Page 92 of Bound

There was a pang, a worry she had stifled before, but comforted herself that the circumstances would never present themselves again. There would be no other half-bloods for him to seduce, no other girls so vulnerable, without families to protect them, to keep them safe.

“You get used to it,” she offered at last because... she had. Perhaps not how she should, bottling it up and shoving it away, the memories slipping free mostly at night and within her dreams. When had they last been pleasant? She couldn’t recall. The most respite she got was on the nights when she didn’t dream of anything at all.

His hand came into her vision, and she startled. And then it fell away and she was almost sorry for it. But she had raised her head again, and that must have been his aim. “Do you see him, when you look at me?”

She sighed. Yes. No.

“I hadn’t. Until... until Firen started in about... about mates.” Another glare, this one directed toward the sky itself. “I can’t be that for you,” she reiterated, in case that had been lost in the midst of all her blubbing. “Even if it’s... real. I won’t let you sell my home, I won’t let you take me away to people I do not know.”

“Wren, I would never ask that of you.”

He sounded so wounded at the mere suggestion, but she couldn’t allow herself to pity him. It needed saying. If there was going to be clarity between them, she would have him understand.

She hadn’t spoken up, before. And if she had, he might have gone away sooner. Before... well, before.

She shrugged. “But you could. If you chose. And they’d let you make me. Please don’t say they wouldn’t. They already had to make allowances for Mama to stay, and they were very clear how few protections they could give me. Not foreign, not a Harquil.”

A grumble that was more of a growl, and she saw him balance his mug against the trunk of the tree so he could kneel next to her. “You are not listening. I do not know enough of our laws to know if you fall in between. What I am saying is that I would not do those things. I would not take you from your home. I would not want you to feel unsafe with me. Or in the home we choose to live in. If... if you ever chose to allow me to call your home my own.”

Her brow furrowed, and she blinked at him. “Live here?” Some of the tension eased from him, as if in relief. As if she finally understood something that she most assuredly did not. “Don’t be absurd.” He sighed deeply and hung his head. “Weren’t you listening? I’ll not have a mate, Braum. It isn’t worth it. I won’t be hurt like that again.”

“He was not your mate.” He was always so careful with her, whether it was in tone or in action, but not now. Not about something that, to him, was elemental. But he did not reach for her. Grasp at her. Shake the words into her until she accepted them. He sank down until his back was against the tree trunk, his wing tickling at her arm. “Can that at least be established between us? A liar, most certainly. Scum, I will allow. But... not that.”

Wren almost—almost—smiled.

“He said he was. At first. I don’t... I can’t know for sure. Not if I don’t feel anything in return.”

Braum sighed deeply.

And then he did reach for her.

His hand cupped her chin, and he drew it slightly upward, and while she could have wriggled back and perhaps even given his arm a smack for the impertinence, she remained still. “A man sacrifices for his mate. To give her the life that she wants, that she needs. To make sure she is happy, that her home is to her liking, so she is comfortable and safe if any fledglings should come.” Her mouth grew dry. “Does that sound like the cad?”

Her stomach tightened. Her heart too.

“No,” she agreed, and ducked her head, feeling relieved. Feeling worse, also. Because he’d never made her feel that way. Not from the very start. And any true-born Harquilwoman would have sent him off at his first smile.

But she hadn’t.

She waited for him to press her about his own attributes. How he’d wanted to give her so much without any talk of payment. Even her meagre offering of meals was begrudgingly accepted.

He wanted to take care of her. Because... to him... she was...

She pulled back from him. And he didn’t sigh, he simply let her go. Watched as she curled back into her tangle of limbs and sipped at the last of her tea. She was still reeling from having told him at all. Was trying to decide what to do without the effort of suppressing it all, the constant weight and pressure that resided in her insides, corrupting what should have been quiet, restful days.

Did she regret it? Would he make her regret it?

She peeked at him. And he caught her, because of course he did, and his lips quirked upward ever so slightly. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked her, and then his eyes crinkled about the edges at he tapped at her nearest shoulder. “And moving these does not count as a proper answer.”

Which she did not owe him, the cynical part of her insisted, but she chewed at her inner cheek and did not say it. But she shrugged anyway because it would always remind her of her mother, but she indulged him with a proper response all the same. “There’s always more to do. Animals to feed, stalls to muck. Lozenges to make. The rest will settle back down and maybe I’ll get better at pretending it never happened at all. And then maybe I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

How was he able to pull so much out of her? To confess her little troubles in ways that he had no business knowing. Perhaps she had not been gifted with bond itself, with knowing when a mate was real and meant for her. Maybe instead she received a compulsion, where his questions needed answering, where she cared when he hurt and looked at her with eyes so tired and so sad.

When he looked a little too much how she felt.

She turned her head, her cheek resting on her forearms. “Have you been sleeping?” At another time, in another life, she might have reached out and touched the fine lines that spoke of his exhaustion, might have skimmed her fingertip across them to see if they smoothed at a simple touch.

But not the Wren she was now. “You look rather terrible.”