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“I do not care if I am exiled so long as I can take you with me.”
“Oh, come on! They’d never allow that and you know it! They barely even let a male take a female who isn’t his mate two steps out of the settlement in the Sea Sands! They’d kill you before you could even have a hope of taking me anywhere. And I don’t want to abandon my human friends. They’re all I have left of my old world.”
“You do not need anything from your old world,” I told her, my words coming out hard so that they wouldn’t come out sounding hurt. “You have me.”
“You’re the one who talks about missing his homeland,” she shot back, “and you have family there! Are you telling me you would throw that all away, never see those hills, those flowers, or your uncle again? Just for me?”
“That is exactly what I am telling you,” I answered plainly.
It would hurt, and it would no doubt be dangerous, but I would do it. I would take her out of our old lives and together, from the scars of what we’d left behind, we would build a new one.
But she was already moving further and further away from me. Literally. Taking small steps backwards and putting more space between us. But I did not need space, did not want it, and I collapsed the distance between us with ground-eating strides because perhaps if I could simply get close enough to her again then maybe she’d come back to me.
I reached for her.
But I snapped my claws closed around nothing but empty air, my back straightening. We were no longer alone. Footsteps entered the cave beyond, followed by Valeria’s voice.
“Fiona? Are you here? We’re looking for Dalk and Oxriel said he saw you two together earlier.”
I remained silent, my sight stars begging her not to speak. Not to let them know we were here. I had the helpless feeling that if she turned fully away from me now then I would never get her back.
“We’re in here,” she said.
And then she turned her back on me.
Valeria entered the cave, followed closely by Grim. She seemed slightly surprised to see us alone together in here, but she did not say anything about it.
She nodded at Fiona then turned her attention to me.
“Dalk,” she said brusquely, “I’ve had a message from Chapman and Fallo back at the settlement.” She spoke as she usually did, quickly and efficiently, but there was a grimness to her tone and a probing sadness in her eyes that made my guts heavy with sudden dread. This would be so much easier if Fiona were beside me... She had turned around to face me again, but she did not move closer.
“What is it?” I snapped, claws flexing and tail thrashing with impatience.
“It’s your uncle. Taraken,” Valeria replied gravely.
I stilled.
She did not need to tell me the rest of it. The way a man knows he will fall the moment before his foot lands wrong, I knew. I knew it so suddenly and with such certainty that when Valeria finally did say it, her voice trailed ever so slightly behind the one inside my own head.
“He’s dying.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fiona
As if this moment couldn’t get any worse...
I’d already made what had started out happy into something miserable by hitting Dalk with all my worries for the future and insecurities. And now, something even worse had happened. Dalk’s uncle, the man who had taught him how to throw a spear and who had raised him like a father, was now dying.
Dalk showed no outward sign of emotion. His face was stony with resignation, and it broke my fucking heart wide open. It made me want to go to him. To hug him. To say his name and make him look at me.
But maybe I didn’t deserve to do that now. Guilt tightened, thorny like a vine. I still believed the conversation we’d started needed to be had, but maybe I could have waited. Maybe I didn’t have to have brought it up now, tonight, so soon after this new thing between us had begun.
But I had started that conversation tonight. When he’d looked at me like he loved me, desperate and tender and telling me that he wanted me forever, I had become suddenly terrified. Not of him, or of that future...
But terrified at the thought we might not get it.
And that fear drove me away from him. Made me hurl questions and scenarios at him like dozens of Deep Sky arrows. I could have been loving on him up until this terrible moment. But instead I’d questioned him and put him on edge. I’d made everything worse, and then the actual worst had strolled right in behind me to finish everything off.
