“I do choose you.” A tear slides down his cheek and he lets it go. “Loving you is the truest thing in me. And this is killing me, Mara. I need you to know that. It is killing me.”
I reach for him, both arms out, and he steps back, beyond where I can touch him. That one move breaks something in me. Then his scent floods back, his magic dropping the seal it’s held all week, and what I taste underneath isn’t fear or doubt. It’s a decision, clean and total, already made. He didn’t decide this here, in front of me. He decided it days ago, and kissed me good morning every day since, knowing.
He’s going to leave me here. I go down hard onto my knees in the dirt of my father’s yard.
Aaron lurches toward me, his hand thrown out, but my father’s arms come around me from behind and lock me where I am, an iron band across my waist. “Go, Aaron,” my father says over my head, low and final. “Go now, before neither of us can.”
Aaron drops into a crouch and reaches for me anyway. I tear one arm free and stretch toward him, straining against my father’s hold until my shoulder burns. Our fingertips come close enough that his warmth touches mine, and no closer. “I’ll find my way back to you,” he says, fast, like he has to spend it all before his nerve runs out. “I swear it on everything. But I want you to have the whole of it, baby. Your name on that door, your pride, our son growing up loved by every soul here. Everything you were meant to have. Tell our boy—“ His voice breaks. “Tell him I love?—“
“You tell him yourself!” I scream it, my throat shredding on the words. “You come back here and you tell him yourself, Aaron Blackwood!”
He shuts his eyes, tears coming faster down his face. Then he turns his back on me and walks for the territory line. And Ibreak. “Aaron!” I’m screaming and sobbing it at once, throwing my whole body against my father’s arms. “Please! Don’t do this—Aaron!”
He doesn’t stop or look back. I claw at my father’s forearms, dig my heels into the dirt, throw everything I have against the iron of his hold, and none of it is enough. My mate keeps walking. He reaches the line and crosses it. In the middle of my screaming, he’s just gone, blinked clean out of the world. And the bond that ties me to him pays out into the dark behind him, and pulls.
It’s too much. Where Aaron stood, there’s nothing now. The bond tears loose behind him and takes me under. The yard tips on its side. Sound goes thin and far away. My father’s voice reaches me from somewhere high above, saying my name, over and over, and I can’t answer. The last thing I know is his arms catching me as I fall. Then nothing.
46
Aaron
The magic sets me down outside the cottage, and I go straight to my knees. One look at the dead Glen, and I’m sick into the dirt, heaving until I’ve got nothing left.
Leaving her is the worst thing I’ve ever done, worse than anything Eric ever put me through. The cruelty he showed me, I never asked for. This one I walked into on my own, knowing exactly what it would do to her. I’d give the whole Glen and every drop of power in my body to take it back.
Every cell I’ve got is screaming to undo it. I could be back at that line before I finish the thought. I could tear her out of her father’s arms, carry her home, never let her go. The bond pulls so hard it’s like a hook sunk in me, dragging.
I stay down and take it without giving an inch. If I move, I lose, and her whole life goes down with me.
When my stomach finally gives up, I push to my feet and drag the back of my hand across my mouth. The Glen sits there in front of me, waiting, and I can’t make my legs carry me into it.Not yet.
So I put it off one more time and stand at the edge of it, watching the market wind down. Shifters haggling at the last open stalls, a witch hauling her cart home, two pups chasing a third through the lanterns.
None of them know the warlock at the tree line is about to trade everything he loves for a Glen full of strangers. I almost envy them.
The sun sets. The stalls close one by one, and the lanterns get carried in. Soon it’s just me, the dark, and the smell of the day’s last bread cooling behind a shuttered window.
I conjure a toothbrush and let myself into the bakery without touching the lock. I scrub the sick out of my mouth at the wash basin. Cold water over my face, dirt worked out from under my nails.
There’s half a muffin and a little bottle of milk left in the cold box. I eat and drink fast, standing up in the dark. Then I wipe down the basin, set the cold box right, and leave the place cleaner than I found it. Whoever bakes here in the morning will never know I fell apart in their kitchen.
But I’m not getting out of here clean. Someone’s waiting for me out in the dark.
Seth’s there when I come back around, rocking on his heels at the cottage door. His head comes up as I clear the corner.
“Seth.” I keep my voice even. “Go home.”
“I knew you hadn’t gone yet.” He doesn’t move. “Ma’s been looking for you all day. None of her locating spells will catch you.”
“I’m cloaked.” I stop a few feet off. “I didn’t want anybody to know the hour I left.”
“I see why you have to do it.” He won’t quite hold my eyes. “I hate it and I get it.”
“I figured you’d be glad to see the back of me.” I try to make it a joke. Neither of us laughs.
He crosses to me and grabs my arm. “I have to ask you one more time.”
I shake my head. “No. You don’t know what you’re asking me for.”
