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He exhaled loudly. "She didn't have to. But I felt it every day. My dad's a dragon and a bastard. He loves malice and conflict.” Rumir chuckled, but it was dry and humorless.
He gestured to himself. "I got my ‘charming’ nature from my dad. He shouldn’t even be in the God Realm, if you ask me. There’s too much darkness in him. Mom once told me that he wasn’t so mean when they’d met. She doesn’t know what happened to him, but somehow, he changed. A soul must earn the right to be in this realm, and he earned his place here. He became the bastard he is now after he arrived.”
“I wonder what could have happened to change him so drastically.”
“I have no idea, Natalie. But as the years went by, the more I felt a silent resentment from my mother. I grew up doing everything I could think of to please her, to make her proud, to prove to her that while I looked like my father, I wasn't him. Then she created Lucian, her perfect warrior.”
I hung my head. Finally, I understood why Rumir was so angry. He’d grown up being hated by his father and constantly trying to prove himself in order to earn his mother’s love.
I’d never met a dragon on Earth. And I’d never thought about being with one.
But Rumir was right. The only difference between us was that he could turn into a large beast with wings. If we were completely incompatible, we wouldn’t have been mated to begin with.
The Goddess made this choice for a reason. She had to know something we weren’t yet aware of.
"I won't be the bastard my father wants me to be,” Rumir continued. “And my mother replaced me. So, I decided to be myself and not give a damn if people liked me or not."
He turned his back to the city but didn't look at me. I knew that telling me all of this reopened a barely healed wound for him. I could almost feel the waves of pain coming from him.
Silence fell between us as the sounds of the city drifted up to us from below, and I sank my teeth into my bottom lip.
Now I understood him better, and my heart ached for the child he’d been. His parents, the people who should have loved him unconditionally, had left him in a corner alone to ponder his worth. And while he'd felt he’d had to work to gain his mother's approval, it seemed as if Lucian merely had to exist to get it from her. That kind of upbringing would be damaging to anyone.
“I’m sorry, Rumir. No one deserves to be treated like that. And I realize that you might feel that I’m just one more person whose affection you’ll have to fight for. But listen to me . . .” I reached up and turned his face to me. “You don’t have to fight to get me to love you. Just because I’m mated to Lucian as well, that doesn’t mean my bond with you is lessened. There aren’t any limits on love and affection. I have enough for both of you. Your mother probably did, too.”
I smiled as the pain in his eyes faded.
He'd been dealt a lousy hand, believing he had no one on his side. And now I, the one created to be his, wasn’t only his.
My wolf growled, angry that I was a part of this, another reason for him to feel he had to compete.
And Rumir wasn’t the only one who needed to sit down and have a talk with the Goddess. While Rumir thought Lucian was the Goddess’s favored son, Lucian believed he was just an experiment that went right. It was abundantly clear an open and honest conversation would have ended this feud long ago.
He inhaled the air as a gentle breeze blew around us. “You’re special, Natalie. I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy. But I can't promise that Lucian and I will ever see eye-to-eye.”
I reached out and took his hand. “As long as you’re happy as well, Rumir—genuinely so—then everything will be fine. I want you to know that I think I'm lucky to have you as my mate. And I'm looking forward to getting to know you better." I released his hand and pointed a stern finger at him. "But I can’t do that if you’re always scaring people away from me.”
“I'm not scary. They're just cowards,” he replied with a fiendish grin. When I shook my head, he added, "But okay."
“Good.” I perked up. “Now, how about you buy your mate a drink?”
His face dropped. “No more drinking.”
"Ha!" I walked away. "Let's see you stop me, sir. Buy me a drink, or someone else will."
"Be careful how much you tease me," he growled. I was steps away from the door when he scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder. "You won't like it when I do the same."
Stunned, I was silent for a moment until it registered that he'd picked me up and thrown me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing. “Rumir! Put me down!”
“I want to spend more time with you, and it is noisy downstairs. Be a good girl and stay put. I’ll go back down and get you a drink.”
