Page 57 of A Sword of Ice
“You’re lying,” he accused, stepping close to her and gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, pulling her gaze to his. “Tell me.”
So much had changed. It was a thought that overpowered her as she looked up at her mate. They’d started out hating each other and now… what they had wasn’t quite love exactly. It didn’t even feel close enough to be that. But there was a certain admiration and honesty between them that she couldn’t deny.
“Everything is different,” she confessed. Telling the truth should have felt liberating, like a heavy weight lifted from her chest. Instead it just felt suffocating, like the weight of the truth was becoming even more confining. “She is different. I wasn’t sure what to expect but she’s so strong and everyone… you all praise her for it while I was condemned for what I thought was my own strength.”
Ryker’s nostrils flared and he sucked in a breath. “Shula.” There was a silent plea in his voice as well as a berating tone. She forced herself to look away again, but all he did was growl and pull her gaze back to him, a quiet command between the two.
Eyes on me.
Like he was quietly protecting her from something. Like he had so many months ago while they witnessed the crueler hands of the Fae torturing a human that had helped kill Orna. He was always trying to protect her in little ways. Healing her wounds, pulling her gaze away from an image that would otherwise be branded into her soul.
But he could never protect her from the cruel truth of herself.
“She’s amazing. She’s brave. She’s tough.”Everything you accused me of not being.She didn’t say those words aloud, but she was sure he felt them somewhere down the bond of their mating mark.
“You will be too,” he interrupted.
Those words were like a knife to her chest.You will be. Will.Because she wasn’t brave or tough or amazing. If she wasn’t those things, then what was she besides a burden they had to train? Someone who until recently had been too human, too afraid of her own magic and true self.
She’d hid in the shadows to survive, had fled from fights, had denied herself. She was everything they abhorred in a Fae and they’d always told her so. Now she was with them, trying to leave that behind and fit into something else that wasn’t quite right, either. Even if she wanted to be one of them, like a burning need inside her, they would always remember her as what she had been.
Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes, and she registered a brief flash of panic in Ryker.
She wanted to lash out at him, push him away like she always did. But she was trying to leave that scared, partly human girl behind her. “I don’t want or need to hear that right now, Ryker,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Then what do youneedto hear?” He said it in such a way that let her know he genuinely wanted the answer to that. Maybe he felt her distress. As her mate, as herbondedmate, he would sense those things, her inner turmoil.
And his instincts wanted to make it better.
But she couldn’t just give him all the answers. It was like he was asking her how to help fix her when she didn’t even know the answer to that herself.
“I don’t know.” She turned away from him and it broke her heart because it was the truth. She wished someone could help her. Wished someone could tell her what she was supposed to do, how to be stronger and not the coward they all so obviously thought she was. She wanted that with a fire that burned inside.
“Shula… I will do anything for you. Tell me what to do.” His timbre was a low growl.
“What could you do?” Her eyebrows rose. “Heal me? Protect me?” She paused, tilting her head to the side. “Love me as I am?”
His eyes flashed and his mouth dropped open, but nothing came out.
Yeah, she thought.Didn’t think so.
“Do you think we rushed into this?” Her finger slid over the crescent shaped mark on her neck. Touching it left her feeling sensitive, weightless, and a spike of desire shot through her that she quickly tamped down. There was a certain artistry in the scars they both wielded that spoke of so many things that she was almost too afraid to voice.
“What do you mean?” The words were all but a growl, his expression angry, but deep in her chest, in her soul where the bond was nestled, she felt a rising flare of panic not her own.
“Maybe we should have waited for this.” She gestured at the bite, between them, voicing the pain. “Maybe… maybe we aren’t right for one another and it was just a moment of selfish weakness for the both of us.”
His anger spiked. It made her magic swell, but she smothered it. She didn’t want him pissed, and she didn’t want to hurt him, either. He was her mate, but he shouldn’t be burdened with fixing her, just like she shouldn’t be the one giving him the answers on how. Just like he should care for her because of who she was and not who he wished she would be. Because that pressure? It built inside her chest like an ache, and all she wanted to do was please him and everyone else. But she was losing herself in it, and there was no way out.
“Is that what you feel?” he gritted out tightly.
Shula’s shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s be honest, Ryker, we don’t reallyloveeach other. We hardly know each other and what we do know has been all fighting and hatred. Maybe Mana is wrong and we aren’t meant to be mates. Maybe we’re just wrong for each other.”
His rage was a storm inside her chest and she tried to pick it apart, to separate it from her own confusing emotions so they weren’t tangled in the same, messy web. She wanted to feel what she needed to feel, not his own emotions, not his rage or panic or betrayal. But even while she picked apart the threads of their feelings, he seemed to latch on, surging inside her so he could feel her own confusion and helplessness.
His eyes narrowed. And she could feel every battle waging between them. His instinct screamed at him to grab her. Maybe a part of her wanted that. To be held and cherished, to be told that she was just as brave and amazing as anyone else.
But Ryker was never one to hold to false promises and hope. His every word had always been honest and brutal, and this was no different just because she was his mate.
