Page 58 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“Raegan! That is so incredibly rude–”

“– of him. Of my friend and brother. You absolutely reek of Killian and I cannot stand it.”

“You are joking, right? This is some sort of joke?”

Shaking my head, at my wits end with these male pixies and their absurdity, I stepped towards him. Only to have him growl, truly beast-like, before he stepped away again.

“Stay away, please.”

“You… you are so difficult! What of it?” I snapped, charging towards him. “It does not matter. Does it?”

I finally had a somewhat decent view of the side of his face, only to see his lips curl upwards, his teeth bared.

“Well? Does it?” I was pressing my luck as I moved towards him, encroaching on his personal space. “If it bothers you so, King Raegan, then do something about it. Claim me as yours, once and for all.”

He let out a deep snarl as he spun away from me, pacing the length of the room several times as he rubbed at his face. “You know that I cannot.” At least he was moving, proving that he wasn’t wound so tightly he was waiting to burst.

“Then you have no right to stand there and scowl at me. And you certainly have no right to look as if you hate him.” I placed myself directly in one of his paths, tempting his quick-moving temper. “I will make my own decisions and you will not look at me that way for it. So if that means that I smell like him–”

Raegan interrupted me with the most primitive noise I had ever heard.

“If I smell like him, you are going to have to learn to live with it. You will say and do nothing to Killian. Or you will lose me entirely.”

He blinked several times, his anger steaming from the top of his head as he glared at me.

“You are… You can be so incredibly difficult to care for, Raegan!”

I regretted saying it immediately, but it just kept spilling out of me, even as I listened to the little croak that came from his throat. And I was shouting, why was I shouting?

“We had a lovely day. I had a lovely day with Killian.”

Raegan finally broke. “Then why are you here? Why do you stand here and torture me so? Why not just go to Killian?” His face twisted into fury and envy. “Go to Killian and drown yourself in his simplicity.”

I didn’t expect so much… sorrow to travel with his words. It made my whole body shift as I shook my head slowly. I had pushed him too far, I saw that as clear as I saw the anguish in his eyes as he looked at me.

But I was angry at him for being angry at me. “It is not simplicity that makes me want to be around him! It is that he knows what he wants and he is not afraid to admit it. Or to claim it–”

“You do not get to do that,” he snapped at me, turning away once more. “Do not compare us. It is not fair. I did not ask you to place yourself before us and pick.”

“Raegan, I—”

“Do you think I do not know? Do you think I do not realize that Killian is a far better male than I will ever be? Do you think I do not know that he could easily take you from—” He swallowed thickly, his shoulders heaving as his head hung. “You come in here demanding to know why I did not welcome you home? Because I could not bear it. And yes, perhaps that makes me selfish, but I never claimed to be anything else. I needed to adjust to you slowly upon your return, allowing myself the time to come to terms with the fact that you no longer smell like my kingdom, my castle, me–”

“Well… Why didn’t you just say that?”

The disappointed way in which he shook his head broke my heart. “Just go, please.”

I tried to step towards him again, “No, let me–”

But he jumped away, lifting his arms as if I had a disease. “Leave.”

~

It took all of my remaining strength to depart from him, to leave him broken, tired, and in agony in the shadows where he dwelled. To have to see the back of his head instead of the pain in his eyes. And I knew it wasn’t fair, that none of it was fair.

I deserved simplicity. I deserved an easy type of love, the type of thing that Killian had, and would always, offer.

There was also the logical side of me, the small voice in my head that said none of this mattered, because before long I would be gone again.