I thought that maybe I should leave. It was clear he wanted me to, waiting until I hopped off his desk and hightailed it out his office door so he could work in peace once more, late into night.

Instead, I found myself saying, “The man I had sex with was named Petyr. He came to work in my father’s mines one summer, looking for work as he was traveling between the Quadrants.”

A sound that resembled a growl rose from Azur’s throat, but he pinned me with a cool, assessing look.

I raised my chin to meet his eyes. “I had just turned twenty-five. So incredibly young and yet in the Collis, my purpose was over. Women are expected to be married at twenty. Every year that passes after twenty, people begin to look at you with a little more distaste. And if you aren’t married by twenty-five…you never will be. I was a disappointment to my family.”

Even saying it sparked familiar bitterness I’d thought I had long forgotten.

“Overnight, I lost all my value in my terrible, terrible society. And it hit me hard. Really hard. I was angry. I was restless. So I went to the mines and I picked the first human man that I saw. I took him to my bed. Afterward, I never saw him again. He stole a few trinkets from my room, and he was off the planet by the time I realized it.”

A wry smile lifted my lips.

“The whole experience was lackluster to say the least. But I don’t regret it. It made me feel better in that moment. But it made me realize how meaningless the act truly was. How foolish I’d been to believe that if I remained untouched before marriage, then I would get everything I’d ever wanted. That idea had been so ingrained in us. Since childhood. And it makes me sick to think about it now.”

Azur was watching me carefully. Only listening, though I had no idea what he was thinking.

“Shortly after, my mother died,” I said, looking down to the floor, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “Then I found out about the debts and I poured my disappointment and shame and grief into something else entirely. And it was easy to forget.”

“How did she die?” Azur asked me.

There was a stone lodged in my belly. A heavy weight that would never quite disappear.

Instead of answering, I shook my head. Because the truth was too terrible to say out loud. Truthfully, I’d never spoken it out loud. Not once. Not ever.

My eyes went to the Halo screen, which was still flickering on the edge of his desk. Longing went through me like a spear straight to my chest. I’d nearly forgotten it.

“Would you let me call my family?” I asked quietly, meeting his eyes. “On the Halo? Just to see them? I’d like to see my sisters’ faces. My friend, Fran. My father.”

Azur reared back. I’d managed to shock him. He hadn’t expected me to ask that, and I watched, with a lump in my throat, as he scowled. All trace of his former expression, however gentle, was gone.

“No.”

“But I—”

“I said no,” he growled. “If you think you can manipulate me and make me feel anything for you just so you can try to get your way, you should know better. You should know that that will not work with me.”

I gaped. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“Weren’t you?” he rasped, stalking toward me. “Giving me your sad story about your fucked-up race, trying to make me sympathize with you when you told me your mother died and how hard you worked to save your family from all the debts. I see right through it, Gemma Hara.”

Where was his anger coming from?

That sudden anger made my mouth go dry. He thought I was using my mother’s death to try to get something out of him?

I was asking to call my family. Not to leave Krynn. I’d thought…I’d thought we’d been making progress. Seeing eye to eye. I’d thought that we could at least be civil with one another if we were to be married for the rest of our natural lives, dammit, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

I was trying to make this work with him.

But he fought me at every turn, and I was getting incredibly demoralized by it.

“You’ll never see me as anything else,” I breathed, a surprising sensation of pain at the realization stabbing at my chest. “You’ll always see me as this conniving person trying to take something from you. You’ll always look for the worst in me, won’t you?”

Azur’s glare seemed to falter, but then it doubled in its intensity, as if he was steeling his mind.

“Hara blood is Hara blood, after all,” he said.

The words stole my breath.

I jumped off the desk, now finding the slick sensation between my thighs—his come mingled with my own—mortifying.

I wouldn’t do this with him anymore.

He could fucking starve for all I cared. I wouldn’t make an effort anymore.

“And you can’t get enough of this Hara’s blood,” I snapped back, throwing him a dark glare at the door. “Can you, husband?”

Then I stormed from the room before he could see the tears welling up in my eyes, threatening to fall.

Chapter 25

Azur

“Raazos’s blood,” came a familiar voice, standing on the precipice of my office. “You look like you got moon fucked.”

I scowled, spearing Rivin a dark look as he sauntered inside, uninvited.

“I thought you would be at the northern border until tomorrow,” I grumbled, turning my attention back down to my desk. I was standing, stretching my wings, rolling my neck out.

“I didn’t want to miss the moon winds tonight,” he told me. “I missed the last one because someone made me act as a witness at his wedding.”

Vaan, had our marriage been nearly a month ago? Already?

“Rivin. I’m not in the mood.”

“I can see that,” my oldest friend commented, grinning as he studied me. He already knew that Gemma was my kyrana. He’d been the first to see me after I’d fed from her that first time, when I’d sped toward the northern borders.

More like fled, I couldn’t help but think. I’d fled to the northern borders after the discovery.

“Looks like you haven’t fed in a while,” he said next, which only sparked more irritation.

“If you saw the look my wife shot me yesterday, your fangs would’ve shriveled in your damn mouth,” I couldn’t help but grumble.

It had been four days since the night she’d come into my office.

Needless to say, Gemma was still pissed after our argument.

Rivin laughed, the sound loud enough to be grating. My head was already pounding from the lore harvest work spread out across my desk and the serious lack of my wife’s blood in my diet.

I was pining. At night, I stood outside the door to her rooms, hoping to catch a tendril of her scent, debating with myself in silent, drawn-out, maddening arguments right in the hallway.

“How’s the border?” I asked, changing the subject. “Any of the Kaazor give you trouble?”

Rivin shrugged. “We had one try to slip beyond our patrol. He had a message on him. In code. I think he was trying to deliver it to someone.”

“To someone at the border?” I asked, my attention sharpening on the words.

Rivin shook his head. “The path he was taking would only lead him to Laras.”

I cursed under my breath. “A spy?”

“There’s bound to be. But what does it matter if there’s a Kaazor in the village? The worst they could do is sabotage the lore harvest, but we already have so many shipments coming in from the other territories that we will be able to make our purchase contracts regardless.”

That wasn’t what I was worried about. The Kaazor were smart. If they thought they could get a spy into Laras undetected, they wouldn’t place them in the village. They’d place them in the keep.

“Have Zaale get me a list of everyone who has access to the keep,” I told Rivin. “I need to review it again. And make adjustments if necessary.”