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Stavrok shook his head before hauling himself to his feet.
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, I need to fly home for a few days and update Lucy. She doesn’t like to be left out of the loop for long.”
I jumped to my feet far more quickly than he had, the difference in our physical abilities obvious in that one movement. “Why should I give Iain a second chance, Uncle Stavrok? After everything he’s said and done. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t like me or want me around.”
He shrugged. “Because ignoring the fated mate bond is fatal, to all that are involved, Veronica. You won’t find another who will love you the way Iain does, and can. And I promise you, my son loves you dearly.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, still finding it hard to believe him.
The huge king walked to the door and opened it before turning back. “Veronica, you don’t have to forgive him. Hell, you can punish Iain for the rest of your lives if you choose to, but before you make a decision like that—one that will bring great sadness to both of you—I ask that you give him a second chance to prove himself. You won’t be sorry.”
Then King Stavrok left the room, taking all my anger with him and leaving me with nothing but my own sadness.
Chapter 13.
IAIN.
The pain in my head wouldn’t stop, and the darkness of my thoughts were downright black as midnight. But I’d scared Veronica off, again, and I had no lifeline to drag me to safety. No rope.
Nothing but darkness that felt soul deep.
“Iain, please, talk to me,” King Damon said again, gently shaking my shoulder.
I shrugged him off and turned away.
The healer had come to check on me again and I’d wanted to outright attack the man.
“He’s alive, my lord,” the healer had told Damon. “But the poison in the wound... it had already spread through his blood. His skin’s burning with it. All over.”
I groaned. They should have left me dead. A little niggle in the back of my mind said maybe that’s why I was feeling so dark and hopeless. Maybe the poison had spread to my mind, too. It was so tiring to think at all.
“What’s there to do?” Damon asked. “We have to fix this and help him. Somehow.”
“I don’t know what to suggest, my king. I’m sorry.”
The healer left and I stayed curled up in my ball of hate and pain.
“Iain, you have to fight this.”
“I wanna go home,” I managed to groan. My own bed. My father’s kingdom. If I was going to die, I wanted to die in the same place I’d been born.
“You can,” Damon said. “When you’re strong enough to travel. Could you shift? That might help detox the poison from your system.”
I searched inside for my dragon but he was curled up, angry and half-dead. I shook my head. “No way.” I wasn’t sure my dragon would survive a shift.
“Iain, you need to get up. Have a shower. Can you stand?”
I lifted my head, a hint of humor lighting me up for just an instant. “Can you?”
Damon swung his legs off the side of the bed and got up, swaying like a tree in a strong wind.
I laughed, though there was slight bitterness in the sound. “Sit down before you fall down.”
Damon picked up a pillow and tossed it at my head.
It hit me, and I batted the fluffy insult away. “Fuck off.”
