Page 74 of Fate of the Sun King

“Do you?” she challenges. “Because you’re acting like you do.”

“Lor!” I grab her wrist and pin it against my chest, the dagger still clutched in her fist. “You’re my fucking mate, and you are mine.”

The words slip out and vibrate in the air, hanging between us. Forever said and never to be undone. I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that, but she’s making me so crazy that I’m not thinking straight.

“I know that!” she yells as she wrenches her arm from my surprised hold and walks away. That’s just about the last thing I expected her to say.

“You do?”

“Yes!” She presses a fist to her heart as though she can’t draw enough air and then gives me a suspicious look, her gaze narrowed. “Wait. You knew?”

“Yes, of course I knew.”

“How long have you known this?”

I shake my head. “I think I’ve always known, but I knew for sure after that night in the Heart Castle.”

She approaches, placing her hand in the center of my chest. My knees hit the back of a chair at the foot of the bed, and I collapse into it. She lands on top of me, straddling my hips, holding the edge of her blade under my chin.

“And you didn’t tell me?” she hisses. With her cheeks flushed and her hair wild, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful in my entire life. I’m trying to focus on her anger and her words, but I’m distracted by this need that throbs in my chest.

Not just physically, but the need for her to see me as I am, hands out, without armor, bleeding heart on the fucking table.

“You’d just told me you wanted me to never touch you again. What was I supposed to do?” I snap, grabbing her forearm as the blade digs deeper.

Her nostrils flare, and she breathes a long sigh before she pushes off me and walks towards the window, placing her hands on the ledge and dropping her head against it.

“When did you find out? Why didn’t you say something?” I accuse, coming up behind her.

She whirls around.

“Rhiannon. She was talking about my grandparents and what she knew about mates, and then it all clicked! You’re my mate! It was the only thing that made sense!”

“Okay! Why are you yelling about this?”

“I don’t know!” She throws up her hands. “I don’t know what to do with this!”

She’s on the verge of tears, but I don’t understand what they mean. Does she hate the idea of being mated to me so much? I know I’m the reminder of so many things she’s lost, and I can never take away what my father did to her, but I am not him. I will do everything I can to protect her and prove that.

As she’s about to turn away again, emotion tears from the center of my chest because I can’t hold any of this in anymore. I need her to understand.

“Lor! When are you going to get it through your head that I am totally, completely fucking in love with you!”

She attempts to retreat, but I take another step until she’s backed against the window. “You’re all I think about. I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and I’d do anything for you. You’ve become my air and my blood and my only reason to exist. I love you, Lor. I love you so much it makes my heart feel ready to burst.”

The rage in her eyes dims and turns into something else I’m not sure how to read. It’s that same look she keeps giving me. Confusion and wariness and some third emotion that almost tastes like forever.

“You do?”

I place my hands on the window on either side of her. “Yes. Gods, Lor. How can you not see it?”

Tears pool in her eyes as she opens her mouth and then closes it. The tension in the air is so thick it feels like it might grow wings and fly out of the room. She stares up at me with her lips parted, and I read a million things in her eyes.

I see the hurt and the loss and the rage that she carries so close to her heart. But I also see the hope and the joy and bravery of her spirit. I see all the things she wants and how hard I’m going to try to give her every bit of it. What I see is almost too much, because even if she can’t say the words, I’m sure at least part of her feels the same.

We’re clashing hordes and falling stars. We’ve been existing on the ledges of two opposite cliffs, so close to touching, and either we grab hold now or plummet into nothing.

And then we’re both moving.