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“I think that whatever you were hoping to do with this information,” he says casually, “whatever blackmail you were planning, it is over now.”
I thought my stomach had already sunk as low as it could, but it still manages to drop further. “What?”
He stands up straight, and his face is like stone. “I thank you for telling me now, at least, so that Asili’s future can be secured with me. You have given up whatever game you were playing for his safety and comfort, showing at least a modicum of common decency, and for this reason I’ll drop the matter here. Provided that you don’t attempt to take this any further, the two of us may end this with neutrality, and I will allow you safe passage off my sphere.”
Tears spring to my eyes as he talks, and I squeeze the pillow harder and harder against my chest. “Vahadr, why…why would you think that I’d want to hurt you?” My voice comes out thick as I struggle to hold my tears at bay, and I see the faintest flicker of emotion behind his gaze.
He blinks and takes a perfectly precise breath in—not too sharp and not too slow. “How long have you known about Asili’s true parentage?”
I look away from the guilt of how long it’s taken me to tell him, but—
“You hesitate,” he says, and the shutters come back down over his eyes.
“No, you don’t understand, I didn’t know from the st—”
“You hesitate,” he repeats, and his voice has grown even colder as he dumps my clothing on the bed before me. “I will need you to remove yourself from my dwelling within an hour. I’ll inform the staff to help you pack. Be off my sphere in one week.”
“No,” I whisper, and then I leap up from the bed as he turns away, snagging his fingers in one of my hands as the other clutches the pillow to me like a safety blanket. “Stop!”
And he does stop, extricating my grasp from his rather painstakingly as he turns back, as if my hand is something filled with germs. “Yes?”
“I tr—I tried to tell you,” I gasp, and I can’t stop the tears from pouring out of my eyes because everything is spiraling out of control so quickly. How did this even happen? “I wanted to tell you earlier, I tried several times, but—”
“There have been so many possible occasions for you to tell me that I could not even count them,” he says without inflection. “Evidently, you did not try hard enough.”
“Vahadr.” I take a step towards him, and he takes a calm one back.
“No,” he continues, “instead, you continued to hold out for whatever it was you were planning, gathering as many resources from me as you could in the meantime.”
“Resources?” I sputter, and this time I’m the one who takes a step back from him. “You mean your gifts, which I never asked for, which you kept forcing on me?” I can feel something bubbling up in my chest—disbelief, anger, shock, grief—I don’t know. “You can’t lay that on me! I didn’t ask for gifts! How many times did I tell you not to?”
“And yet you took them.” He remains emotionless, but somehow, the way his voice quietens gives him a more dangerous edge. “Time and time again, you put up a token resistance before accepting my wealth—”
“I was accepting your sentiment, Vahadr! You said you wanted to make me happy! You said you wanted to. How could I reject that without rejecting you? I don’t want your things, I want you!”
“Spare me,” he almost hisses and turns away. “Put some clothes on and get out of my home.”
“Vahadr, stop.” I drop my pillow and move to block him before he can walk out. Again, he stops when I ask him to, and his gaze drops seemingly against his will to draw down along my body, before he frowns minutely.
“Look at me.” I take a final step towards him, my toes almost touching his. He looks back, and it seems as if he tilts slightly down, slightly closer to me. The hand by his side twitches forward, almost brushing against my skin, but his face is so blank, so emotionless, so…so nothing.
I can feel the hot marks of my tears still tracking down my cheeks, but I ignore them. “Vahadr, I don’t have an agenda, I promise you. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted, the only man who’s ever touched me, and I think…I think I might lo—”
“Don’t,” he whispers, and he closes his eyes. “Don’t be cruel.”
“I’m not.” But when I touch my fingers to the back of his hand, his eyes snap open and he moves abruptly away.
“Do you see this?” he asks quietly, flicking open his shirt so that the amber glow of his chest is displayed. “All Zvezdi, male and female alike, have luminescence over their hearts that match the color of their irises. The only time this changes is when a true mating bond has been triggered so that others know the individual is not available for partnership. Do you understand what that means?”
I feel my brows draw together as I glance between his face and his chest.
Does this… Is he saying that he…?
“It means that I am indeed a stupid and emotional male.” He flicks his shirt closed again, drags his eyes across me one more time, and then turns away. “Do not be cruel to me, Analina. You have done enough.”
And he walks out.
