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He dipped his chin. “So you’ve told me. It’s something I need to work on. Amongst many, many other things.”
He looked like a puppy that had been kicked. In all reality, he was. He’d spent his life under his father’s fist. If I stepped outside of my own emotions for a moment, empathy for his experience took hold. Neither one of us had fathers, not really. At least the stories of mine were honorable, and I had a family filled with love.
I’d rather have my life than his any day of the week—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Even on my worst days, it would have been better than the life he’d lived. It didn’t excuse his behaviors. He would atone for that, and for once, I believed it was possible, given time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you finish talking earlier. I had every intention of stabbing you, or hitting you with a tree branch, and here you were, trying to do the right thing.”
“For once.” Markus huffed a humorless laugh and shook his head. He took my hands in his and I didn’t feel the need to recoil or defend myself. Holding them firmly, he looked me in the eye. “You owe me nothing. Certainly not an apology.” He pressed his lips into a tight, thin smile. “I never deserved you, Dannika Kresley. You are too good for me. For Fire and Fluorite. For any of them. Remember that.”
Then he let me go.
In more ways than one.
I watched him walk away, into the trees, never once looking back. Nova came to my side, knocking her head against my arm.
I tried to remember how long it had been since the commemoration. A touch over three weeks since that fateful, cursed night.
The chains were broken now.
An overwhelming sense of freedom filled me, and I threw my arms out, letting the breeze lick my skin. Markus had rejected me. Finally. No blood had been spilled. We could move on with our lives. I looked up, checking the sun’s position in the sky to gauge the time. I wanted to get home and tell Elias. Screw the fight and the notes and the ignoring each other. I just wanted to talk to him and share everything that had just happened. Describe the feeling of being let go, and the internal snap when the bond had been truly broken. I wanted him to listen.
I sighed.
None of it was business for me. Not anymore. I wanted him. I loved spending time with him. I didn’t need to be rejected to know that. If anything, I just felt it more.
For the first time in my life, I felt romantic love. I knew what it meant to be in love with someone. It wasn’t a bond decided by fate. It was genuine. It was decided by me, without the influence of any magic whatsoever. I couldn’t keep this inside me now that I was actually free to do something with it. My stomach twisted in a knot, wondering how Elias would respond, but I had to know. I couldn’t spend my life here if he wanted nothing to do with me. Now that I could make my choices, that was exactly what I was going to do.
Maybe he was just as pissed off and stupid as I had been. I’d said things I hadn’t meant. He might’ve done the same. I held on to a thread of hope that I was right, and some unknown voice inside me said it would be the case.
“C’mon, Nova,” I said, taking off at a jog on the trail back home.
I had no idea where to find him, but I knew if I left him a note, he’d see it. Except this note wouldn’t be so snarky.
CHAPTER 22
Elias
Two days.
Two days since I’d said what was between us wasn’t real. Two days that Dannika had been leaving me notes reminding me of what an asshole I’d been. Two days I’d been wishing to turn back time, but not to that moment. I’d go back to when I could have told her it was more than business. To let her know she meant more than that to me. To tell her I wanted to choose her as my mate.
Fuck fate.
I had a choice in who to love, and I’d done everything to screw it up.
She was angry. Rightly so. I’d scolded her in public. I’d made every effort to talk about us like we weren’t a real couple. Then I’d gotten my feelings hurt when she’d played along with that? The worst of it was that I couldn’t bear to hear her say that everything she’d said and done while she’d been in heat had been a lie. It had felt so real. The hunger had been forced upon her, but the connection between us? I couldn’t understand how that could have been faked.
I replayed the confrontation in my head over and over. I’d missed something. There was a piece to the puzzle that was misplaced, leaving a gaping hole, the entire picture incomplete and not making any sense. If we were nothing more than a business arrangement, why did our fight break us apart so terribly? I sighed. Nothing could excuse what I’d said to her. I’d said it to make her feel as badly as I had in that moment, and it had worked. I cringed, repeating the nastiness of my words and the tone of my voice so it echoed in my memory.
Leaning back in my chair, I dug my fists into my eyes. The throbbing headache should have subsided. What good were healing powers when you couldn’t stop your own head from pounding? I could regrow an eyeball, but I couldn’t stop stress from needling at my brain. Nature’s joke, right there.
My thoughts were ugly, asking if I’d pushed her too far. She may have been soft, but she wasn’t a pushover. She wouldn’t accept someone who bullied her, let alone blackmailed her. Did I even have a chance to make this right? Did I deserve that chance? Deserve her? Markus still hadn’t rejected her. My mind toyed with me and whispered that she could still choose him. She would never, I’d argue with myself in return, but it didn’t stop the noise.
It was my fault. A chasm between us of my own making. And I would do everything in my power to make it right, given time. If she even lets you, a voice rasped in my subconscious.
Yes. If she let me.
“Elias?” Bianca’s chipper voice sounded on the other side of my office door. I called for her to come in, and she entered, halting when she took in my form. “For the love of the gods . . . have you slept? You look terrible.”
