Page 52 of Fated for his Flame

Silas stepped back at my onslaught. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you!” I half-shouted, poking him hard in the chest.

“Me? What did I do?” he frowned. “Is this because I sent you back with Shi? I told you I had to warn the others. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you around. I wanted you safe! So I knew you would be okay. How is that a bad thing?”

“Not that!” I snapped, trying to take a calming breath but only succeeding in getting more worked up. It didn’t work. Why was I so distraught? It didn’t make any sense! Knowing that, however, didn’t help me relax. It only made me more frustrated. “I’m talking about the fact I’m here in the first place. With you. The entire reason I’m here. Something you didn’t want at all.”

Silas eyebrows shot up. “What on earth are you talking about?”

I leveled another finger at him. “All this time, you’ve led me to believe you willingly volunteered to take a human as a mate. That it was something you wanted to do, that you chose to do. But that’s not true, is it?”

He worked his jaw.

“You basically lied to me,” I said. “You allowed me to believe something that wasn’t true.”

“Chloe,” he said, spreading his hands.

Instantly, I could see the truth.

“Don’t try to weasel your way out of it,” I snapped angrily in an attempt to cover up the unexpected stabbing of pain that came with the admittance. “You lied to me.”

He threw up his hand sin frustration. “Yes, okay? I guess I did.”

“See!”

“At first.”

I blinked. “What do you mean ‘at first’, Silas?”

“Are you being serious right now?” He sighed. “Okay. Yes. I did not go there that day willingly. I was somewhat tricked into it. Goaded, perhaps. There, is that what you want to hear? Are you happy? Do you want to leave now, or would you care to stick around and hear the rest of my side of things?”

“How can there be another side of it? You just admitted you were forced into choosing me. You don’t care. You never did.”

I was pouring it on hard, but I couldn’t help it. It hurt. Not fake hurt. But real, actual pain. I’d wanted it to be different. For once in my life, I was starting to feel like I actually belonged, like someone wanted me.

Now, I was yet again disappointed. It hurt even worse to know I never should have let myself feel that way. I was on a mission. I’d forgotten that, and now, I was paying the price.

“Enough,” Silas growled, his face filling with an anger that had never been directed at me before. “That is not true.”

“You just said it was.”

“At first,” he barked. “Have you never heard of a love story that starts out for impure reasons and then morphs into something real, something infinitely better? Can you, Chloe? Because if you can honestly tell me that, then yes, perhaps this was never meant to be. But I have, and I’m no romantic. I know it happens sometimes. Even in the movies you see it.”

I reeled at his use of the L-word. It was unexpected and shook me deeply. My heart was racing, and my brain took its time pulling together words. But it did. I was stronger than that, I wasn’t about to be so easily won back over.

“Yes, I have,” I said. “But in the real world, you know, where we live, those people talk. They tell the other person and admit their mistakes. They don’t try to cover it up and then wait for the other person to find out by accident.”

Silas winced. “You’re right. You have me there. I didn’t tell you. I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked. “Once it was clear we had something, why didn’t you just come clean?”

Abruptly, the anger left his face, replaced with something more like discomfort. “Because,” he said in a gentler tone, “I didn’t want you to hate me. I wanted you to stick around, and … and I guess I thought you would leave if I did. That you wouldn’t believe me that things had changed. Exactly like what’s happening right now. You’d say I was a liar. I wasn’t actually enjoying your company, even though I’ve never been happier. Because of you. Then you’d leave, and I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I …” I licked my lips. What was I supposed to say to that?

Part of me wanted to forgive him then and there. To tell him I appreciated his honesty and coming clean, and we could work through it.

But panic was setting in, a tightening of my throat, fresh clamminess in my hands as everything locked up and refused to respond. It was all wrong. I was an agent on a mission. My mission was to spy on him and his people, to report all that back to my boss. How was I going to do that if I couldn’t think straight, if I continued to let myself fall for him?

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