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“Drink,” he urges, in that same harsh tone that he seems to purely reserve for her. When I give him a searching look, he shrugs his shoulders defensively. “What? It will help calm her nerves.”
So he’s worried about her nerves, now?
Tentatively she takes a drink, and her eyes grow huge. Berry wine has that effect, which is what makes it quite dangerous. I wonder if Drazak knows what he’s doing. She takes another big sip, and the tight curl of her shoulders, the shivering in her arms, begins to ebb. After a third sip, I take the skin away from her.
“She shouldn’t drink too much,” I say. Esme reaches for the wine skin in my hands.
“Han’zir,” she grumps. “I want to drink that.”
“Wow.” I grin at her. “Guess your Trollkin is coming along.” I’m too proud of her for figuring out how to say what she wants to keep the wine away from her. She happily takes it back.
“She’s no better than a toddler,” Drazak says. He borrows my skin and guzzles the wine down, too.
And that’s when I realize it. He was scared. He ran out there like the barn had caught fire, maybe faster than I’ve ever seen him move. I take the drink again from Esme and suck down a few big sips myself. I feel like my heart has only just stopped trying to escape my chest. I was terrified of what might happen to her out there, all alone in the barn.
I watch the little human as the meal cooks and the fire reflects off her big eyes.
“What if those coyotes had gotten her?” I ask Drazak.
He flinches. “What? They wouldn’t have. They just thought they could force her to back down.” But I’m not sure if he believes his own words.
“Drazak—” I begin.
He raises a hand to stop me. “I know what you’re going to say, and the answer is ‘no.’ She is not sleeping in the house. The barn was enough of a stretch.”
“But she’s not safe out there!” Our burgeoning argument has attracted Esme’s attention, and she watches us curiously with the wineskin in her hand.
“So what?” Drazak spits on the ground. “She’s a puppy, remember? Dogs don’t sleep in the house.”
Why is he being so obstinate now when he was the one who ran like a bolt of lightning to rescue her? When he started this fire and cooked up the dead chicken to make her feel better?
A flame of anger sprouts in my chest. It’s not a common feeling for me, but I can’t stand the idea of finding Esme lying in a pool of her own blood just because she tried to protect the chickens again.
“She is not a dog,” I snap.
“Is that right?” Drazak doesn’t rise to my bait, simply arching an eyebrow at me. “I thought she was your pet. And pets live in the barn.”
The fire in me burns higher. “You know she’s more than that.” How could he say that after all she’s done around the farm? How hard she works every day to please him, when I wish it were me she was trying so hard to impress?
“Hmm,” is all Drazak says, taking a sip of berry wine. “No, I don’t know that.”
He’s lying to me—bottling up how he really feels and pretending like it doesn’t exist at all. I get up from the log and cross my arms, glaring down at him. “How can you be such a bastard?”
“Because she’s just a human!” He rises to his feet, too, and gets right in my face. “You know that, I know that. This can’t be permanent. She’s a passing fancy of yours, and I’ve entertained it to make you happy.”
My heart clenches. A passing fancy? My eyes slide over to where Esme is watching us both, her face slack in surprise. I hope she can’t understand what he’s saying about her.
“She’s not,” I say, but it comes out less strong. Maybe he’s right. Maybe this twinge of excitement I feel when she smiles at me, the way my blood feels too hot when I catch sight of her naked backside, will waft past like a cloud across the sky.
“You plan to keep her?” Drazak says, tone accusatory. “To let her sleep at the foot of the bed?”
“I...” I trail off. Of course I want her to stay here, by our sides. I want to keep teaching her how to talk so I can find out what else is inside her mind. I want to watch her finally break through to Drazak, to unlock the affection towards her that he’s clearly holding tight inside and refuses to act on. “Why not?” I finally ask. “What harm does it do to keep her? She’s helpful. If she wants to stay here forever, then?—”
“Since when has ‘forever’ been on your timeline?” Drazak asks, his face as hard as stone.
It slices me straight through. This is a very old argument, a wound I thought had healed over.
We’ve never made pledges to each other, Drazak and I. Once he asked me if we might make our bond a lifelong commitment. Though what I feel for him is unparalleled, while my need for his smiles and his body are all-consuming, it’s not a mate bond. I know it and so does he. While that doesn’t make a difference for him, since he’s long given up on such a thing... sometimes I still wonder if it’s out there for me. A mate is what I’ve wanted all my life, and I couldn’t pledge myself to Drazak if I was meant for another.
