Page 71 of Veil of Shadows

Before I got two steps past him, he clasped my elbow and swung me around. The hardness of his chest intimately met my breasts when he hauled me against him.

“What are you doing?” My words came out in a squeak.

“Why did you come for us tonight?” His question was muttered softly, but a razor hung in the air between us. One wrong move, and it would drop, slicing the tension that smothered us.

“I told you. I couldn’t fathom a child growing up without their parent. Not if I could stop it.”

His grip caressed my elbow, so subtly that if I wasn’t hyperaware of every move he made, I would’ve missed it. “Is that the only reason?”

I swallowed, and his gaze tracked the bob of my throat. “Do you want there to be another reason?”

His expression grew stormy, his eyes blazing like liquid gems. “Would you tell me if there was?”

Our words danced around one another, and I’d never been more aware of a male in all of my life. But I couldn’t allow this to continue. Attraction sizzled between us. I knew it. He knew it. It’d been growing since the very first day we met, and had become painfully acute in the week we’d been playacting.

But he was the crown prince of Stonewild. He was to eventually marry another of royal blood or of a pedigree that I could never claim. The reality was that I was a lorafin, which made meother. I could be an owned trinket or the scandalouslover of a royal prince, but any affair between us would always be kept in the shadows. I highly doubted his future bride would allow him to flaunt me in the open.

And I didn’t want that. I wantedmore, so if the bottom line meant that we could never have any future together in any capacity, that I could accept...

Our fate was already sealed, and it was best to accept that now.

I swallowed again, and Jax’s aura rose like a swelling wave around him, growing higher and stronger, so large and powerful that I waited for it to crash all around me.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” A muscle bulged in his jaw.

I licked my lips, and he watched the movement. “I’m thinking that someday you’ll be wed to another.”

He growled, and the energy around him soared. “I’m not wed yet, Elowen.”

“No, not yet.”But I’ll eventually have to watch you wed another, and if I’d already been with you...it would destroy me, which is why nothing can ever start between us. Don’t you get that, Jax? I have feelings for you too.

But I didn’t voice that confession, and I didn’t point out that his future bride would likely not stand for me lurking in her shadow. There was no point. Nothing could ever come of this.

His thumb moved in a languid circle on my arm. Goosebumps immediately sprouted. “What do you need? Just tell me, and I’ll provide it.”

I shook my head. “But that’s just it. I don’tneedanything you can give me. What I want isn’t possible, but thank you. You caring means more to me than I can ever describe, but I’ll find a way to forge my own path with this new life I’ve been given.”

I looked down slightly, still reeling that we hadn’t come to any sort of resolution or agreement for what he would do with me. The fact remained that I knew their secrets. The DarkRaider’s worry that a Mistvale fairy could pry those secrets from me still loomed. In all likelihood, I would forever be tethered to the crown prince. But still, I wouldn’t demand things of him he couldn’t willingly give. And he could certainly never give himself to me.

“You don’t owe me anything, Jax.”

His breath stopped, and his entire body turned to stone. A moment passed and then another before he rasped, “I do. Because of you, we know that my brother was here recently. If you hadn’t gone to the Veiled Between for me, my search for him would still be entirely lost.”

“You’ll find him. I know you will.”

His expression wiped clean, and it wasn’t lost on me that I hadn’t saidwe’ll find him. I opened my mouth to correct myself, but Jax gave a brief nod, and then he turned.

He entered the bathing chambers and closed the door behind him, and it felt as if something inside of me died.

Heart feeling heavy, I shuffled away from the bathroom and removed my bulky sweater and breeches. Wearing only my underthings, I slipped under the sheets. I pulled the covers up until they met my chin. Since the lights were already out, I turned on my side to gaze out the window at the three moons.

A moment later, the door opened and closed behind me, but I didn’t turn. I didn’t make a sound. Rustling came from near the couch, and then the furniture creaked when the prince settled his heavy weight onto it.

Tension bled through the air until it congealed into a mass so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife. Yet neither of us said a thing.

Eventually, the pull of sleep became irresistible. Closing my eyes, I knew that no matter what tomorrow brought, I needed to stop these ridiculous reactions I was having for my former captor. He and I led two separate lives. As my guardian hadpointed out to me time and time again, I was a lorafin. I was to be feared and revered, yet I would always be different.

And as Saramel had told me, and the queen had not so subtly hinted at by having all of the approved females on the royal ship when we’d ventured here, the prince was to marry a female of noble breeding next summer. A female that could never be me.

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