The longing makes me open my mouth when I shouldn’t because I need to know. “What happened to them?”
“She died. A long time ago.” Kalos’s gold eyes open, but he doesn’t look at me.
How long ago doesn’t matter. His emotions are stark in the lines of his body and face.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. The sentiment is a useless one, but it doesn’t make it less true.
Kalos shrugs and sighs before his gaze meets mine again. “Dragons have one predestined mate. So you see, we are not mates, and I wouldn’t want us to be. My heart is only meant for one.”
My brain is too stubborn to let this go without more investigation. “But the night we spent together—”
His eyes freeze over, and my words dry up. “Was about sex,” he says. “Not love, and it was a mistake.”
Mistake. That word shatters the tenuous hope in my chest that whispered that I’d finally found my place in the world. That after all the human couples who’d declined to adopt me, I’d found a family.
“Being mated to you would be a lower circle of hell,” he’d said. Even if he could mate with me, he wouldn’t want to.
Kalos clears his throat and pushes his chair away from the table, standing and adjusting his suit. He takes the jagged remains of that hope and continues to stab my heart.
“You are the mother of my child. I will try my best to make you comfortable, but do not look to me for anything else.”
The numbness spreads out from my chest.
“I don’t say this to be cruel, but for you to know your place here,” Kalos says.
I blink up at him. For all that his pain was on display a moment ago, his face shows no emotion now. He nods like I’ve agreed and leaves. His footsteps are clipped and echo in the empty dining room until they fade, disappearing entirely.
The beautiful room that was warm and cheery just a moment ago is as silent as a tomb.
I inhale a shuddery breath, trying to do damage control on the thud of my heart.
I don’t love him, so why does what he said hurt so much?
SLEEP COMES SLOWLY FOR ME. I’m in the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in, and still my mind spins. I find another blanket in the closet and add it to the bed. I’m not quite cold yet, but past the hollow pain in my chest, the chill is encroaching again.
Eventually I’ll go to Kalos to get an injection of warmth, but I can’t right now. I’m licking my wounds.
Tomorrow, I’ll be strong. Tonight, I grieve.
I don’t love Kalos. I loved the idea of having a fated mate. A place where I fit. I thought that maybe that place could be with Kalos.
There’s something magnetic about him. When he’s not being cruel, it’s hard to remember that he’s practically a stranger.
But nothing is going to happen with him. He still feels for the rightful mate that he lost.
I sigh and rub my chest.
I’d always expected that when I had kids, it would be with a man who loved me. Who was excited to be a father and we’d be every bit of the family that I never had. It’s not fair to hold Kalos to that expectation, but releasing my desire for that is hard.
It clings to me with skeletal hands. It has the power to make me miserable if I’m constantly thinking of what I don’t and can’t have. It’s not my fault Kalos is the definition of emotionally unavailable. I can’t expect that to change. I can only expect to adapt to the situation.
I’m having a baby. They will be my family. Stella will be my family. Maybe with time, Maggie and Ben will be too. I can mourn the moment of losing something I never had, but I won’t let that take me down in a spiral.
I don’t realize that I’ve fallen asleep until I wake in the dark with a start, shivering.
Cinnamon and the scent of campfire.
He’s here.
I’m on my side, and the blankets behind me lift.
My throat swells closed. The chill has returned.
The bed dips like he’s pressed his knee on the edge.
“I am sorry for hurting you,” he says softly. There’s a warmth near my cheek as if his hand hovers there, but it disappears without touching me.
I swallow and don’t respond. The emotions I thought I’d tamped down are too close to the surface. I don’t want to say something stupid like Why don’t you want me?
When really, why would he want me?
“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.
“No.” The word is barely a rasp on my lips, but he hears it anyway. His body slides behind mine, his arm wrapping around my waist.
I gasp at the contact of his hot body against mine. The cold flees immediately. The pajamas I wear are flannel and act as a buffer, covering every bit of skin between us.
The instant relief almost brings tears to my eyes.
“Sleep, Rina,” he says. The words brush over the exposed skin of my neck and ear.
I don’t fight the command. I don’t snap at him not to call me a nickname if he’s the one putting boundaries in place. I don’t get mad at him for making it too easy to soften for him.
I give in.
14
KATARINA
BREATHE IN. Breathe out.
I move with my breath, enjoying the burn and stretch of muscles. I follow the directive from the instructor on the tablet to keep one knee bent and dig into the knife edge of my back foot for Warrior II. This is nice. Calming. I can almost forget the worries that try to flurry around in my brain and focus on the moment.
Stella’s gasping breaths beside me are distracting, but I don’t hold it against her. There are a lot of distracting things. Things like the grit of the yoga mat on the stone patio, the sun beating down pleasantly on my back, that it’s been a whole month since my world was turned on its head, or that my hair smells like campfire.
I shy away from that train of thought and the dragon it’s going to revolve around, focusing hard on the cheerful instructor’s words as she tells us to bring our feet together at the top of the mat before moving from our core to raise our right foot. Oh, a balancing move!
Stella topples with a shriek.
“Are you okay?” I pause the video and Stella stays spread on the mat, trying to catch her breath.
“I’m fine. Everything is fine… this was a terrible idea,” she says.
My lips twitch. “It was your idea.”
“Doesn’t mean it can’t be a bad one. All the research says that yoga is great for birth.”
I skip over the thought of birth and laugh. “That’s great to know, but you don’t have to do it with me.”
“I’m being supportive.” Stella’s face is bright red with exertion. “I thought this was supposed to be relaxing, not pushups and planks.”
“I’m sure it gets easier with practice,” I muse, hiding my secret smile that Stella is willing to go out of her comfort zone for me just to be supportive.
She glares at me, no doubt noticing that I’m not gasping or sweaty. “Why are you good at this?”
I raise a brow and point at myself. “Cat burglar, remember? Being able to balance is kind of important.”
“But you stopped doing that ages ago.”
I smile and shrug, unwilling to admit that I’d kept up my physical routines. The compulsion not to lose strength tastes like that life-and-death decision still. Sometimes moving my body lets me relax when the world and my conscience yells at me, and other times… it’s because I’m afraid of needing those skills again and not having them.