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“Yes. Exactly. They attacked your group and would have killed Varrow if the Vrika had not been chasing my idiot brother to the ends of the Deep Sky and hadn’t just happened to be flying overhead at that moment. These are precisely the sort of things that are not supposed to happen. Gahn Thaleo knew that. He knew he had no right to use neutral territory for his own purposes and to attack others there. Yet his men did it anyway.”
“You can move your hand,” she said. My thumb grew damp when her tongue accidentally swiped it as she spoke. “I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
I did move my hand, but I found I could not let go of her. I slid it down and backwards, cupping the back of her fragile skull and burying my fingers in the soft warmth of her hair.
“So, yes, after being hot with rage at Gahn Thaleo’s brazenness, his men attacking my brother and kidnapping his mate in what should have been neutral territory, my first response was to refuse his request. But had I been given some time to actuallythink-”
My hard cock nudged Zuh-Tephanie’s hip and her eyes went huge.
“-my response may have been entirely different.”
With neither of us noticing, my other hand had drifted to Zuh-Tephanie’s waist.
“Thaleo could have come to me,” I said. “He could have told me of the situation affecting his people. Despite what you may think of me, I am not so vicious as to let women and children starve.”
“What about the male warriors? About the Gahn himself? Would you have let him starve?”
Why is she so cursedly concerned with that foul Gahn?
“The man put an arrow through me just a few days ago,” I said flatly. “I did not know I should reward him for such things with fresh meat and sweet moonbark from my own mountains.”
She raised a brow at me, not willing to let the question go.
“I do not know,” I replied honestly. “I never got the chance to see what I would have done because Gahn Thaleo never gave me a chance. All I got was my enemy’s arrows striking men down in neutral territory and the abduction of my brother’s mate. And then, to top all of it off, I was told I’d never get to see my own mate, I’d never get to seeyou, if I didn’t let Thaleo officially take the neutral territory he’d already claimed with his lawless arrows.”
Zuh-Tephanie sighed.
“So, neither of you are really victims, then. You’re both right and you’re both wrong. Why do you guys have to make everything so complicated?”
“I refuse to believe that your kind is less complicated than mine,” I said with a humourless laugh. “You are the most infuriatingly complex creature I’ve ever tried and failed to understand.”
“Alright, well, like I said before about the taklok, this definitely provides some more context,” she said slowly.
I could tell her anger had abated somewhat.
But not entirely.
“Good,” I said. “I am sick to death of spending all my time with you talking about Gahn Thaleo. Tomorrow, I will be healed enough for the flight. We will leave this place. And I will show youmymountains.”
I had hoped she would have shown some excitement, or at least interest, at the prospect of seeing my mountains.
But I should have known better by now.
“Oh, really?” She jerked her head away from my grasp, then stepped out of my reach. “Just like that? You’re feeling better and you just make the decision for both of us? Suddenly I’m back in your good graces enough to be allowed near you?” She searched my face with guarded eyes, then whispered, “What happened to, ‘Please don’t leave me’?”
I stiffened, my spine going ramrod straight. My wound ached.
Curse me, I’d hoped she had forgotten all my blubbering.
But my mate was too insufferably clever, it seemed, to forget a single thing I said. I had a feeling that this skill of hers would likely be turned against me many times over the course of my life.
“I was not myself when I said that,” I grunted.
It was true. If I had been at my full strength and not half out of my mind with the lingering grief from my nightmare, I never would have allowed myself to become so weak in front of her.
And at the same time, the words weren’t true at all.
Because ithadbeen me – the deepest, ugliest, and most pathetic part of me – who’d asked her not to leave me. Who’d made her pity me enough to want to stay.
