Marianna
“I’m not rejecting you,” I rush out, clasping his hands. “Blake–”
He slides his hands from mine and steps back, an unreadable expression shadowing the planes of his face. “Are you–”
“Do you want me here? With you? Me and Skye? Is… is there something here for all of us, Blake, with you?”
His lips part, but no sound comes out. He looks shocked–that mask of indifference slipping just a touch.
“Can we have a life together?” I ask, my heart beginning to tremble.
“We–”
“Can you let me in, for real this time? Everything. I need–I have to see everything. You can’t hide anymore. I can’t be with just parts of you, Blake. I need it all. The good parts, the bad parts. The parts that scare you, that you think will scare me–”
The magic coating the room quakes–an alert, I surmise, that someone is coming.
Blake ignores it, his hands shaking slightly as he takes hold of my face and leans his forehead against mine.
“I–I do want that,” he says with great effort. “But–”
“But I’m not some fierce warrior. I’m not a princess with royal blood–”
“Your great-grandfather was an Alpha.”
“I don’t have powers,” I whisper, but his lips brush my forehead in a featherlight kiss that sends a shiver of warmth licking down my spine.
“I don’t want any of that.”
“But you could be with someone who–”
“I want quiet,” he whispers against my skin, his mouth brushing against my temple. “I want calm. I want to sit on a couch with you, listening to music, watching Skye do her homework. I want to come home to you playing your violin. I want to sit in the royal box with our daughter watching you play for all of Eastonia knowing that you’re mine. That’s all I want.”
Another ripple of energy shimmers through the room. Blake growls against my temple before pulling away and turning toward the door, swiping his fingers through his hair as the mask slips back over his face, blocking what I realize is the real him… only for me to see.
His shields drop. “Are you all right with my parents meeting Skye? I was thinking we could go on a walk in the garden. It’s quiet out there.”
I turn toward his closet, wondering if there’s anything I could possibly turn into an outfit in there but… my clothes from the townhouse are already hanging up neatly, arranged by color, cut, and texture…
Blake’s hand went into this, no doubt. I feel tears prickling to life but blink them away, wondering if this–if he is what I even deserve after what I did to us.
I pull a shirt from a hanger and turn to him. “Do you want to tell her you’re her dad today?”
“I’m not sure how to even begin.”
I shrug. “She’s… she’s going to understand. She’s like you, remember?”
His answering smile is soft but unsure. A few minutes later, dressed in jeans and a simple blue top, I follow him into the recesses of the castle where Skye quickly makes her presence known. Instead of the quiet observer she’s been for the past year or so, she’s animated, talking rapidly as she skips beside Blake to match his long stride when he walks us down to the first level of the palace and through a private, well-lit corridor leading to the massive veranda and garden on the back side of the castle. Beautiful trees cast shade across the mowed lawn. Hydrangeas and roses scent the air as the sun sparkles through the trees, casting the grass in flickering strips of gold.
“Can you teach me how to use the spheres?”
“One day,” Blake replies, smiling down at her. She clutches his hand and tugs him toward the rose bushes, talking about the bees, and I… sit down on a bench in the sun, letting it play over my skin for the first time in… weeks, I think, feeling whole, warm and… unburdened as I watch my mate inspect the rose bushes with our child.
“Marianna?”
I turn to the soft, musical voice to my left as the Queen of Crescent Falls floats into view, her shimmering white-blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders. She’s dressed casually in slacks and a light gray sweater, but her eyes, that stunning violet, shine with what I can only describe as uncertainty when my gaze locks on her face.
Blake inherited her beauty–that ethereal kind of beauty that radiates like starlight on a perfectly clear night. Then, she smiles, and if I weren’t sitting when I first noticed the way her nose crinkles, I’d fall to my knees.
Just like Skye.
I rise, preparing to bow, but she touches my arm. “You’ve grown up since the last time I saw you.”
“It’s been a while,” I whisper as loud as I can muster, which isn’t much. The last time I saw her was the night Blake and I ended things in that knockout, drag out fight in the curved driveway of the castle. I’d been to his place a few times, which had been a shock to my system, of course, but… his family knew about me and that I was Blake’s friend. His only friend. They had no idea we were so much more.
She’d walked out of the garage around the back of the castle at the very moment I told Blake to stay away from me and I bolted.
The look on her face is forever cemented into my brain.
But now, her face is full of relief. She pulls me into an embrace I’m not expecting. “Your mom and I have been talking. There’s nothing that needs to be said between you and me, but–” She pulls away, holding me at arm’s length as King Sydney steps into view, but his eyes are on Blake and Skye, watching them with glimmers of tears, maybe, in his eyes. “But–I know what it feels like. What you had to do, raising that baby on your own. I’m so thankful you had your mother with you.”
My gaze flickers back to her face. “You do?”
She tilts her head, her cheeks going slightly rosy. “Blake and I are the same. I’m sure he’s made that known. I… I wiped Sydney’s memory of me, however. He had no idea Blake was even his child until… weeks after he and I crossed paths again. I regret it immensely. I’m so proud of Blake for being stronger than I was.”
She steps away and turns to where Sydney is cautiously approaching Blake and Skye. My daughter looks up from the roses and watches Sydney close in. She steps closer to Blake on instinct as what she thinks is a stranger begins to speak to them. Sydney’s words are too faint for me to hear, but Blake motions to him, likely explaining that Sydney is his father.
“I have to admit that staying away from her the past day has been difficult for us. We’ve been curious, honestly. I understand why Blake wanted us to wait, and it’s a big enough castle, I suppose, to have made that easy enough but…” Sarah trails off as she watches her son and her grandchild lure Sydney closer to the roses, to the bees she’s suddenly obsessed with. “I worried about Blake so much. I worried he would never find his person. I worried he’d continue to fall further into himself, but when you came into his life, he changed for the better. Then you were gone, and he…” She can’t continue. She looks down at her hands before curling them into fists.
“I never intended to keep her away from you, not like this. I wasn’t–I didn’t know what to do, and Blake handled everything. He made sure we were both taken care of.”
“He said you barely touched the money,” she says quietly.
“I… I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” Shame ripples through me, but I brush it away, closing my arms over my chest. “I wanted to do it on my own, without him. I was angry with him for a long time, but I regret–” A thought strikes me. “Blake said you can turn back time.”
She chuckles under her breath, then sighs, “I can, yes.”
“If we–if we went back…” I close my eyes.
“It’s something I could, in theory, do, but it would change everything for everyone. Other futures would be at stake. Blake and I already talked about it, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back, to change things. But if it’s something you want–”
“It’s not,” I say quickly, swallowing hard. I look back on my memories and see the scared, heartbroken girl I used to be. I see her clearly, like she’s standing in front of me right now. I stayed that way for so long, terrified my daughter would turn into the man who broke my heart, but… I overlooked who Blake really was back then. He would have never hurt me. The fact that he scared me ruined him.
That’s the only reason I would go back. To save him from that feeling that warped him into the closed off shell of a man he became.
But now?
He laughs. It’s a sound I haven’t heard in years. Sarah and I turn to the men at the same time, watching as Sydney and Blake converse, and Skye picks rose petals, stuffing them into her pockets for later.
“He has so much to offer,” Sarah whispers, “If he could only get out of his head every once in a while.”
Silence settles between us for several long moments before I take a breath, asking, “Do you want to meet her?”
Sarah smiles weakly and nods, trying to hide the excitement in her eyes, and I watch her go. I sink back onto my bench and take it in, smiling as Sarah kneels down and talks to Skye about the flowers, watch as two parents see their son as a father for the first time, even if Skye has no idea that these are her grandparents yet.
I’m leaving it up to Blake.
He doesn’t seem ready today, especially when we leave the garden and rejoin the family currently gathered at the palace. Kenna is preparing to leave for Veiled Valley tonight, and Sarah and Sydney debate staying for a few days over the course of the afternoon, but as night falls, and the family parts after dinner, I find myself alone with Skye in the guest suite where my mom has been staying since Dean died in our townhouse.
I run my fingers through Skye’s hair as she falls asleep beside me, wondering what comes next. The mate bond, to be honest, and maybe this is strictly because of the hell I was dragged through, raked through coals and then back out of again, felt… easy. Simple. Warm. It wasn’t the explosive sense of knowing and belonging I expected, but I’ve always felt off kilter around Blake and all-consumed by his presence, so those feelings weren’t anything new.
Mom is already asleep when I ease out of Skye’s room. I follow that bond through the castle and find Blake in his office, seated behind his desk in the dark, his laptop casting a blue-hued glow around the far wall of the room.
He looks up at me as I enter. “Is she asleep?”
I nod, giving him the softest of smiles. “Yeah, she was exhausted.”
He closes his laptop with a sigh and leans back in his chair, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I have to go to Veiled Valley in a few days.”
“What for?”
“War,” he yawns, like it’s just another day in his life, and this isn’t totally jarring whatsoever.
“Is it going to come to that?”
“Probably. I hope not.”
“Are you going to work all night?”
“I wasn’t working,” he replies, rising from his chair and tucking it in. “I was emailing the headmaster of Skye’s new school. We have a meeting with her next week, when I’m back from Veiled Valley and I–” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “I’m getting ahead of myself. There’re things we need to talk about first–”
“I think you need to shift,” I offer, and he gives me a skeptical look.
“Oh?”
I stretch my arms over my head with a sigh. “I know I do. I want to at least try.”
He rolls his lower lip between his teeth as he considers it, then says with a soft, breathy sigh, “All right. Only if you feel up to it.”
“I want to be alone with you for a minute. Really alone.”
Yeah, that does it.