Page 73 of Heartsong
His lip peeled back in a show of disgust. “Yes, I could tell. With your headaches hardly managed and your sad meals.Iwould take care of you, my Anna, if you’d only let me.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of.” Which was good, because she never had been.
Frey snorted, the sound full of derision and frustration. “Fine. Iwantto take care of you. As a mate should. But you won’t allow it. You insist on doing everything yourself, taking no help. You entrust me with nothing important. Never you.”
She shook her head, wincing when a stab of pain lanced from her brow to the back of her head. The harshness to Frey’s face faded as he watched while she rubbed a circle in her temple. He stepped toward her, expression softening, but she held her hand up to keep him back.
“I never asked for this. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I don’t know what happened, it just…happened.”
“Because you are my heartsong,” he said, voice gentler but still low and firm.
Anna sighed. “Frey, I’m not your soulmate. I’m just Anna. Nothing special. I’m not what you need me to be.”
“You are you, Anna. That is enough.”
“That’s not true!” she cried, tears spilling across her fingers. “If it was, the curse would be broken.”
A dissatisfied rumble emanated from his chest. Again Frey tried to approach and again Anna repelled him with a hand.
“Anna…”
“No. This has to stop, okay?” She rubbed circles into her head in time with her words, the tears coming faster than she could wipe them away. “Whatever this is, it has to stop. It’s too much. It’s—I can’t, I can’t.”
“Anna,” he groaned, the sound like she had her hand wrapped around his beating heart and squeezed the very life from it. “Anna, let me help. Let me be your mate.”
“You’ve done enough today.” She shook her head again and backed away blindly. “You want a mate, Frey. You don’t wantme.”
Why would he?What was she? What did she offer?
Nothing.
“I wantyou. Anna.” Big hands finally caught her by the shoulders, bringing her to a halt. She could hardly see him through the fog and tears, but she could feel his words when he said, “Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me that, and I will leave you.”
Her heart clenched more painfully than even her head.
I can’t I can’t I can’t.
All she could do was what she always did. Run.
“I have to go,” she said, breaking from his hold. She was probably already too far gone for even a shot, and if she stayed here any longer with him, she knew she’d break. “Just…just leave me alone, Frey.”
And she stumbled away, finally catching the concrete path and following it out of the park. She could hardly hear anything above the pounding of her head, but when she looked over her shoulder, she saw only fog and the eerie outline of trees.
Numb with pain, she left him behind.
With her phone map, Anna managed to get to a populated street and call a cab. It didn’t matter the cost, she had to get home.
She had to get back to her real life.
Even if, over the pain of her head and the absolute terror of knowing someone wanted to be with her, she’d left her heart with him there in that park.
Frey let her go. It went against every instinct, every belief. The weight of his kin’s disappointment bore down on him until he could hardly breathe.
Still, he did not follow her.
Whatever bond had managed to build between them hung by a thread, and Frey stood on, waiting for the stone sleep to take him back. He almost wished for it.
But the fog continued to roll through the grassy land, illuminated eerily by evenly spaced lampposts. The thickness of it brushed against his skin with a damp chill, and Frey numbly wrapped his wings about his shoulders.
