Page 246 of Night's Fall
Sure, we both liked quiet and being at home, reading, cooking, yadda, yadda.
We also liked having sex.
But was that a basis for a relationship?
He was wealthy.Titled.Hehad an intact family, which had some dysfunction, but there was love, care, support.
I had none of that.
He had a drive to make something more of himself, doing this making scads of money.
I liked nice things, andIdidn’t mind working for them, butI’dnever been ambitious that way.
He was business minded.
I was creative minded.
He was determined to find balance in doing what he wanted with his life and performing the duty he was born into.
I was struggling mightily with that, andIhonestly didn’t know ifIcould take on another job and do it to my exacting standards, at the same time fret about all the appearancesIwas going to have to make, butIhad to make them anyway because that was expected of me, andIcouldn’t demur.
Truth be told, if we were not mates, we would never have found each other.
Like the article suggested, had the gods got it wrong?
Was that whyAlekseiwas behaving like this, because with all that was going on, he was realizing it?
It couldn’t be denied, even if it wasn’t my fault,Iwas trouble, a weakness that was not his own, one he didn’t really need.
All of this messing up my head,IsearchedMaleShifterDragonFatedMateReactiontoFemaleMateVulnerability.
And the results rendered much the same but included spontaneous or uncontrolled shifting to their creature.
Nothing about picking fights, remoteness, coolness, or overall dickish behavior.
I tapped my fingernail on the edge of the tablet untilIgot a brainstorm.
TrueHeirReactiontoTrueBrideVulnerability.
There were a number of panes about the history of theTrueHeirand hisBride, but the only ones about any reaction harked back to general information about shifter mates.
But on the third pane of search results, there was an article aboutPrinceAerinand hisTrueBride,PrincessIphelia.
There was a famous play aboutAerinandIphelia.We’dput on a production of it whenIwas in school (and my costumes for it rocked).
The reason they were famous was thatAerin’sandIphelia’slove affair was known as being explosive.Shewas a warrior herself, which didn’t help things in their relationship, because he was big on wanting to make her stay atSpikebackCastleand go off to battle on his own, and she wasn’t so hot on that.Theyclashed, she won and was eventually wounded at theBattleofPeakNeige, which madeAerinlose his mind.
They shocked realms by separating.Butduring this, they were both miserable.
The legend went, they eventually couldn’t deal with being apart and set out from their respective castles at the same time, met in the middle, and their activities there created the nextTrueHeir.
I called up the article to read it just as a bubble drifted down from the top of the screen.
It announced a vid comm fromCat.
I took it. “Hey.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
