Page 86 of Interion

Unfortunately, the bond could be a curse too. Wars had been fought over it, and the problem with the connection was how unexpectedly it struck. A faerie could spend two hundred years married, only for the bond to tie her to someone else entirely. Imagine how devastating it would be for her spouse to be abandoned so abruptly. Besides, the nature of our race had always been more sentimental than rational—we were primitive yet intelligent beings, dangerously unstable.

The weight of the news settled in my stomach like a rock. As much as I’d already imagined something like this, hearing it from him made it so much worse. Could this be why Zion despised the bond so much?

“Did you love her?” I asked, prying a bit deeper. His expression went blank. I felt the shadows peering over my shoulders. Zion stayed silent for a while before answering.

“I… That’s not a simple answer… After the bond, things changed. It took us a while to get used to it, and fortunately, she understood.”

Now he was the one studying my expression. I took a bite of pizza and mulled it over. He hadn’t answered about loving her, but there was clearly something there. I could torture myself trying to figure out why, but I preferred to believe he was holding back to spare my feelings. In the end, I decided not to fool myself by reading between the lines.

“I hope she’s doing well,” I said, my heart aching.

It wouldn’t be easy to accept something like that. I certainly wouldn’t react well if the person I loved abandoned me overnight for someone else. I also couldn’t pretend I hadn’t been bitten by the jealousy bug. Some things were better left alone.

“She’s fine. In a way, time heals most things, and what it doesn’t heal, it eases.”

I glanced sideways at him. Did it really heal? My treacherous mind started spinning a thousand theories, and I wondered if she was someone here in Interion. I was itching to know, but I preferred to stay in the dark. It could be someone I already knew, and then I wouldn’t be able to act normally. How would I act knowing Zion had already slept with her? I felt my cheeks flush. This jealousy was completely irrational.

“When I kissed Aish and Hiro, it wasn’t because I wanted them or because I liked them romantically,” I explained. “I just wanted to experiment. I didn’t know what a kiss was like.”

Awkwardly, I stared at my hands and took a bite of pizza. He didn’t seem to know what to say either. Nervousness hit me like a truck, and I started swinging my legs.

“Did you like it?”

I choked on my food and coughed to clear my throat.

“Do you really want to know?”

He seemed uncomfortable. I could almost hear his thoughts screaming about how crazy that had driven him, but Zion swallowed his feelings, as he always did with anything that might expose his true self.

“Yes. I can’t give you those experiences as your partner. So I at least want to hear about them.”

I crossed my legs on the couch and turned to face him. We were so close that if I reached out, I could touch his cheek—yet somehow, he still felt far away.

“You can’t or you don’t want to?”

And there we were, both facing the question that would make all the difference. I had spent five years waiting for this, and whatever the answer, it would leave my heart satisfied. Being ignored was worse than being rejected. With the first, you just imagine the situation and drive yourself crazy wondering why. With the second, you know—and that certainty gives you the power to decide how to deal with it.

Zion sighed and looked me in the eyes. Then, slowly, he reached out and touched my hand, resting our hands on my thigh. He held my fingers, caressing my skin with his thumb, and the touch made my heart skip a few beats. This time, I couldn’t even blame the damn biological compatibility—it was dormant.

“I can’t,” he forced out, as if purging something that had been lodged in his throat.

My eyes widened. If he couldn’t, it meant he wanted to—and maybe my idiot heart wasn’t ready for that confession, because now it was swelling with so much hope it might burst out of my chest. “Okay,” I thought, composing myself enough to analyze the situation as a whole. He couldn’t, and that meant there was a problem.

“Why can't you? Does it have to do with your ex-girlfriend?”

He let out a humorless laugh.

“No. That's far from the truth. I can't—” He seemed to choke on the words, then tried again, but his voice failed. Zion took a deep breath, his face flushed. “I can't talk about it, Kyller.”

I didn't understand what was happening, but he looked like he was in pain. I wondered if it might be some kind of trauma.

“It's okay.” This was a difficult subject in our relationship—I felt like I was walking through a minefield. One wrong step and all the progress we'd made today would go up in smoke. “I wish I could know all the whys, the limits, the subtext, but knowing it's because you can't is better than thinking I'm being rejected.”

His expression shifted from neutral and distant to uncomfortable.

“I'm sorry for being a shitty partner,” he said, looking at our hands. “I... can't tell you a lot of things, and besides the problem with the bond, I've got years of military service behind me, Kyller. Years of death, state secrets, and information that would put your life and others' lives in danger. I need to keep all of that locked in my head, and with the bond, that's impossible. I don't want to drag you into the middle of this... problem.” He let me absorb the words. “It's not about you—the problem is that I simply... can't.”

I saw the pain in his eyes, but looking past it—past the guilt—I understood this wasn't a personal choice. It was duty. Zion was, above all, a general; his soul had been shaped and forged for this. My only question was whether living that way was really worth it. Still, I couldn't shake the splinter lodged in my chest. Why didn't he just tell me? Why keep up this mystery for five years? If he had some kind of trauma, he just had to say so—I deserved to know. I felt hurt by it. It was as if he only saw his own pain, his own problems, as if he didn't see me in his life. And I realized something else: if what he was telling me now was true, Zion had lied that day at the military academy, making it seem like I was the problem—that because it was me, he wouldn't tie the bond.