Page 52 of Upon Shattered Bonds

He could remember the moment it had all been lost for them due to his foolishness: the day they’d discovered they were fated mates.

The moment he’d retreated from her lips after that first kiss, desperation and dread threatened to choke him from the inside out. His protective instincts, always overdeveloped, would never let him condemn Nina to the same fate his sister had fallen to.

He’d felt the flash of distress that accompanied Nina’s changing expression. Hurt, sharp but confused, had speared through the mating bond that’d only begun to awaken. Her pain had been a dagger to his heart.

She’d seen through him instantly, asking why he didn’t desire a mate. His mind was still racing at the consequences of their union—at the overwhelming intensity of the link that’d bared their souls to one another. He opened his mouth to explain, but the words refused to come out.

What had happened to his family made it difficult to explain his resistance. It was hard to form a cohesive thought around what had occurred, and describing the history and reasoning behind it was just as painful, especially with everything screaming inside him. Too late he’d realized that Nina could feel his emotions as he’d felt hers. Her misery morphed into stilted abhorrence in the blink of an eye.

“You do not desire me.”

The words she’d spoken were etched upon his heart. It was the beginning of the end, and no matter how many times he wished he could’ve changed his response that day, it was impossible.

The only thing he’d managed to explain—poorly—was that she was too young to enter matehood. She’d been a sovereign longer than he had, and had experienced such tragedy in her young life that she’d been thrust into a position of power. Zeke refused to push her into yet more precocious situations, rushing her further into maturity. It would unfairly rob her of life experience as an individual before she entered matehood.

He wouldn’t link them together while she was still a youngling. He’d seen the situation play out too recently, and the repercussions of the union had changed the trajectory of his life forever.

Raeths aged similarly to humans up until twenty years old, then slowed before reaching adulthood. While she was still under a century, she was still considered an adolescent in Raeth society. Nina hadn’t been much older than when Isabeau had bound herself to her mate and had suffered because of Zeke’s negligence. He wouldn’t disregard his duty again, not even to appease his mate.

It’d been a bitter battle of wills, and neither of them had come out the victor. Nina had claimed he’d made an enemy, and when the other sovereign teleported away, he was left hollow in her wake.

He’d asked her to rekindle their relationship on multiple occasions, and he’d been shut down every time. Once lost, Nina’s favor was nearly impossible to reclaim.

For years, he’d cordoned off the depth of his affection for her behind a wall of ice, deliberately keeping himself free from entanglement. But now, welcoming the obvious affection her small touches betrayed, that wall shattered, flooding into every crevasse of his being.

Unintentionally, his swelling emotions drowned the mating bond between them, inundating his mate with what he’d hoped never to reveal.

A barely perceivable jolt struck Nina as she weathered the brunt of the transference. Cringing internally, he waited while she sifted through the wave of emotion, her entire being still as she processed Zeke’s passion.

Instead of retreating, or chastising him, she merely brought her eyes up to meet his. Something indecipherable passed through her gaze, an understanding that hadn’t been there before, and she went back to tending for his wound.

As much as she donned a mask of indifference toward him, he could see now that Nina had never been truly averse. She tried to deny that she cared for him, but her actions proved otherwise. Realization hit him like a ten-thousand-pound anvil. All those years ago, there’d been a reason for her visceral reaction to his perceived rejection. She’d been protecting herself—from him.

Pushing Nina away—purposefully—right after the mating bond had bloomed within them, had wounded her far worse than he’d believed. Regardless of his intention, the immediate denial of a relationship with her had been akin to formerly rejecting her.

And he’d failed to ever provide her with a reason.

Zeke had hidden his true intentions and reasons for the rejection under the veil of protecting her innocence. With a start, he realized now was the time to come clean. He had to explain the rationale behind what she’d perceived to be a rash action with no foundation.

Now or never.

“Nina.” His voice breached the otherwise silent room. Save the whistle of the wind through the broken shards of the window.

She paused briefly as if sensing the intensity of what he was building toward. “Yes, Zeke?”

Anticipation was a jackhammer in his chest. He owed her this— the truth that had stolen so much time from them both. Though his tongue threatened to twist in his mouth, nothing was more important.

“If you’ll allow me, I’d like to explain my actions to you.”

Nina would understand he wasn’t speaking about their most recent history. When she stepped in front of him to clean the blood that’d trailed down his forearm, she didn’t meet his gaze, but he watched her features pinch, then a slight nod in consent.

“My mother, Rhanna, was a healer with fertility abilities, and she was uncommonly gifted. I was born three centuries into their mating, and my sister, Isabeau, was born three centuries after that.”

Nina’s whole being paused. A slight intake of breath betrayed the fact that she hadn’t known of Zeke’s sister, and he wasn’t surprised. Few did.

He didn’t stop to explain, pushing through the words and hoping that his inevitable tongue tie wouldn’t reappear. “Izzy was beautiful, with the soul of a poet and the temper of an eternal optimist. Everyone who met her loved her, and never once did I hear her speak ill of another.

“When she was barely thirty, she met Georg, a Raeth from a neighboring clan. At the time, he was over five centuries old and already functioned as a lieutenant in his clan. He was strong, and he would have made a great sovereign one day. With Izzy, he was gentle in a way that only true mates could be.”

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