Maeve
“What did you say?” My mouth goes painfully dry. I try to swallow but fail, humming a choked sob as I search his eyes for understanding.
The four feet of distance between feels like an ocean when he balls his hands into fists at his sides, widening his stance like he’s preparing for battle, and maybe he is. I can feel my own power prickling over my skin as it stands.
“You’re my mate, Maeve.”
I imagine this is what it feels like to be stabbed in the heart. I clutch the corner poster of my bed for support as I sink onto the mattress, overcome by… a sudden, overwhelming understanding that makes the last nine months make absolute sense.
This whole time.
All of these feelings–this insane, otherworldly heartbreak…
“How long?” I ask, unable to look him in the eyes. “How long have you known?”
“Since the morning after you danced on that table at the hotel in the Highlands,” he admits, his voice level and deep, like he’s holding back whatever he’s feeling. “I nearly–”
“You almost marked me,” I say under my breath, finishing his thought. I remember that morning clearly, like I’m back in that room right now, watching him fighting for his life while he yelled at me to go shower, to wash off that scent. “You–you kept your distance from me the entire walk back into the Roguelands.”
“I wasn’t sure what was happening until we–until I realized we’d been spotted and followed.” He moves through the dark, his body casting mine in shadow as he sinks onto the edge of the mattress beside me with a soft groan.
I look at him then, taking in the expression sharpening in the planes of his face. I always forget how young he is. He’d be… twenty-seven now, I suppose. I don’t even know his birthday, but he’s lived what seems like a dozen lives compared to my single one.
Those lives show when he scrubs a hand over his face and turns ever so slightly to look at me.
“I want to know everything,” I tell him, and he nods.
“I know.”
“You–you knew this whole time, and you didn’t–”
“You can’t feel it like I can, Maeve.”
“What makes you think this has been easier on me?” I whisper, unable to raise my voice like I want to. How often have I lain in this very bed, alone, talking myself out of scaling the castle walls to scream my despair from the rooftops, praying he could hear me? Find me? Save me from this torment? How often have I wanted to claw out my own heart and inspect it for Soren’s brand, like he laid claim to it, forcing me to forever carry the weight of my feelings when he was so, so out of reach?
I feel it, too, I realize, and it's… shocking. I rub my upper chest on impulse, trying to feel the strings binding us, but it’s… faint. A taste of what it could be if I had more shifter blood, I suppose.
It’s still completely overwhelming.
I steal a glance at him, and I see the pain he’s been wearing since he came here, waiting for me, likely stealing his way into the castle to get to me, and realize it has nothing to do with his arm.
He was coming back for the mate he forced himself to leave behind.
“I realized we were being followed,” he begins, “shortly after we dropped back into the Roguelands. I took us down that old road knowing it was going to be difficult for them to maneuver into that ghost town in their wolf forms. The whole time I was thinking that I… that I couldn’t keep you safe, that I’d die there, protecting you, if it meant you’d be able to get home. That’s when I really knew that you were my mate. I was going to die to ensure you got home, when just a few days before I… I was begging the Goddess to take you away somehow.”
I choke back a laugh, but Soren isn’t laughing. He’s entirely serious as he glares at my obvious attempt to rein myself in and then rolls his eyes to the windows with a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. “Go on.”
“This isn’t funny to me.”
“I know. I also know that you really hated me for a while.”
“I never hated you.” He breathes, glancing in my direction. “I hate that I–” He cuts himself off abruptly and takes several heartbeats worth of a pause before continuing, “I hated that I wanted you, Maeve. From the moment you absolutely beat my ass in my old apartment, I wanted you. I was curious about you from the beginning.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I say nothing, folding my hands over my belly instead. He shifts his weight, his thigh brushing mine as we stare out the windows at the falling snow for several long, silent seconds.
“You shifted for the first time in years that day, in the village.”
“Yeah,” he answers with a nod.
“Is that when it snapped into place?”
“No. Well, I guess, yeah. It did.” He chews his lower lip, closing his eyes as if summoning the fine details of the memory. “In the hotel, that morning, when you slid out of bed, and I could smell you over the blood… that nearly did me in, as you remember. I was out of my mind. Then, in the village, when I shifted and saw you getting dragged away, I honestly blacked out. There was nothing in my head but ripping the Hound off you, off my mate. So, I did, and I took you inside.”
“And I kissed you.” I look at him, my heart beginning to beat out of rhythm.
“And you kissed me, and my mind went blank save for me… claiming you.” He runs his hand over his face like the memory is suddenly too much to bear. “I was so hard on you–”
“I liked it–”
“It doesn’t matter, Maeve, and that’s what I’m trying to say right now. I didn’t have control over my wolf at all that night. I wanted you, badly. Fucking desperately, and that had nothing to do with being able to shift again, but you were my mate, and that part of me was desperate to keep you. But I still put you on that train and sent you home. I had to. I saw no other way to keep you other than sending you back because I’m not–I’m not the kind of guy you need. I’m not someone who can stand by your side while you rule. Stuffing me in a tailored suit wouldn’t have changed who I am and what I’ve done. Your family would have found out who I really was eventually. Your public would be curious, and it would have been just a matter of time until the truth came out, and where would that leave you? Dealing with very public fallout, Maeve.”
“It wasn’t just your decision to make for the both of us.”
“I did what I had to do. I made sure you made it back to Moonrise safely. I kept tabs on you. I made sure you weren’t followed during your grand tour, or whatever the hell the media called it, and kept the Viper busy while you were out in her domain. I gave us a clean break so you could fucking live your life as queen–”
“You sent tea to the castle.”
Soren closes his eyes with a sigh.
“The night of my coronation and the Rite… you sent tea to the castle. You had it delivered to Jane. You said–you–” My eyes fill with tears.
“You never needed that necklace,” he finishes, his voice a soft whisper. “I remember.”
“This whole time you’ve been… you’ve just been making sure I was safe? But you knew I was. I have guards, Soren. I have my powers–”
“I couldn’t fucking sleep, Maeve. For months. I just… I wanted to feel close to you somehow.” He picks at his shirt, his hand directly over his heart as he watches the snow falling in dizzying silver sheets beyond the frosted glass.
Soren and I are alike in so many ways. This is terribly hard for him… talking about how he feels. Putting those feelings into words… I know because the past months have been impossible for me to describe.
I buried it, just like he buried our bond. It ate me alive, just like it’s eating him alive now.
“Why did you come back?” I ask, knowing the conversation could go two ways. He’ll pull a stunt, rejecting me, telling me it’s what’s best for us, or… I wince, looking down at my hands.
“Enough time passed that I felt it was safe for me to go to Twin Rivers to pay the debts we owed. Patton didn’t want me to. He stayed behind, but I wanted out, officially. Your tour of Eastonia and the summit in Crescent Falls kept the Viper busy. She couldn’t move contraband like she normally does, and I figured she wouldn’t fuss when I gave her what I owed her, but… it didn’t go as planned.”
He pauses, and I wait for him to resume.
“She… told me I had another mark, that she couldn’t let me go yet, and when I refused, I was held down, and she made another band. I found out… I found out about the baby then. The news had gone public. I went back to the safe house and…”
“Nearly cut off your arm?”
He rolls his lower lip between his teeth, casting me a narrow-eyed glance. “She made this band tighter than the last.”
“Would you have… would you have come back regardless if I was pregnant or not?”
He looks toward the window, his eyes shadowed by the lamplight. Beyond the frosted glass, the first inklings of morning light are starting to fade into view.
“I don’t know how to do this, Maeve,” he replies under his breath. “I don’t know how to be with someone. I don’t want to hurt you.” His eyes meet mine. “I don’t know how to be a mate, or a father, fuck, I…”
I reach for him, placing my hand on his thigh. His fingers absently find mine. “Would you have come back for me?” I ask again, my heart on the verge of shattering. Shattering for him–and for us. Shattering for the little boy who used to get in fights, who had a future given to him then ripped out from underneath him, and the man he was forced to become.
“I’ve been coming back here from the beginning,” he says with great effort. “Going to the tea shop, sitting on a roof wondering what you were up to.”
My lower lip quivers.
“I came back,” he says, turning to me, “and broke into the castle–easily, I should add–because I couldn’t fucking take it anymore, and I wasn’t going to leave you alone with our baby. And now you have to go–”
“Listen,” I interrupt, clutching his face. “I can deal with the Viper, all right? I’m not going to go hide in Veiled Valley. But the second you set foot in Veiled Valley dragging me back there, my dad is going to kill you while my grandfather watches. We’re safest here.”
“You’re not understanding–”
“I don’t need you to protect me. I should be protecting you–”
“That is not how this is going to work.”
“Because you’re a man? Because you’ve spent your life fighting to keep it? I can’t–what you’ve been through, Soren, is terrible. It’s horrific. I think about it all the time, and I don’t–I can’t let you go back to it. I won’t.”
He smooths a hand over my cheek.
“You’re not afraid of me and what I can do, but you should be,” I say in a near whisper. “You don’t understand what I’m actually capable of. My powers aren’t even fully mature yet and won’t be until she’s born. I could wipe out the entire kingdom with a snap of my fingers if I willed it. I am not afraid of Hannibal or the Viper. I’m afraid of losing you…” I meet his eyes.
He just… stares at me, searching my eyes for understanding, like he can’t place the feelings ricocheting through his chest. For the thousandth time, I remember this man, this good, honest, devoted man grew up thinking he was a plague to society. That everything he needed came with the price of violence, paid in blood. A man who was beaten and abused as a child. A man whose worth was decided by how hard he could fight and how much pain he could tolerate before bending, and he never bent.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Soren blinks, pulling away from me just a touch, and looks momentarily confused. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out as he runs his fingers through his hair then scrubs his hand over his face, his freshly shaven jaw, like he did his best to look… nice for me. “No one has ever said that to me before.”
“I know,” I bite out, fighting against another torrent of tears.
Silence fills the space between us. I let it, letting the truth of my feelings sink in, telling myself I won’t be heartsick if he can’t say them back because the fact that he’s here is enough.
Soren reaches for me but flinches, drawing in a sharp breath as blood seeps into the bandage. I rise, wiping my eyes, and hurry to where I left the healing draft on my dresser, but he shakes his head. “I’m not taking any more of that.”
“It’ll stop the bleeding!”
“It’ll put me to sleep,” he argues. “We have things we need to talk about first, Maeve.”
“Let me see it, then, and I’ll decide what we do.”
I sit beside him again, taking his arm. The wound is just… massive. Massive and all wrong. It won’t heal, even with the healing potions still lacing his blood. I could… cauterize it with my magic, I suppose, but there has to be an easier way…
And there is an easier way, it just means bringing my family into this.
A sharp knock echoes in the recesses of the suite. I turn toward the sound, furrowing my brows as footfalls stretch through the darkness.
Soren rises, on edge, hackles raised, but I beat him to the door and step into the hallway just as Blake speeds into view, looking relieved to see me awake.
“We have a situation,” he says as he stalks toward the doorway to my bedroom. “You need to move, now, to a safer location.”
“What’s going on?”
Soren, only a few paces behind me, and out of view of the hallway, stiffens. I glance at him, noticing the odd look crossing behind his eyes when Blake replies, “There’s a possible intruder in the castle. I was just informed there’s a broken window in the gallery.”
I throw a look at Soren, but his eyes are narrowed to slits when Blake turns into the room, reaching for me.
“Guards are going to clear your rooms–” Blake freezes, his eyes sweeping toward Soren.
“There’s a slight miscommunication,” I begin. “I have guests–”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Blake snarls.
“You?” Soren says in disbelief, chuckling.
Blake makes the grave mistake of grabbing my arm… in front of my mate.