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KINSLEY
Later that afternoon, I woke up to find Grayson still sound asleep next to me. I’d lain next to him, watching him for a long while, enjoying the calmness in his face and hoping that one day he might feel that way more often and when he wasn’t sleeping.
It wasn’t until I heard someone in the kitchen that I decided to get out of bed.
I slipped into some pajama pants and pulled on one of Grayson’s T-shirts. The hem fell just above my knees, but I didn’t care. I was hungry and curious if there had been any updates about last night.
When I padded into the kitchen, I was surprised it was Markus there and not Lia cooking breakfast.
He was mixing up eggs when he glanced up at me. “Hey. Did you sleep okay?”
“Better than I expected to, at least,” I replied, reaching into the fridge for some orange juice. “Want some?”
“Sure.”
I glanced around but didn’t hear or see anyone else. “Is Lia still sleeping?”
He nodded. “She used a lot of energy last night. More than she has in a long time.”
“I know the faction appreciates her help,” I replied. “We wouldn’t have gotten everyone settled as quickly without her helping clear out the smoke.”
He nodded again, taking the bowl of eggs and pouring them into the pan on the stove.
As awkward silence settled between us, I realized this was the first time we’d been alone. Either Lia or Grayson was always with us.
My fingers tapped on the counter, and I cleared my throat at the same time he did, causing both of us to laugh.
“Sorry,” I said. “This shouldn’t be so weird.”
“And yet…it is,” he said with another chuckle. “It’s okay, though. I didn’t expect us to become an instant family. Though, I did always wish I had an older sibling.”
I raised a brow. “You did?”
“Sure,” he said sheepishly. “Then I wouldn’t have been the heir to the role of Alpha Supreme growing up. I wondered for a long time how different my life might have been.”
I thought he was just referencing his relationship with our sperm donor, but then he continued, completely taking me by surprise.
“My first mate? I was cruel to her, and that led to her rejecting me. It took me a while to accept things fully, and then I was just sad. Not for Danni, because she found her second-chance mate immediately, but a part of me resented them and their happiness. If I hadn’t been such a prick, that could have been me with her. But then, I met Lia, and I can see everything worked out the way it was supposed to, but for months? I’d had no clue.”
Fuck.I couldn’t imagine how Markus had felt before. Nor could I picture him being cruel since that wasn’t the person I’d been slowly getting to know.
All I could see now was a man wanting to be better than the way he’d been raised, a man focused on the right things. That made me glad Lia had brought us together.
I’d found a family and a home here in Fire and Fluorite. Even if I was still what felt like a long way from being Alpha Supreme, there wasn’t a part of me that intended to give up just because things would only get harder from here on out.
“What about you?” he asked. “How was life with the witches?”
My lips bunched as I thought about my answer. My thoughts on it always seemed to be conflicted. “It wasn’t awful, but it was lonely. Some days, I wished they’d been mean to me just so people would talk to me, but instead, I was ignored most of my life, bounced from house to house before I was given my own place. I then spent my adult years training to at least be physically stronger if I wasn’t going to be magically capable.”
He frowned and stirred the eggs. “I’m sorry that you were alone, and I wish I could say you were better off, but maybe we both got the shit end of the stick in different ways.”
I shrugged, finishing off my juice. “Nah, from the sounds of it, Mathis was way worse than the coven.”
A dark look crossed over his now-sullen face. “Yeah, probably.”
Without thinking too hard about what I was doing, I reached for Markus and, for the first time since meeting him, pulled him into a hug. He stiffened briefly then wrapped his arms tightly around me. “I’m glad I found you,” I said.
He nodded over my shoulder and spoke gruffly. “Same.”
