14
Diem
Immortality. Gideon had dropped a bombshell on her.
She knew what her answer would be, but he’d stopped her from saying it. She wanted to be with him. It wouldn’t be easy having to watch their friends and her sister grow old, but leaving Gideon would be even harder. He’d wormed his way into her heart.
Now they were lying in the bed of the private plane. Every time she tried to ask why they were leaving, he would distract her with sex, and her body fell for it every time. When his hands were on her, all thoughts and common sense went out the window.
Her scar, along with her vision of when she and Kayda were younger, had trigged Gideon’s response. She wanted to stay another night and find out what everything meant and, more importantly, how she could find her sister. She couldn’t imagine where Kayda might be.
Gideon ran his hand down her scar. He hadn’t stopped tracing it. Growing up, she’d wondered where it came from. She and Kayda had tried to remember, but Diem didn’t remember much from her early childhood.
Because it was blocked. That was her only guess. There was no doubt someone could block memories. Hell, I can turn into a dragon, so anything is possible.
“Do you think it was the right decision to leave?” she asked.
“Yes.” He sighed.
“We’re going to have to talk about everything soon, Gideon.”
“I know, but when we do, I know you’ll leave me.”
It angered her, knowing he didn’t believe in them as much as she did.
“You think that little of me?”
“The total opposite. You’re the light to my darkness, and I have so much darkness. Things are coming back, memories…” His fingers skimmed over her scar. “Memories you will hate me for.”
She twined her fingers in his. It wouldn’t be long before they landed back in West Virginia. Kirin would be at the airport when they arrived. Gideon had told him more than he’d shared with her, and that hurt.
“How do you know if you keep it to yourself?” She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. The sex is amazing, but you can’t distract me with your body for the rest of our lives. From the little I know about mates, it’s like a husband and wife. A team. And teams work together, and that makes them stronger, and when they don’t work together, they fall apart.”
“The sex is amazing,” he mumbled as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “When we did the rituals, they didn’t help. I didn’t see anything useful or anything I really wanted to look further into. I’m not sure if it relaxed me enough to clear my head.”
He was finally talking, and she worried that if she said anything, he would stop, so she nodded. The first time they were together, it was like their bodies had bonded. Gideon had told her they hadn’t, but something had formed between them. Her dragon pranced in her mind, telling her to claim him. But even if she was ready, Gideon wasn’t.
“You’re going to be mad,” he said.
“Let me make that choice, not you. Now, spit it out.”
“When I ran my hand over your scar, an event came to mind. I was there the day you got this.”
“Did you do it to me?”
“Fuck no,” Gideon growled.
“Do you know who the man was who did it to me? Well, bear-man?”
Gideon held her tighter. She didn’t know what he was going to say, but it would give her answers.
“The man who hurt you is Darius Klin. Like I said the other day, I can heal people. Once he did that to you, he called Kael. I made it to you just in time and healed the wound.”
“Do you remember anything else about who the woman was?”
“I don’t know who she was. I helped Kael take you. Yes, he put you into foster care and didn’t hurt you back then, but it’s my fault. I should’ve done more.”
Well, that explains why he felt guilty and didn’t want to tell me about what he remembered.