was dead, and it was just her daughter now. Did they need to send the Proctor? Negotiate a new deal? Or just let her be. Half-blood that she was...

Didn’t really belong there, anyway. Would give the young ideas.

Or maybe it was better. For some of the young Harquilthat dallied with the foreigners because it was safe as they waited for their mates. Let them see they weren’t so safe after all—could end up with a complication.

Until there was another face at her stall.

Smiling. Warm.

Not a woman with a screaming fledgling on her hip in want of lozenges. But a young man, with wings near to sunlight and hair to match.

He’d leaned in close, and there was nothing predatory in it. He’d asked for her name, and she’d given it with the same numbness that she’d shown to everyone else.

“You’re my mate, Wren,” he’d told her. So full of confidence.

She should feel something about it, shouldn’t she? If it was real.

But no, she was a half-blood, he said. With a sheepish turn of his mouth as if revealing he knew some terribly kept secret about her, and he was sorry she hadn’t been able to tell him herself. “I’ve waited such a long time for you.”

Had he? He did not look so very old. But she had no reason not to believe him, and although her heart was battered and broken, she was almost... relieved.