She turned and hurried away, her face buried in her hands, and I almost dropped to my knees, overwhelmed by the sudden loss. Instead, I threw my head back and roared her name. “Lila Fairbanks!”
With a sob, she skittered sideways—in surprise or dread?—and stumbled into the wall. I was there to catch her and breathed a grateful prayer when she turned in my arms and buried her face against my chest, crying too hard for me to understand anything she could say, even if I could hear it.
I can’t be seen with you.
It had finally happened.
Thisis why I hadn’t claimed her as my Mate before now; I couldn’t afford to. Not if her world couldn’t accept us as being together.
Fuck me.
So I stood there in my socks and a stupid tuxedo in the office hall, and I held her as she sobbed. And I felt like crying too.
Instead, I buried my face against her vanilla-scented hair and whispered, “Hush,dkaar, it’ll be alright.”
“No it won’t,” she hiccupped. “I shouldn’t even beherewith you. Someone might see us.”
Gods below, my gut clenched at that rejection. I wasn’t even good enough to comfort her? “Who gives a fuck?” I growled. “You’re mine, Princess.”
“I can’t be.” She pressed her forehead against my chest, “Oh, Kardok, I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” I ran my hands down her arms, knowing the chill in her skin wasn’t from the air. “Lila, tell me what’s wrong. What happened?”
The story came out in hiccupped pain. The letter from the League, their threat of revoking our franchise rights.
“No more Terrors?” I swore softly. Everything we’d worked for… The team was young, yeah, but we had a lot to prove. The thought of that chance being taken away was just impossible to consider.
Her red-stained eyes rose to mine, and Lila lifted a hand to cup my cheek. “See, Kardok? It’s notyou, it’sme.”
That didn’t make any sense. Frowning, I pressed my hand to her hand to hold it in place. “What does that mean? This doesn’t have anything to do with?—”
“Yes, don’t you see?” Her smile was watery, sad, and there were still tears on her cheeks to match the way the front of my tuxedo had been soaked. “This is Daddy’sfacility. By dating you, by lov—” Lila bit down on the words and shook her head frantically. “You’re a player for the team, and we’ve been openly dating. That means Daddy could be coerced into giving the Terrors unfair lease terms or preferential treatment when it comes to ice time. It’s a stupid rule?—”
“There are plenty of other teams—the older, established ones—that don’t have these rules!”
“No.” She sniffed. “Because they own their practice arenas. These rules were put in place when the league was beginning, when the officials didn’t want to worry about the orc teams taking away ice time from the human teams already playing. So they set it all up?—”
“So we didn’t get preferential treatment.”Fuck. Her world still couldn’t accept us, huh?
I suppose part of me was relieved to know Lila was breaking up with me because of the League’s stupid rules, not because she didn’t think I was good enough for her world.
But really, it still came down to the same thing. The rules had been put in place because her world hadn’t fully accepted males like me, even if they were ready to make use of us for their entertainment.
“Princess, this doesn’t mean we can’t be together?—”
“That’s exactly what it means.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but didn’t turn her face away, thank the gods. Of course, that just meant I could see the tears squeezing from under her lids. “The League wasveryclear on that. If we don’t—” Her voice caught, and she swallowed. “If we don’tconclude our personal relationship, they’re going toterminate the Terrors’ franchise rights, since it goes against their rules.”
Well, this was some bullshit.
Still, part of me was comforted to know it wasn’t her plan, and she was hurting just as much as I—no, I hated her pain even more than I hated mine.
MyKteergrowled, and I echoed it, running my hands up and down her arms, trying to comfort her. “Lila, we’ll figure it out,” I vowed softly. “For now, what does this mean for the exhibition?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, dropping her chin. “I don’t know.”
“They can’t cancel it—they can’t make us cancel it. Plenty of pairs skate together without being romantically linked, yeah?”
“Yes,” she sniffed.
