Page 47 of Venomous Heart
“Yes, I did. I was as faithful and caring as any other, but I think, deep down, she knew I didn’t love her. Not like I should have.”
“But didshelove you?” Ava’s stare was intense, her purple eyes missing nothing as she looked at him.
“In the beginning, I think she wanted to.” Arlen shook his head. “But with time, when she understood that I would never truly feel for her what my father felt for my mother, she grew hostile, spiteful. It grew harder to please her, to appease that mean streak in everything she did. So, I left for longer and longer periods of time, looking for my lost brother. Every time I came back, Maral was more resentful, more bitter. She refused to bring any offspring into our lives because I didn’t deserve to be a father as long as I was such a poor mate to her.”
Ava swallowed, hard. “But if you were both so unhappy, why didn’t you leave her?”
“You don’t understand… because you’re human more than anything.” Arlen took her in his arms, then pulled her toward a chair and sat her across his lap. “An Eok mates for life. I had no choice.”
“Like you don’t have a choice now?” Ava’s words were careful and her clear, sharp eyes missed nothing of his reaction as she spoke.
“I took Maral because I was blind.” Arlen shook his head. “But with you, my eyes are wide open. I tried to fight it, tried to ignore the call, but it was true. You are the one I have looked for all my life, Ava. And now that I’ve found you, I will never let you go. I will fight for you every day if I have to.”
Time felt suspended as they looked into each other’s eyes without speaking. He had told her more than he had ever told anyone, and still, he regretted nothing.
“Good,” she finally said. “Because I’ve never trusted anyone in my life before you.”
He stared at her for a long time as what she said made its way into his very soul. This wonderful, brave female was giving him her trust. A trust he hadn’t earned, but that he would work his entire life to deserve.
“How did Maral die, Arlen?”
Pain pinched Arlen as memories flooded his mind. Memories of the day he found Karian barely alive in a pool of blood with his mate, Rose. The day he found Maral, dead on the ground, the weapon with which she’d stabbed his brother still in her hands.
“She betrayed us all. She pretended to be heavy with offspring to trick me into bringing her with us to the Ring’s headquarters.” His own voice came from somewhere far above him, like it wasn’t truly he who was speaking, but some stranger who had borrowed his voice. “She plotted my brother’s death, and his mate’s—all so I could become the next chief of the Erynian tribe. All she cared about was power. In the end, that was what killed her. That, and the knife she used to stab Karian and his mate. It was Rose, Karian’s human mate, who killed her.”
“That’s terrible.” Ava stared at him in horror as he relived the awful day on which his entire life had morphed into a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.
“It was my fault.” Arlen shook his head. “I should have seen what she was. What she was capable of.”
A small hand found his own, and Arlen looked at Ava. Really looked at her.
There was no condemnation in her eyes, no judgment for not being able to protect his mate. Only sadness for the pain he’d suffered. And that was enough for him to continue.
“What happened after she died?” Ava’s voice was soft and warm, full of concern and care. It felt like a soothing balm on his raw heart, appeased his burning soul better than any days of violence at the Frontier ever had.
“I carried her body back to her homeland. I buried her with her family, then I left.” Arlen closed his eyes against the vision of Maral, her pale face even paler in death. “I demanded an assignment at the Frontier and I stayed there until I was recalled and sent here.”
Silence wrapped around them and Arlen allowed it. It was a good kind of silence, the kind of silence that let wounds close up and the blood stop flowing.
“Ten years.” Ava stared at him with those eyes carved of jewels. Those eyes he saw every time he closed his own. Those eyes that were etched into his very soul. “You worked hard every day for ten years because you wanted her to love you.”
“No.” He shook his head, sadness emanating from his very core. “At first, I thought so too, but I know different now. I worked every day for ten years because I wanted to love her. But I never could.”
The words were simple, and yet as he spoke, he understood the weight of what he was saying. The weight that had killed the laughter from his life for the past ten years. The weight that had smothered any hope of better days, any hope of true love.
Maral had killed the joy of his youth, had stolen his hope for love when he’d needed it the most.
But now with Ava, everything was different. Everything was possible.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Ava cradled his face in her two small hands, her thumbs rubbing along the sides of his jaw.
“I’m not.” As he spoke, he felt it rise, that hope he had thought long dead. “Because without all this, I would never have found you, my little wonder.”
Ava’s lips met his, her touch light and healing. As Arlen answered her kiss, a new storm rose inside him, and soon, lust wiped away everything that wasn’t Ava.
And Ava was everything.
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