ButI’dknown, hadn’t I?
Somewhere underneath all the happiness of the last few weeks, I’d known this was too perfect to last.
He was the most extraordinary person I’d ever met, in ways I suspected even he didn’t fully understand. But he didn’t—couldn’tbelong to me. Our worlds couldn’t mesh, not the way the exhibition claimed, or the way Joshua’s choreography wanted to show.
Or the way I desperately wished.
His world and my world—the ice rink we both loved, the facility that was essentially the only home I’d ever felt completely myself in—couldn’t contain both of us at the same time.
I’d been pretending, for weeks, that it could.
“Oh God,” I whispered, the word wrenched out of me in a hopeless sob, as I turned against the door, my shoulders digging into the wood. I slowly slid down until my butt hit the floor, and I wrapped my arms around my pencil skirt, burrowing my face in my knees.
“Oh God.” The tears came then, deep wracking sobs.
I loved him, and now I would lose him, because we didn’t belong together. Not as a hockey player and an ice dancer. Not as an orc and a real estate tycoon’s perfect daughter. Not even as Kardok the Wicked and Lila Fairbanks.
I loved him and knew we couldn’t have a future together.
So I sat there on my butt on my office floor, and I sobbed. For the team, for his hopes, and for the future we couldn’t have.
Chapter Twelve
Kardok
I knewsomething was wrong before Lila even showed up for our final dress rehearsal. I don’t know how, but I suppose it was that Mate Bond thing I’d been reading about.
These last few weeks had been…pretty godsdamned special. No,miraculous. I was more or less living with my Mate, and lucky enough to get to spend every day making her smile.
So why wasn’t I satisfied? Why wasn’t myKteersatisfied?
I woke up with her in my arms. I fed her all the best foods. I brought her pleasure so many times she’d often call a time out by making a “T” with her hands while laughing and slumping back on the bed. I was satisfying my Mate, and thus, theoretically, myself.
My cock was satisfied, my heart was satisfied, myKteershould stop this annoying buzzing, this irritating itching feeling throughout my body.
You haven’t claimed her as your Mate. She doesn’t know.
I knew this was why, but I hated to admit it.
Why? Because it was mychoice. I could have told her a hundred times in the last few weeks: “Hey, Princess, by the way, you’re my Mate. That means we can only be parted by death, and maybe not even then.”
But I didn’t, and Iknewthat was why myKteerwas being such a little bitch about this, making me feel antsy and irritable when I should be focused on the start of the exhibition games next week, or the gala tomorrow night. The team needed me, and Lila needed me to be focused, and I was failing them both because I hadn’t told her the truth yet.
So why hadn’t I?
Because my cock and my heart might be satisfied, but my mind wasn’t. There was still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind thatI wasn’t good enough for her.
No matter how idealistic Joshua’s choreography was, or how much we might hope to have a future together, Lila came from a different world from me. Not just the human world, but therichworld. A world where fathers bought their daughters ice rinks to support their hobbies, a world where everyone judged me as not being good enough.
I could claim Lila as my Mate, but would she claimme?
And that was what had held me back all these weeks.
She’d given me no indication that she thought of me as more than just a fun time in the sack, a boyfriend who could make her happy. I mean, I wasn’t taking her to country clubs or fancy restaurants, but she seemed to enjoy our time together nonetheless.
But there’d been no talk ofmore. Of a future.
Until she gave me that, I wasn’t going to push the Mate Bond on her.
