Page 215 of Gift from the Wing

“What? No, of course I did,” he immediately says as his bright ruby eyes fly up to mine. “I was…I was just a fool, Draken. I should’ve released her from the forest the second I felt anything. I never should’ve let it last as long as it did.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t say regretful shit like that with me standing here coming to you for answers. I won’t be made to feel even more like a mistake, especially not by you. I’ve experienced it my whole life,” I growl.

I don’t mean to jump straight to being defensive, but the deed is done. I’m here in the flesh now. There’s no changing that.

He’s on me in the blink of an eye. I’ve grown used to tracking him, so I knew he was coming, and I don’t move as he lays his hands on my shoulders. “That is not what I meant by any means, son. Nothing aboutyou is a mistake. Not a thing. Not how you became and not what you’ve become. I have zero regrets, but I am riddled with guilt.”

“Can you just explain it all to me?”

He stares into my eyes for a hot minute, and I let him see the want, need I have for these answers. I feel like a child begging for a scrap of anything he’s willing to throw at me.

“The bond between Eryken…” he stops, shaking his body out as if it pains him to say her name. Honestly, it kinda hurts me to hear it.

“The bond between your mother and me was vastly different than with Tanith and me. Whereas in the Keep, it was an immediate feeling. Here, it was too late for me to notice. It was as though the way in which you all bond was merging with my nature. Everything about our relationship was like the two realms colliding. The bond took time, slowly developing as I’ve heard that it happens with awakenings, yet I felt protective over her the second I was a few feet in front of her.

“We fought, and we fought. Endlessly really. Then we talked, spent time together. I learned your mother was incredibly smart, had a voice that could lull me to sleep, she loved art, and had an imagination of a storyteller. It wasn’t until after she was free, I realized, those were our challenges. We were matched in both strength and intelligence.

“I was so naïve not to see it or maybe I simply didn’t want to, I’m not sure, but in my mind, I’d deemed it impossible. An actual bond hadn’t snapped in place, so I firmly told myself it was my loneliness clouding these crazy feelings I was having. The first time I called her my beloved, it had slipped out, but it felt right. It was the first thing that felt right since I became imprisoned in that place. So I told myself, she could be that for now.”

The way his eyes lit up when he spoke about the things he learned about her and the emotion in his voice now make my heart pound against my rib cage painfully. I don’t want to tell him what became of her.

“Did you know she was pregnant? The comment about the scent,” I choke out.

“No, I didn’t. If I did, I would’ve hidden her so far into the forest, she never would’ve been found. I would’ve made every vow possible tokeep her safe. The scent that the other vampires smelled was the bond and the pregnancy. It’s not something I would’ve picked up on. That should’ve been another thing that told me the truth, but I refused to accept that.

“When a beloved is claimed, the smell of their blood changes, but not to their other half. They will always smell the same. Your mother always smelled like Estra fruit. A very popular delicacy from the Keep. She smelled like home.” He pauses, taking a deep breath.

“Her scent would’ve started changing for them, warding them away from her. The pregnancy would’ve solidified that because they would’ve started catching her scent and mine, mingled. I would’ve known eventually. Once the taste of her blood changed.”

He doesn’t look at me when he says that, thankfully, ’cause I grimaced. “So if the bond never snapped in place, is there a possibility she wasn’t your beloved?”

It’s not that I’m doubting he loved her, it’s very clear in every word, every expression, but I can’t imagine what it feels like. If I had lost Willow before we bonded, I know a part of me would never be the same. There’d be a hole the size of this realm in my heart.

I don’t want that for him.

He closes his eyes once more, and my body startles when a tear slides down his face. I want to take my question back. I want to rewind time by twenty-five seconds and never let the words come out of my mouth.

“The moment she crossed through the ward, our bond solidified. I couldn’t do anything but stare as my entire life walked away from me because I told her to. She had to.”

Fuck.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I don’t know what else to say.

The devastation rolling off him is suffocating. It’s pounding against my lungs like I’m reliving my own grief and now his.

“There’s nothing you have to be sorry for. I am. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for the two of you. If I had been, she’d still—”

He can’t finish the sentence, and I don’t want him to either. It’ll lead to me having to tell the story and fuck me, this is going to be so much harder than I thought.

“Start niceand slow, young lord. Tell him the happy things. Not all of them but start there and end there.”

Peering out of my peripheral, Tanith is nestled in the tree line, watching us keenly. I was too caught up in his story to notice her spying.

“Thought you were giving us some space?”

“I could no longer ignore the call to come. He is in pain. But he must break before he can rebuild.”

“Fuck me. I don’t want to break him.”

---