Page 84 of Sway's Peace
“Loyalty is gone?” Grace frowned, confusion and alarm immediately rearing their heads.
“Well, he’s notgone,” Vweet chuckled. “He left the Song to go into the forest. He needs to hunt. He is carnivorous, after all.”
“Omnivorous,” Grace corrected softly, frowning. It made sense that he would do that, since there wasn’t any meat to be found in any store or restaurant here. “But why wouldn’t he tell us if he was going to go?”
“I hardly expect their kind knows anything about common courtesy,” Vweet chuckled. “Anyway. Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. There aren’t any large predators on this planet. It’s a very peaceful place.”
“Oh. Okay,” she muttered, still confused. Loyalty hadn’t even sent them a message on comm or anything. He just left?
But with that, Vweet took off and Sway pulled on her hand, taking her into the inn. He wasn’t thinking about Loyalty at all. She wondered if he even heard what Vweet said.
He led her right to her door and, when she opened it, followed her in. Her heart immediately jumped, but she told herself tocalm down. This wasn’t the time. She had to focus on him, not how much she wanted to throw herself at him.
Fixing her face, she turned, folding her hands together as she searched his face. “Are you okay?”
Sway looked at her carefully. His expression unreadable. “Yes. Why would I not be?”
“You looked aggravated.”
He blinked then laughed. Relief swept over him, cracking his untouchable façade. “I thought you were going to treat me like I was delicate too.”
“Yes, because you clearly enjoyed that from them,” she laughed along with him.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, taking her by the wrists and pulling her into his embrace. “Iwasaggravated though. I did not enjoy any of that conversation.”
“Didn’t seem you did.”
“But I do feel like I accomplished what I needed to.”
“With your father?”
He nodded once, staring into her eyes like his thoughts were elsewhere. “I’ve met him. I learned the fate of my mother. I have no more questions left in my past. And I learned how I need to go about trying to mate you.”
This was a night that should have been focused on the dramatic, emotional reunion of a father, long suffering under the weight of his loss, and the son that had been forced to survive without him. Yet mating Grace was the only part Sway seemed interested in.
It was too tempting to get swept up in the heat in his gaze. In the way he was focused on her. The obvious direction his thoughts had taken. Because tonight might have been an emotional one for his father, but Sway had just been trying to get through it.
Still, she forced herself to stay on topic. To make sure he was okay. To check in with him after what had to have been a harrowing dinner.
“You’re not going to stay with him?”
He shook his head immediately. No hesitation. “No. This is not the kind of life I want to live. These are not my people.” He made a face. “I mean, in a literal, species sense, they are. But I could never live among them. I could never follow their lifestyle.”
Grace cocked her head curiously. “Why not?”
Sway didn’t answer immediately. His face pinched, like he was wrestling with his thoughts. He turned his gaze from her, and though he didn’t let her go, there was a new distance between them. A deliberate one that made her still as her heart thumped nervously.
“Grace, I have not told you all of my past.”
“I know. And I wasn’t going to ask. It’s painful for you. I don’t want to force you to revisit it.”
“That’s just the thing.” Sway’s jaw tightened. “Everyone says my past is painful. That the things I did and were done to me are going to haunt me. But… they don’t.”
Grace searched his face carefully. There was conflict there, but not horror. Not the shadowed trauma of a past too weighty for the heart to bear.
“Why not?” She asked at last, careful to take any hint of judgement from her tone.
Once again, Sway didn’t answer right away. And when he did, his words were slow and measured, like he was considering each one carefully before speaking it.
