Page 65 of Upon Shattered Bonds

“Like what?”

Underneath the genuine concern, there was a hint of amusement. It was as if his cousin had been handed a math problem and solved it while Zeke still toiled away at the desk beside him. It only served to anger him even more.

“Like you have hope!” Zeke roared, tunneling his fist into the side of his couch. “There is no hope!”

“Barring any further destruction of your home, I’d reckon there is hope, sovereign.”

Bellowing his frustration to the ceiling, Zeke whirled on his cousin and stalked toward him. Jamming a finger into the other man’s chest, he snarled, “Nina herself has given no reason for hope. Besides that, do you remember the part where she’s being hunted?”

Tzuriel had the audacity to smirk. “Nope.”

Zeke threw his hands in the air. “And what if this is it? If she dies, her clan will go to whomever challenged her. If I follow her in death, you’re clanless. If I don’t, I’ll be forced to agree to a treaty with the one who killed her. There are no happy endings here, Tzuriel.”

Something like pity jaded the other man’s expression, but it was so fleeting Zeke barely had a chance to decipher its meaning before his cousin spoke again.

“Except there is,” he reiterated. “There is a happy ending. You’ve just refused to see it.”

“And what would that be?”

“One where Nina survives—and so do you. You’ve admitted something has changed between you. A shift in her feelings, at a bare minimum.” Cocking his head, the other Raeth pinned him with a penetrating stare. “Why did she send you away?”

“Because she can’t love me.”

“That she can’t love you, or that she doesn’t?”

The question gave him pause. Frowning, Zeke shoved himself back into the painful memory of their conversation and her rejection of him. She’d never claimed that she didn’t love him, only that she couldn’t. Why had she phrased it like that?

But it didn’t matter, not truly. “She said we can never mate, Tzuri.”

“And you believed her?” Genuine incredulity ran amok over his second’s features. “Tell me, sovereign, why would she admit to feeling nothing for you and banish you, when you’ve clearly felt the opposite sentiment through the mating bond?”

Zeke blinked in shock. With his mind wavering between the stark picture Nina had painted to what Tzuriel suggested, he floundered like a fish on the sand.

What if what he implied was true? As he weighed the facts, they painted a picture that confirmed Tzuriel’s interpretation. After everything Zeke and Nina had shared in the past several days, he’d experienced her shifting emotions firsthand. And mating bonds, however derelict, never lied.

Nina had been protecting him from getting too close in case she died. By sending him away, she was providing a shield against a mating bond that might kill him, too.

The thought brought him to his knees.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Overcast clouds had brought with it a chill, the heavens resembling freshly fallen snow rather than an early spring sky.

Several hours of daylight remained before it’d set completely, and she could be challenged once more. A resigned sigh left her as she peered out over the Kentucky fields that hemmed in her property.

Until recently, it had been a life well lived. She’d served her people. Kept them safe from threats, comforted them when they hurt, and cured what ails they suffered. The Blaede clan was stronger than ever and would remain so even without her at the helm.

Regardless of who took the sovereignty, Kaien would protect her clansmen. Remmus and Celeste, too. Each and every soul that made up the Blaede clan would be provided for in the event of her death. While she functioned as sovereign, it was truly the people who made her clan great.

And if she died today, she’d leave the vampire nation in capable hands. The establishment of the council had been her saving grace in that regard, and the ruling body of the vampire race would ensure the species remained strong. Drake and Kane would see to that, and Blair if they annoyed her into it.

Her only regret was Zeke.

As she’d spoken those words that’d ripped a hole in his soul, the lie had burned her tongue. It was all she could do to keep her deceit from translating through the mating bond between them.

In the end, his own agony had kept him from realizing the truth. As the hours stretched on from when they’d spoken, she’d experienced the myriad of emotions running amok from the man on the opposite end of the mating bond.

What’d originally been pain and hurt had transformed to anger. Fury had followed, then it slowly tinged with the undeniable brand of hopelessness.

---