I’ll never be truly free.

Even if separated, even if he spent all his time doing whatever it was that the council needed him for, I’d never be free. Not really. I’d always be bound up in this, in him. The invisible, tightening layers of our agreement that had once felt like salvation and now just felt like ruin.

All my fury faded, crushed under sadness that made me double over, like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. My hands landed on my knees then disappeared, turning murky, and I realized it was because of tears in my eyes.

I couldn’t even be mad that I was crying in front of him yet again. In fact, a harsh, hurting part of me was glad for it. Good. Maybe he’ll run away again and leave me the hell alone.

But he didn’t. He was at my side instantly. He said nothing, and neither did I, as he scooped me up into his arms and carried me back towards the stairs. I could have fought him. I could have screamed.

I turned my face against his starlit chest – so warm, so fucking warm – and sobbed.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Wylfrael

Torrance was weeping. I couldn’t run from it this time. Not when the salt-scented tempest of it was directed squarely at my chest. She shuddered in my arms, even when we re-entered the warm shelter of the castle, having closed up the walls of the conservatory. Her face was exquisitely soft and alarmingly wet against my chest as I carried her down the stairs.

Was all human weeping this distressing, or only Torrance’s? I was not sure what was a more disagreeable possibility. That I would be affected thus by any human woman weeping. Or that my bride’s crying was special, and affected me above that of any other.

Because affect me, it did. Every tremor, every gasp she made, was like a shockwave through my frame. I wanted to make it stop.

I wanted to comfort her, my prisoner, my bride, but I did not know how.

She wants children. Children!

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, and now I felt a fool. I’d already resigned myself, with desperate agony, to the fact that I’d never meet my mate, never father a son. But now, I was forcing that fate on her, too.

I’m not forcing it, I reminded myself harshly. Her friends had left her. The only way she’d find them with any sort of efficiency is if I got access to the council. Being married suited both our purposes. We both had to make sacrifices.

I’ll have no one. That’s what she’d said. And, like some haunted half-wit, I’d babbled that she wouldn’t have no one. I’d gone far beyond any realm of decency or sense and told her I’d be there for her, that I would lie with her, even though that was something I knew I should never, ever do. I said I’d get her a blasted pet! Like that would mean anything to her now. I’d even said I’d house her human friends here, the very same ones I’d almost murdered in my rage. If I’d been at my full power, I knew with a deadly certainty I would have killed them all.

I’ll have no one.

I thought about her loving a Sionnachan male and rebelled. The same way I’d rebelled against the thought of Maerwynne marrying her.

That was not her fate. I was her fate.

What do I want with her?

The question was so loud in my head it was almost like Torrance had asked it herself – What do you want with me?

I carried her into my room – our room – and then I did not know what to do with her. I held her, turning my head this way and that, looking for something, anything, to make her stop crying. It was as if her grief was pouring out of her in physical waves, like I was the shore and she a battering ocean storm. I reeled with the sense that she’d drag away every bit of me, erode me down to my very bones, if I let her.

I wanted to drop her. To get as far from her as possible. It was the same trapped burrowbird feeling I’d had when I’d watched her, so lovely and so sad, with the fabric of her wedding dress around her.

I settled on pulsing my wings just enough to lift us onto the bed. But this was perhaps even worse, because now she was cradled in my lap. I thought of heaving her over to the side, but she was clinging to me now, her tiny fingers digging into my neck with the force of something feral.

So, I held her, just as she was. Tiny. Human. Weeping.

And mine.

There was no satisfaction in the thought. Only wild confusion. Confusion because I’d made her cry, which I knew I should not do, because she was to be my wife and we needed to look happy. But there was more than just that, more than just worrying about appearances. So much more. Eyes the colour of honey. A love of animals and snow. An infuriating, beautiful sort of hope that pulsed in her like a heartbeat even while it burned in me like poison.

She was more than I’d bargained for. Much more.

And I didn’t know how to save either of us now.

We’d announced our mating bond, our marriage, and could not go back on such a thing. We both needed the council, which meant we both needed each other.

“This would all be so much easier if I hated you,” I muttered as my hands ran up and down her slender back, the silk barely there between us.

“You don’t hate me?’ she asked, so astonished that she stopped crying for a moment. “Well, I hate you.”

“Clearly,” I said sardonically. “That’s obviously why you’re clinging to me so.”

She sucked in a wet-sounding breath and scrambled out of my lap. Some stupid instinct I could not quash made me regret my words, made me regret that she was no longer in my arms. Even my cock was being stupid at the moment, straining for her through my trousers, as if the curve of her hip still pressed there, even though she’d gone.

“You should have told me.” Her words were an accusation from across the bed as she sat up against the headboard. Though I could have grabbed her with very little effort, it felt as if she was in another world entirely, across a great expanse of fur wider than any universe.

“Told you what? That you could not take a lover, have children?” My own disillusionment was rising now. “It is the same for me. I can never find my true bride, my fated mate. Never. I’ll never have a son, as I always dreamed I would.”

“Oh, please!” Torrance cried, her eyes flashing in the low firestone light. “Aiko told me. She told me that you become a mortal when you claim your true mate. You’re just afraid of dying, that’s why you need me instead of your real bride. Don’t make it sound like we’re the same. You’re choosing your future. Mine was taken from me.”

“That’s what you think?” I asked, keeping very still, freezing everything down when what I wanted to do was explode. “You think I’m avoiding my fated mate and trapping you in this bargain because I’m afraid of dying?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Torrance didn’t look pleased with my answer. Her eyes were hard gold points with black in the middle.

“That’s because you’re immortal. How can you be afraid of something you have no concept of? People like me,” – she smacked her hand to her chest, making the silk of her robe rustle and expose more skin – “we have to fight every day to survive. It could all end in an instant.” Her voice cracked, then got quiet. “I was dying when you found me.”

“But you didn’t die,” I reminded her, more forcefully than perhaps was necessary, “precisely because I found you.”

“Well, maybe you should have left me there!” she cried. “It isn’t like you’ve saved me.”

My insides went dark and off-kilter. Like everything was sliding to one side, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my balance. In an instant, I was above her, on my knees, my hands planted on the headboard on either side of her.