“I don’t!” I cried, shaking my head until I could feel a new headache growing. “You always said-”
“That was before I knew what it was to lose you!” he hissed, fangs flashing. “That was before I knew what it was to love you!”
His knuckles brushed my cheek, so softly. Such a contrast to the hard set of his features. To the bludgeoning reality of his words.
“You…You love me.”
“I do,” he said. A simple statement, but imbued with the deepest certainty. “From the first moment I saw you, your very presence pinned me, as if you were an arrow. I tried to ignore it, tried to fight it. To not acknowledge just how deep my desire for you went. But when I saw you with the borog, beneath the falling rocks…” His hand curled into a fist and fell away. “I knew in that moment I’d rather die than ever live without you.”
Tremulous hope bloomed. But doubt wound through the roots.
“But…But what does this mean? For the Vrika?” It still floated in that eerie, arcing sway outside. “Shouldn’t you go with it?”
“I will not,” he replied firmly. “I will not risk being mated to anyone but you. I have made my choice. That choice is you.”
I closed my eyes, briefly basking in his words. In the sugar-sweet bliss of them. He was choosing me.
Because he loved me.
I’d told myself I could never fall in love with him while things were the way they were. But against my better judgment, against every wall I’d put up, I’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
I have to tell him.
Blinking tears away, I opened my mouth to do it. But he was speaking again. Words that winded me, left me reeling.
“Once the borog situation resolves,” he said, “I will renounce my title of Gahn and call a baklok to determine my people’s next leader.”
“What? No! Thaleo, you can’t!”
“I cannot remain Gahn while breaking the law my people hold most dear,” he said. There was a sombre calm in his words. Like he’d already decided this course of action days ago. He was set in his path and there was no going back.
“But…But that’s…That’s not what I wanted!” I cried. “I want to be with you. But I don’t want to be responsible for takingyou away from everything you’ve ever known!” I let go of the bedding, gripping his shoulders as if I was going to try to shake some sense into him. As if such a thing were even possible. “Your people need you!”
“My people do not need to be commanded by a hypocrite,” he said, “who now puts his own selfish desire above that which he has always defended.”
“So that’s what I am to you now,” I said, all the fight going out of me. My head pounded. My pussy ached. I was so fucking tired. “Your selfish desire.”
“What you are to me now?” he repeated softly. Almost bitterly. “You are everything to me, Nazreen.” He lifted his chin, finally gazing steadily upon the Vrika. “And that is precisely the problem.”
I clutched at the bedding once more, wrapping it around myself, like it could be a shield against this sudden grief.
Thaleo loved me.
And now, he was going to lose everything because of me.
Exhausted by the harrowing prospect, I curled into a ball and fled into sleep.
21
THALEO
Iremained with my sleeping love for quite some time.
The Vrika remained as well.
“You must have heard me,” I said to it. “I will not go with you.”
My fate did not lay in its nest.
