AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The answer was out of my mouth before I’d even thought it through. “It’s stupid and I don’t need it.” I shut my eyes right as I said it, hating that answer.
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said.
Foolish, insecure panic caught up to me: a fear I never would have felt before all of this. “Do you not like…” My breath caught, the words turning thick as molasses in a split second. “You won’t like me if I don’t—?”
“You’d be my dream girl no matter what you wear or do with your hair,” he said.
My heart calmed, if only for a moment.
“But I don’t think it’s stupid if you do love it,” he finished.
Carefully, I set the eyeliner down, then turned so I was facing him. Violet galaxies held mine, sure and sad, piercing me right to my soul.
My mate, who never missed my pain. Not for a second. Not even buried in the depths of a video meant to do so much more than challenge something as inconsequential as my passions.
“And that’s all?”Zeus’s voice was like daggers in my mind.He was pinning me by the neck, forcing the camera in my face so they could all see how weak and stupid I was. “That’s all? The best you have to offer? A pretty face?”
“I love that you love it,” Drake whispered, drowning out Zeus’s taunt. “I love that you sing to yourself when you do your hair. That you enjoy putting on makeup so much sometimes you wipe it all off and start over just because you want to go again. I love your hair and style because it’s a reflection of you. And I love…” He trailed off and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “I love that you fought for it. You don’t have to fight again, but I just want you to know I don’t think it’s stupid.”
I reached up before even thinking about it, hands cupping his cheeks as I drew myself up to my tiptoes, face just inches from his.
I knew they were worried about the dark bond—about commands that might be hiding around every corner, and I couldn’t say anything about it, even to tell him there was nothing to be afraid of right now.
He leaned closer, cautious, and I dragged him down to me and pressed my lips to his.
A purr rose in his chest. He lifted me and set me on the counter so my legs could tangle around him and drag us closer.
It was, for a few brief seconds, enough to stop the world, to challenge each doubt and monster lurking around every corner. After, when I stepped from the bathroom, I left the counter how it was, messy and scattered with makeup.
Next was my clothes. While Drake went to grab us a late lunch, Love helped me dig out all of my favourite sweatshirts. They were all oversized, worn with age, and each had an inscription on the cuff. They were the most precious things I owned, aside from Aisha's collar. My mother was gone now, and she’d never be able to inscribe the lyrics of a song ever again. I’d always been so careful about wearing them, not wanting to ruin them.
Right now, I’d lined up my favourite three and I was looking between them.
The inscriptions read:‘I’ll stay with you until the first break of day’,‘Find your voice, find your strength’—the one I’d worn yesterday. And the third, the one with the inscription that meant the most, even if I never wore it or never spoke it.
Choosing the former, I tugged it on (over Drake’s shirt), not caring that it was warm out today. Love helped me hang the others up on a rack all of their own, keeping them separate and easy for me to identify by inscription.
“So, did you speak with Ebony?” Love asked.
I glanced at him, a little unsure. “Yes. Last night.”
“And was it… okay?”
I nodded. “He tried to apologise.”
“Tried to?”
“Yeh.”
I didn’t really know what to think of the conversation I’d had with Ebony. It felt right, but even he’d been concerned at my choice, which was unsettling. No one had ever asked that of him before, I knew it, but I had to have faith in this match.
And then… what he’d asked me…
Perhaps it should have been the most unnerving moment of the night, but instead warmth coiled in my stomach at the thought of it.
I will burn the world to the ground if anyone ever dares try to take you from me again… I will bury the bones of anyone who has ever hurt you…
Would he?
