Page 11 of Damian

“What’s your point? I don’t need you or anyone else feeling sorry for me.”

I scratched my cheek before brushing the hair on my face downward with my fingers. If anger is all she knows, maybe anger is what she needs. “Too bad, Emjay. You’re my mate. The pain I feel for you that I didn’t get to you in time won’t go away because you don’t need me to feel sorry for you. Your hurts are my hurts. Like it or not. Keep me at a distance for as long as you need to wallow in your torment, but know this—you are no longer alone. And you never will be again. I will spend the rest of our lives removing the sting of your past. You will know that you are treasured, valuable, and worthy of love. This I will prove to you, no matter how many times you push me away. I’m very persuasive, and I will succeed in shattering the walls you’ve rightly erected.

“I thought you were dead. My dreams ended with that belief, only to have them restored when you walked back into my life as if raised from the dead. I know the severing of our souls hurt you as much as it hurt me, and I will not walk away from what the Fates have restored. You are worth the fight. We are worth fighting for. The monsters you’ve known all your life won a battle, but they will not win the war for our destiny. You possess a strength I’ll never understand, having made it this far. I don’t have to know you well to know you don’t want what your mitéra and the others did to you—to us—to be how your story ends.”

She stared into my eyes briefly, the intensity of her gaze piercing through the barriers we’d both erected. “Did you tell these heifers about me?”

I shook my head. “They weren’t worth it. I loved them, but not enough to share all of myself with them.”

I forced myself to keep my arms at my sides when a lone tear slipped past her defenses. We continued our journey again in silence. I stopped when we neared the pier.

“Emjay, I know you can find me anywhere, but I still wanted to show you the entrance to our labyrinth. Whether you accept it today or years from now, it’s your home. It’s where you belong—when you’re ready.”

Hours later, Emjay tells Jayce to park. The van stops and I’m pulled from my memories. “We go the rest of the way on foot.”

Chapter 8

Emjay

“Walls around one’s heart aren’t only to protect from further heartache. Sometimes they’re built to house the pain of trauma.” ~ Emjay

I remember the day I left my daughters vividly. The sun had barely risen, casting a pale light over the barren landscape. I held them closely one last time, whispering promises of safety and love before slipping away into the darkness. Each step away from them felt like a knife in my heart, but it was the only way to protect them.

I don’t have a wall around my heart because I’m afraid of love. I’ve never experienced love or a broken heart from loving the wrong person. I built a protective casing to hold myself together. I wanted nothing more than to give up after I left my daughters, but I still feared Basil finding them. Ending my life of suffering couldn’t happen while he remained out there.

My girls are safe. Basil is dead at the hands of Damian. Poppa still roams the Earth. If he tries to find us again, our mates will rip him to shreds.

Finding Damian removed the incessant desire to seek peace in the afterlife, but I can’t submit to Helios’ blessing upon us. Not while other heifers remain imprisoned in the labyrinth that I escaped.

My future holds a happily ever after that I never dreamed possible, but I must keep my walls up or I’ll lose focus.

I’ve only ever known sacrifice. Momma sacrificed my mating call, keeping me a prisoner. Hallie sacrificed her life so that I might escape and give my daughters a chance at freedom. I sacrificed raising my daughters, holding them in my arms, and giving them all my love for fear that Basil would find us more easily if we remained together. Now, I’m temporarily sacrificing Damian. I’ve given him no choice in the matter, and he assures me he understands. His understanding makes keeping him at a distance harder than the annoying tick-tock playing on repeat in my head.

The night I found him, we walked and talked. Like long-lost friends more than destined mates.

My face remained stone when he confessed loving two other heifers. I felt no remorse that they broke his heart. Only anger that our severed bond gave him the opportunity to love someone else—twice.

Not anger toward him. How I wish I could have been the one to flick the whip against Momma that killed her. If only one strike. In my dreams, it’s my fist beating her to death. What will Damian think of me when he learns the depth of my hatred and bitterness?

“Look at you.” I told him.

“Do you have a mirror?” he teased with a giant grin.

“That’s not what I mean?” He even acted the age he looked.

He rubbed his face. He did that several times this night. “What do you mean?”

I huffed. “You look twenty-five, and I—I look over sixty.” I’m only fifty-eight, but my past has aged me. He looked me up and down. I continued spewing my insecurities before he could object. “I have wrinkles all over my skin. My breasts, though they’ve never fed a child, sag toward my stomach. For Helios’ sake, I’ve gone through menopause. I’m an old woman, and you’re—well—look at you.”

He hadn’t touched me since we left the bar. And the touches before were of comfort, nothing more. He moved closer. The serious glint in his amber orbs formed a lump in my throat. Damian pushed the hair I keep over my face behind my ear before he cupped my cheeks in the palm of his hands.

“While your aged looks aren’t permanent, it doesn’t change my attraction to you—my mate. The one created for me. Look down and see.”

Part of me wanted to refuse his demand, except the girl who couldn’t wait for him to find me all those years ago glanced at the bulge in his pants.

“I don’t need smooth skin. Breasts are magnificent no matter what direction they point. What does menopause have to do with how I behold you?”

I wrapped my hand around the hand still holding my face. “It means my ability to bear children is gone.”

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