Page 16 of The Bound Mage
Chapter
Five
Loren stoodon the balcony of his bedroom, staring out at the mist. It rose over the walls, wrapping the entire castle in its oppressive embrace. It clung to his skin, cold and damp. But the chill did nothing to soothe the anger that still burned in his veins. Not at Araya. Not even at Eloria—but at himself.
“Well that was an absolute disaster.” The air beside him rippled as Eloria shed the illusion she’d cloaked herself in. “Storming off—very mature.”
“As mature as you going behind my back after I explicitly told you to leave her alone?” Loren glared at her. “You were going to tell her about the bond! She isn’t some doll for you to play dress-up with—I don’t want her involved in any of this. Just leave heralone.”
“As regent, I can’t do that.” Eloria leaned against the railing beside him, her voice as cold as the wind that stirred the shifting mist. “Until you’re ready to step up and start acting like the king you were meant to be, it’s onmeto make sure our people survive. If she needs to accept the mate bond for you to gain control over your magic then that’s what she has to do. I won’t let them suffer just because you’re too paralyzed with guilt to even share a meal with your own mate.”
Loren clenched his jaw, the words he longed to throw back at her souring on his tongue. She was right. She was the one who had been here, leading their people. All he’d ever done for them was bleed.
“I don’t want to force her,” he said finally. “Don’t you think she’s suffered enough?”
Eloria sighed, the accusation draining from her face. She leaned against the railing beside him, looking down at the skeletal remains of their mother’s once lush garden. “I object to your characterization of being mated to you assuffering.” She knocked her shoulder against his. “Any fool can see you care about her, Loren. Why are you making this so difficult?”
“It’s not that easy.”
Of course he cared about her. But that didn’t change the simple truth that she deserved a chance at freedom—truefreedom. The chance to make a choice, to live the life she wanted. But instead, she was cursed with him—the mate bond between them nothing but another chain.
“Itisthat easy,” Eloria insisted. “You aren’t in that cell anymore. Your mate is here. She’s safe—because of you. If you’d just stop pushing her away?—”
“And what do you think I should say to her, El?” Loren asked bitterly. “That I tied her to me without her consent? That if she goes back to the only home she’s ever known they’ll torture her—because of me?The last thing she needs is another male controlling her—acting like he is entitled to her power and her body. Being bonded to me is no better than being chained to Jaxon Shaw.”
“I don’t understand how you can possibly believe that.” Eloria scowled at him, her shoulder bumping his. “You’renothinglike him, Loren. Do you think he ever felt a fraction of the guilt you’re drowning in?”
Loren didn’t answer.
Eloria shook her head, straightening as she tugged the threads of her illusion back into place, aether twisting and bending around her. But her voice lingered, drifting through the darkness long after her form had dissolved.
“There’s too much at stake here to just let her go without trying, Loren,” she warned. “You’ve already claimed her—now talk to her. And if I were you, I’d start with an apology.”
Loren stood there a long time after she’d vanished, his hands aching where they clenched around cold, unyielding stone. Far below, brittle, bone-white branches twisted in the wind, cutting the mist into strange shapes—like bits and pieces of nightmares brought to life.
But Eloria’s words churned in his mind, a splinter he couldn’t dislodge. She acted like she hadn’t been standing in the same room when his shadows ripped free of his control. Loren would never forget the way Galen had thrown himself between them, ready to die to protect his mate. Any other time, Loren was certain the shadows would have obliged him. After all, they had already tried to kill Eloria once, and he’d been powerless to stop them.
But tonight, nothing could have shaken their focus from the infuriating female he’d bound them both to. Loren could still feel the warmth of her skin beneath his fingers, the bright flare of her defiance as she’d stared him down.
She should have run screaming from the room. Any sane female would have. He could have hurt her. He could havekilledher. But Araya hadn’t flinched. Not even when the shadows wrapped themselves around her throat, licking over her skin like flames.
Never hurt, the shadows hissed, their whispers curling around him like smoke.She is yours. Ours. Ours to protect. To keep.
“You wrapped around her neck like a noose,” Loren hissed. “You’re starving our people, twisting the animals here into monsters—if that’s how you protectushow can I trust you to protect her?”
Not us,the shadows whispered, their voices splitting and overlapping in a chaotic chorus of confused echoes.Not us. Not us.
They crawled up his legs, wrapping around his arms and twisting threads of dark silk around his heart. The bond stirred in answer, an aching, primal pull that anchored itself behind his breastbone, digging in like claws.
It didn’t matter that she was perfectly safe inside these walls. It didn’t matter that he could feel her at the other end of it—angry, but unafraid. The bond still howled, demanding that he see her safe with his own eyes.
Loren snarled, slamming his hands into the railing. Stone cracked beneath his palms, pain lancing through his hands. But it did nothing to muffle the agony as the bond tore at his sanity, digging sharp claws into his heart.
Ours, the shadows whispered, their voices rising.Ours. Ours. Ours. Ours?—
Loren’s head pounded, their words beating against the inside of his skull as the shadows pressing in around him on all sides. Coiling around his ribs, his throat, his legs—winding tighter with every ragged breath as they screamed at him to go to her.
“You can’t make her accept us,” he ground out, his breath short. “Even if we tell her, she could still reject us.”
