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“It’s too dangerous to go through heat alone. In New Yden there are special heat rooms in the healing houses to ensure you’re never far from a healer. You can get very sick.”
“Let me be sick, then!” Nur struggles out of his grip and pushes him away. “You don’t want me as a mate. I’ll just be wrapped tighter in the thorns of this so-called bond so I can be torn apart when it ends.”
“It won’t be like that. I swear.”
“You’re lying! To me and yourself. You’ll leave.” Nur scrambles out of reach. Arsene’s heart sinks. His scent is souring, that heady richness shot through with distress. “You’ll discard me and find another vergis to do it all over again—the right way, with the right mate.”
He bites his tongue on the promises that threaten to burst free. Nur’s words are the truth—what he wanted not so long ago. He would have broken the bond without a second thought.Return to New Yden, finish his training, and wait to be chosen by another vergis. A stranger.
But now his memories will be haunted by Nur. His body will carry the scars Nur gave him.
Another vergis will be soft and sweet and trusting. He will be poised and well educated in matters the Council deemed important. He’ll expect Arsene to obey the Council the way he obeys. He won’t tease Arsene for being rigid, won’t make biting comments under his breath that tilt Arsene’s whole world on its axis, won’t claw at his back in passion and draw blood, won’t ever demand, beg, challenge him, turn him inside out.
Forge him into someone different.
Or maybe…he’s the same as ever. Except his raw edge are mirrored in Nur’s scars, weaving their story together in ways that Arsene would never have dared to imagine.
“I don’t want someone else,” he whispers, letting the words out finally.
Nur sneers, but his eyes are uncertain. “It’sallyou want, angel. Your story wrapped up with a tidy end, a perfect vergis, a rightful place in the world that scorned you.”
“Maybe that’s what I wanted,” he admits. “But not anymore. I want you to be mine. And when I finish my mission…I want to be with you. No one else.”
Nur’s scarred face twists up with doubt. Confusion simmers in the bond. Arsene’s heart thunders. Maybe Nur doesn’t want him. But he has to know. If he has to stand outside the tent for three days and keep watch while Nur suffers alone, he will. If he has to bear the soul-wrenching pain of rejection, he will.
“Then what? You’ll take me to New Yden and hide me away like the monster I am? Or abandon your perfect life to wander this realm until I finally succumb to the aether and leave you to wither alone?—?”
Nur falls silent as Arsene puts a finger to his lips. “Anything. I don’t care. We’ll figure it out.”
Nur’s pale gaze drills into him. “I don’t believe you.”
“Spend your heat with me. I’ll show you.” He’s begging now. “I’ll give you everything I can give. As a primus. Then you’ll know.”
Nur yanks his hand away, claws digging in cruelly. “I hate you! You can’t do this to me. You always get what you want out of me.”
“Not always,” Arsene says roughly, but his heart leaps.
“Always!” Nur bites out. “Why can’t I ever tell youno?”
“Do you want to tell me no?”
“Of course I don’t, you utter idiot,” Nur snarls, but the frustration melts from his face as his heat scent swells with another wave.
Arsene catches his weight as Nur slumps, his body singing out with joy to be so close to his—not mate yet, he reminds himself.
But soon.
He sweeps Nur off his feet with ease. “Hang on.”
Rhys looks up with a grim expression as Arsene approaches the tent. Arsene’s pack lies next to him.
“Is he okay?” Rhys asks, his gaze going to Nur.
Hostility still pours off Nur, but he’s too weak to do anything but cling to Arsene’s shirt and bury his face in Arsene’s chest, his vergis instincts driving him to need closeness. Arsene sympathizes. He wants nothing more than to chase everyone away and nest down.
“He’s going to be fine,” Arsene says as tactfully as he can manage.
Rhys looks skeptical. “I wanna hear it fromhim.”
