Page 89 of Sky’s Edge

Aleksei had obviously filled her in.

This meant I leaned her way and answered, “Because I’m an idiot?”

She scrunched up her face.

She knew I could totally be an idiot.

That afternoon, before we all broke to go to our rooms to freshen up for dinner, I’d told her the story Mom received about my weekend on Sigil.

Laura was less excited about it, more reflective, and I thought she read between the lines of what I hadn’t told Mom.

That Tanyn was getting to me, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

But any kind being wouldn’t pick a fight, accidentally or not, with a male who just learned both his parents were murdered.

I honestly didn’t know why I mentioned the sleeping arrangements, understanding he put me there, so that was where he wanted me, and it was no skin off my nose to be there.

Except something Tanyn had said to me on Sigil.

And you were better at putting them off.

He’d been speaking of the males that I’d been with where we didn’t work.

Was it me who made sure those relationships didn’t work?

And if it was, why would I do that?

I’d always wanted to spend my life with someone. Get married. Have children. Have someone to go home to and share my day with. Make Dead Winter and Summer Solstice memories.

Have my own digi-frame filled with pics of smiling beings I adored.

But I was thirty-one (only just, my birthday had just passed), and even with copious courting, did that happen?

No.

Because none of them were right.

None of them reached into my brain, my heart, my blood and bones.

I wasn’t the only demon who thought it sucked our kind didn’t have fated mates. Not only did it make it easier to find the one, you had it. That being you belonged to. That being who belonged to you. That being who was made for you. Meant for you.

Destined for you.

Demons had to court and hope.

I’d looked it up once.

Divorce or desertion between fated mates among all in the Four Realms sat at one point two percent.

Divorce or desertion between others was forty-two percent.

Divorce or desertion between demons, the fieriest of all the species, was fifty-three percent.

I could not refute there were some feelings happening in me when Aleksei and Laura found each other.

And I was seeing this was why I gave Bash a shot.

Sure, he had it all on paper, but when the hover met the air, he was a juvenile, pouting asshole.