Page 44 of Sold Rejected Mate
“I healed an apple,” I admit, staring at the sandwich in my hand. “And then I healed you.”
“Have you still been getting headaches?”
“I mean, it hasn’t been that long, but no. I haven’t—well, I haven’t had one since I got back to Silverville. I think at first, I was so emptied out from the fire at the motel. Then, by the time it started to come back, there was the daemon fire at your place. Which—I guess I never said thank you, actually. For saving my life. For the third time.”
Lachlan’s brows pull together slightly, and I stare at the reflection of myself in his sunglasses, feeling the weight of his gaze even though I can’t see his eyes.
“Valerie,” he says, sitting forward and wrapping his arms around his knees. “When I saw you fall into that pool…” He trailsoff for a moment, looking out over the valley, the town, before returning his gaze to mine. “I would have died for you.”
“I know, but I don’t want you to, Lachlan—”
“The worst thing I’ve ever done was driving away and leaving you on that ridge. I’ve regretted it every second of my life. I’d happily pay the penance of death if it meant you got to be happy. Got to live.”
I watch a hawk circling lazily overhead as he talks, and I remember him dragging me out of that pool. How he ignored his own injuries, asked about me with his first breath.
The words are on the tip of my tongue. Three of them, short but powerful.
But I can’t help myself from thinking about the last time I tried to say them, the last time I tried to tell Lachlan that I loved him. On this very ridge.
So I swallow them down.
I’m going to stay. Going to try to make this work. I’ll go on a million picnics with him to try to wash out those bad memories.
I can only hope that I won’t have to live with those words stuck in my head, painting every interaction with him as we try to make this thing work.
Chapter 22 - Lachlan
Even though it practically kills me, I climb out of my bed—ourbed—and leave Valerie still sleeping while I get ready to meet Xeran. The carpenters and glass guys made quick work of the house, returning it to its original state, though they couldn’t completely get the stink out from the fire.
Today, we’re walking through the sites of the fires from the past two weeks—the ones scattered in every cardinal direction around town—looking for something. Evidence, patterns. Anything that we could possibly use to make the fires less frequent and further protect the area from them. We’ll be respraying the trees that survived with the flame retardant, trying to improve their defenses.
“Gods, is there a reason this shit can’t smell more pleasant?” Felix asks, grabbing his mask from his bag and pulling it down over his face. He’s always had a particularly strong sense of smell, and that means the strong, acrid bite of sulfur and ash tends to get to him more.
“Probably because it’s from hell,” Xeran mutters, stepping over a charred log. We’re in a pine grove in the mountains on the far east side of town, our boots crunching over a carpet of silver dust that sparkles in the sunlight through the remaining leaves.
Probably because it’s from hell.
As we walk through the fire-ravaged forest, I think about that figure I saw dancing in the flames. Or that IthoughtI saw. I watch Xeran as he makes his way up ahead of me, and wonder if I should say anything about it.
Xeran stops, and we stare at a cluster of trees that’s somehow survived the latest fire. The bark is scorched black onone side, but green needles still cling to the branches on the other, as if the fire changed its mind mid-burn.
As if it lost its motivation when it realized we’d treated the trees, protected them against its blaze.
I decide that if I see that figure again, I’ll know it was real. And I’ll tell the supreme about it then.
The contrast in this forest is jarring, like someone took a blowtorch to half a painting and left the other section untouched, vibrant. A bird flits from the blackened skeleton of a tree to its full, healthy neighbor. The blackened pine is nothing more than a charcoal skeleton, and the forest is littered with plenty of other corpses like it.
Here, the smell is stronger, but there’s something else in the air. A familiar scent that I can’t quite catch. Felix is practically vibrating beside me as he pulls down his mask and tips his head to the sky.
“You smell that?” he asks, looking at me.
“Kind of,” I admit. “Hard to catch through the sulfur.”
“It’s…” He pauses, takes a deep breath, wrinkles his nose against the smell. “Like—fuck, this is annoying. I can’t fully make it out, but it smells like…something from being a kid.”
“From being a kid?”
“What are you guys doing?” Xeran asks, crunching through the ash. “Did you find something?”
