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I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know for certain. But I needed to. I began to shake, with nerves or fear. I glanced away from him, taking in the calm darkness of the forest around us. I took a deep breath, the scent of damp soil and crisp autumn air mixing with the scent of my mate.
“You told me to run,” I whispered, looking back to him.
“I did.” His lips stretched into a thin, sad line. There was a tenderness in his eyes that opposed his intimidating and dangerous facade.
I looked down at the ground and nodded softly, tears stinging the back of my eyes, and my throat tightened.
“I didn’t know what this was until after seeing you in the alley. That burning inside me… I never understood. I thought maybe it had something to do with Odarum at first. Then I saw you and I just…knew.” I didn’t lift my eyes. Instead, I concentrated on the forest floor.
He didn’t respond, didn’t move. I glanced up at him and saw that he was still watching me, his eyes roaming over my face in search of something. I lifted my head back up and tightened my arms around myself, chilled from the cool night air. His eyes flicked down to the motion briefly and his body tensed.
“When didyouknow?” I prodded, not able to handle his silence.
“During the Trial. I felt it first when your fate was sealed in the Spirit world.”
He’d known that long?
His face looked pained, and he seemed to tense even more and I could see his eyes harden. His chest moved up and down with his quickened breathing. His short answers were starting to piss me off.
Was I so bad that he was in pain to be near me? Was it only the bond forcing him to be here?
“Why did you wait to approach me? Why did you follow me? Why didn’t you come up and tell me?” Anger laced my voice, hiding the hurt behind it. I braced myself for the brunt of my stupid childish dream, of one day having a male that was fated to me by the Gods, to be crushed by the Lord before me.
“I—” he stammered.
“Do you want this? If you don’t… If you don’t want this, then just reject the bond and get it over with.”
He flinched. “What makes you think I don’t want this? I’ve followed you across the damn continent. I’ve abandoned my Nation when it needs me. All so I could be near you because I can’t stand being away from you, even before learning your name. I can’t get you out of my head. Of course I fucking want this. I can barely control it. It’s been killing me not to have you.”
My heart lurched and my stomach fluttered. Hearing him admit to the mating bond after dancing around the term hit me hard and made me shiver.
“But you told me to run,” I breathed.
“Yes.” He huffed in a humorless laugh. “But not for the reason you think.”
Ryker let out a sharp breath and closed his eyes for a moment as if to calm himself before looking at me again with intensity in his eyes.
“It’s because I know how the mating bond works. And I knew then that I was not in control of the urges. Not enough anyway. The first encounter can be intense and overwhelming, especially for males.” He spoke apologetically. “The instinct to claim our mate can completely consume us, no matter how hard we try to fight it. I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want to do that to you.”
I knew this. I had read about it time and time again in love stories. It was what drove that private dream of mine to have a mate finally come and claim me, to live happily ever after. But I wasn’t completely ignorant about the reality of the mating bond.
Although mates were rare, most instances were recorded and that’s where many of the fae had written fictional books about the romantic encounters. Most of the records of theactualoccurrences were anything but romantic, though. The claiming could be violent, vicious even, the males having little to no control with the strong urges the bond forced upon them, especially if there was another male with his female. Some of these instances had even ended in bloodshed.
A realization came over me and I felt the blood drain from my face as fear took hold. This was my mate, standing at arm’s length without having claimed me yet. And I had been traveling with another male. The urge to seal the bond must have been overwhelming for Ryker. Yet he seemed to have control over it somehow. But how long could he hold on to it? And…did I want him to?
His tongue swept out and licked his lips.
Lips that I couldn’t stop staring at. I wanted to know what they tasted like.
A wave of heat flashed through me, to my very core, and I thought of that delicious tongue on my body. Something deep inside of me urged to be even nearer to him.
His eyes flicked with a fierce hunger. He tensed and he took a step back as if he could… My eyes widened and the thoughts of what my body yearned to do with his stilled.
“Can you read my mind? Hear my thoughts?” My voice raised an octave, feeling mortified.
“I’m trying not to. But it’s so damn hard for me to control everything when the bond makes me so drawn to you.” The side of his mouth lifted.
My face paled even more at the admission.
