Page 49 of Shadow Weaver
The man that had raised me hadn’t even bothered getting in touch, and no doubt the news of my heritage would have made it to his ears by now. I wonder if I’d been cut off yet. I wondered if my mother had been cut off, but these were fleeting thoughts. Not stuff I cared about.
“How is the troop treating you?” Payne asked. “I spoke to Hyde briefly a week ago, and he mentioned you were integrating well.”
Hyde’s name brought heat to my face. “Yeah. They’re good. Things are good.”
Payne frowned. “Are you blushing?” His brows shot up. “Ah, I see. There’s someone you like in the troop.”
Harmon had been my go-to guy for matters of the heart. My eyes pricked and heated.
“Indigo?” Payne leaned forward and placed a hand on my knee. “Look at me.”
Fuck. I blinked away the tears and met his eyes. “I’m fine. I can handle it.”
“This isn’t just about Harmon, is it?”
I blew out a breath. “No. I seem to have gotten myself into a situation.”
“Go on,” he prompted.
Shit, how to say this? Should I even be talking about this?
“Indigo, you can tell me anything,” Payne said. “I would never judge you.”
I blew out a sharp breath. “I have feelings for two guys.”
“Oh.” He sat back and studied me.
I winced and ran a hand over my face. “Yeah, it’s a pickle.”
“And dotheyhave feelings foryou?”
“Yes. No. I mean, it’s complicated.”
He chuckled softly. “Relationships tend to be.”
“Especially when you can’t pick who it is you want more. Especially when you’re a nightblood and the guys you have feelings for aren’t.”
“But you’re not a nightblood,” Payne said. “And you’re not a weaver. You’re something new. Those rules don’t apply to you. At least they shouldn’t.” He leaned in. “So, why choose?”
It sounded so easy when he put it that way, but … “Because that’s how it’s done.”
His eyes crinkled in amusement. “I suppose it will come as a shock to you to know that the female to male ratio in the weaver community is one to three. Female weavers have been taking three or more lovers for decades.”
“What?”
“Yes. The weaver bloodlines are all about the next generation, and the women tend to be very fertile. The males not so much, and then you have the defectives, like me.” He said it good-naturedly, but there was no missing the flash of pain in his eyes. “We’re prohibited from entering into any relationships within the weaver community at the risk of passing on the defective gene.”
The weaver community kept to themselves. They had their own little ecosystem, even here at the Academy, so this was all news to me.
Payne shrugged. “You make your own rules, Indigo. Love who you want as long as they’re happy to share your love.”
I snorted. “A novel idea, but I doubt either of these guys is the sharing type.”
He sipped his coffee. “Their loss then. The problem most of the younger generation of supernaturals today have is that they watch way too many human shows. They’re mimicking human cultural norms. Nightbloods may take a mate, but they are liberal in their sexual activities. Moonkissed often take more than one mate, and I’ve already explained how weavers work.”
The turmoil in my chest eased a little. “And what about the feybloods?”
“Most feybloods are pretty liberal when it comes to relationships, but they are sticklers for commitment.”
