Scream at him.
Beg him.
Just like I begged Fallon.
I can’t do that. I can’t lose somebody else.
Exactly why I need to get the fuck out of here and leave. Now.
I look at his lashes again, imagining myself leaning forward to kiss them both—soft and slow. Imagining my nose nuzzled into his neck, drawing my lungs full of his scent. Imagining myself pressing my forehead to his, telling him the three words I know Elluin felt in every fiber of her being, planting a final kiss upon his cheek—
Go, Raeve.
My heart throbs with an agonizing ache as I rip my gaze away, shift his arm to the side, and sit up. I drop inside myself and begin shucking the beautiful memory of all the warm, lustrous layers that could make me want to stay and live this past slumber again, and again, and again.
Forever.
Kaan’s arm lashes around my middle, snapping me back to the now. With a surge of might, I’m lugged against his chest, bound in his embrace.
“Wh—”
“The aurora’s still in bloom,” he murmurs into the dip of my neck, his voice gravel laced with groggy wisps of sleep.
Despite my frown, my body bows to the shape of him, like we were made to fit together.
Move together.
Fall together.
“You don’t know that,” I scoff, and another bolt of lightning ignites the room.
“It is,” he says, settling around me like he intends to fall straight back to sleep. “You can’t tell because of all the clouds.”
I sigh.
Sounds like a load of spangle shit to me. A perfect excuse to draw the pleasure out and put off the painful bit. But I’ve been doing that for the past who the heck knows how long, and all it’s done is land me on this big, comfortable pallet with the male, nuzzling his hand. Indulging in a love I’ll never be able to keep.
It’s cruel.
I’m cruel.
“I have to go, Kaan.”
“Bluntly aware of your intentions, Raeve. But as I said before you fell asleep, we need to have a serious conversation first.”
I go stone still, swearing internally.
I’d hoped he’d forgotten.
He lifts his face from my neck, then tilts my head far enough that I’m looking up at him, crushed beneath the sizzle of his earnest stare. “We can either do that now or we can keep pretending for a little while. The choice is yours.”
I scowl. “And if I don’t want to have this talk you speak of? Ever?”
He shrugs. “Then you’ll have to kill me on your way out of Dhomm. Simple as that. Otherwise, I’ll be on your fucking heels for the rest of eternity until you decide you’re ready to face your past.”
I physically recoil, like he jabbed me with a shiv and marginally missed a vital organ. “You’re horrible.”
His smile is soft. Gentle, even.
“I’m a horrible male that loves you, Raeve. That wants the best for you, even if it’s not the best for me.” The smile falls, his eyes darkening as he pauses—like he’s grappling with the words on his tongue. “There are … others who would be affected by your sudden return. One in particular. You need to know the truth.”
I open my mouth, close it, shafted by the hardness in his stare. The same hardness I saw in his eyes when he leapt down off Rygun’s back at the crater in the Boltanic Plains.
Whoever this other is, I’m half convinced he’d cut off a head for them. Meaning I’m not getting out of here without this talk. Especially since I threw away my leverage for a midslumber snuggle and a lullaby.
Who am I? A dose of love from the past has tamed me into something soft, squishy, and … stupid.
“I don’t like this.”
“I know you don’t,” he murmurs, reaching up to tuck a tendril of hair behind my clipped ear. “Growing pains are called pains for a reason.”
Don’t like that, either. I’ve had enough pain.
A bit sick of it, actually.
“So what’s it to be, Moonbeam? Are you in a listening mood?”
Definitely not.
A little more blissful make-believe with the male who’s looking at me like I shaped the sky versus a conversation about my prickly past that’ll probably break more than it builds?
Not even a competition.
“Tell me,” I muse, falling back into our lustful illusion like falling through a cloud, “what sort of … things did we used to do in this room when we’d wake before the aurora rose?”
Kaan softens around me, a husky sound building in his chest as his eyes blaze. “You haven’t dreamt about us in this sleep space?”