Page 2 of Beyond the Grasslands

The cage I was held in had silver and steel bars and three of the four walls were also infused with silver and most likely wolf’s bane. It kept me from shifting. That in turn kept me from being able to heal properly.

“Nika!” He hissed. “I’ll send the pack doctor down, too.”

“Why bother?”

“Because you need to be healthy.”

“I can’t be healthy because I’m unable to shift inside this fucking cage you threw me in. That was after you worked with a woman who tried to kill me, and this is the first time you noticed my head wound?”

“I thought it would have healed by now.” He offered his explanation on a wince. “She wasn’t supposed to hit you that hard.”

“The fact that you thought it was okay to have someone hit me at all tells me everything I need to know about you. Then again, coming home to discover your fucking harem told me exactly who you are.”

“Nika, I made a mistake.”

“Oh, you’ve made many mistakes, Aiden. Not the least of which was kidnapping me before my real mate could seal the deal with me.”

“I am your real mate!” He shouted at the bars as he leaned too close. The smell of burnt flesh greeted us both before he even realized his hands were wrapped around the bars. He peeled them away and then stared at me as if it was my fault.

“You gave up the right to be my mate when you exiled me to a prison island in favor of keeping you harem.”

“I never touched them again after you were taken away.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? I was on that island for six months, Aiden! Six fucking months I dodged attacks by rogues and tried to keep all the other castoff women safe while you did what? You nursed your wounded pride and ignored your harem?”

“It’s not like that.”

“It was exactly like that! If you think for a minute that I would ever agree to be with you, then you have well and truly gonemad already. You are nothing to me. You are less than the dirt beneath my feet. I would rather die in this cage than be mated to you. Keep that in mind.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

I shook my head adamantly.

“You will.” He stated those two words as if they were the truth and I could taste his belief in them on the air. “The thing you don’t know about your supposed other mate is that he had another.” Aiden’s smirk meant that he thought he had an ace up his sleeve. “He tossed aside the idea of his moon-blessed mate, so that he could mate with his childhood friend instead.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “That isn’t news to me.”

Aiden’s shoulders drooped and the smug look on his face transferred into one of puzzlement. “You knew?”

“How could I not know? The woman you convinced to attack me was the mother of that woman.”

“You were still going to mate with him?”

I laughed then. “Thorin had good reason to assume that he didn’t have a moon-blessed mate, he waited, searched, and did all the right things before he realized there was no one out there. Only then did he compromise his potential fated pairing by agreeing to be with another. I can’t fault him for that. There’s a bit of an age gap between us. It’s almost unheard of for your mate to not be close in age. I understand why he made the choice he did.”

“Yet you condemned me.”

“You made a selfish choice that hurt your future Luna, those women in the harem, and your pack’s health. You did it knowing that your potential mate was out there waiting for you. You did it with the idea in your mind that I was your mate and you were only waiting for me to come of age. You weren’t out there looking for a mate, in case I wasn’t the one for you. You were too busystealing other people’s mates. How did that work out for the women in your harem, Aiden?”

I could tell by the way he flinched that it had caused consequences for other mated pairings. “You caused other moon-blessed pairs to be rejected, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Not only did you make a mockery of our potential bond, but you destroyed others’ bonds as well. Selene must be so angry with you.”

“Where is Selene now?” He yelled at me. “Where are the gods you hold so dear? They’re not here to protect you, are they? Where were they for all the women who were thrown on that island with you? The gods don’t care about us. Why should we care about them and what they have to say?”

“If that’s the truth, then why am I here? If you don’t care what they think, then take someone else as your mate. I’m sure one of your harem harlots would jump at the chance to be your mate.”

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