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My monster dissipated, especially when Namir’s eyes left the woman and landed on me, then trailed down my body appreciatively. He didn’t seem to notice my haircut, but I didn’t give a damn about that.
“If you’ll excuse me, my queen’s ready for me,” he told the other woman, standing and striding toward me without a glance back toward her.
I lifted an eyebrow at him as he took my arm and swept me toward the doors that led out of the castle. “We don’t have any markings on our throats to suggest that our bond has developed,” I reminded him.
“Semantics,” he said, his voice smooth and upbeat.
How much of that cheerfulness was a front?
Was he only putting on a grin for everyone else’s sake?
“Where are we going?” I changed the subject. Out in public in his kingdom clearly wasn’t a place for me to call him on his shit, if there was a place at all.
“The ceramicists. I’ll be running my training out in the streets, to keep my warriors on their toes.”
He’d remembered.
Despite everything else, I grudgingly admitted to myself that the gesture was sweet.
“To make it possible to check on me half a dozen times every hour, you mean,” I drawled back.
He flashed me a playful smile. “You know me too well, Love.”
“Do I?” I shot back.
His eyes narrowed a bit, though his smile remained. “What did you and Lavee talk about this morning?”
“Sex,” I lied smoothly.
His eyes went back to their normal shape, his gaze returning to the horizon as we continued to walk. “And?”
“And I didn’t know that there’s no form of birth control that works on fated mates,” I admitted.
That one wasn’t a lie at all.
Namir nodded. “I would’ve made sure you knew, had I thought we were at that point in our relationship yet.”
Honestly, I believed him. The way he’d reacted when he bit my lip definitely didn’t make me think he’d be alright with secretly impregnating me.
“Then you agree that we can’t have full-out sex yet. We need to make sure we’re thinking clearly and on the same page before we risk bringing a child into the world; we can’t go there unless we’re ready to be parents.”
“I agree.” Namir’s voice was still upbeat, though the topic of our conversation didn’t really feel like an upbeat one.
Feeling a bit self-conscious, I added, “There’s a lot we still don’t know about each other—particularly about our pasts. We should know each other extremely well before we contemplate having a child together; I don’t even know whether or not your kingdom is safe for kids.”
Namir whirled to face me, his hands cradling my cheeks and his gaze deathly serious. “We can put off the sex and anything else as long as we need to, Diora, but never doubt whether or not you’re safe. I will always protect you and any child we bring into this world; always.”
The fervent promises in his voice were intense enough to take my breath away a bit.
“Alright,” I said, not sure what else there was to say.
He released my face a few moments later, stepping back a bit to give me space, and then gestured toward a building we’d stopped in front of. “Here we are, Love.” His grin was back, but it was the practiced, kingly one.
Not ready to call him out for that fake grin yet, I slipped into the ceramicists’ studio, and spent the day lost in their work.
The next fewweeks passed by quickly, and similarly.
I spent a day or two learning the beginning of a new craft or trade, rotating through everything Namir or I could come up with in an attempt to discover what I liked most. Though I enjoyed almost all of them, none of them stuck out as something I’d want to do every day for the rest of my life, except maybe cooking. And the chefs had pretty much told me that wasn’t going to happen given the fact that I was Namir’s fated mate.
