Page 5 of Broken Fate
A desert I would truly love to explore. I saw its edges once. That was all.
“Aren’t you the slightest bit interested, or excited, about who your mate might be?” Clive asked, only the tiniest of hitches in his voice.
He’s excited to be mated to you.
“I don’t know,” I said with a groan, trying to let him down gently. Little nerdy Clive was not the sort of person I ever imagined being mated to. I’d known him for too long! We’d met when we were eleven, and he wore glasses and was the runt of our class, the tiniest little shifter. Even smaller than me. Sure, we’d grown up, but that was who he would always be to me.
“It’s not a death sentence,” he joked.
I glared at him. Did he know how close to home that comment hit? He knew about my sister, of course, but did he know that I still had nightmares? I doubted it.
“I want to be free, Cli.Free. I want to make my own choices. I want to explore. Totravel. To see it all. Arcadia is great and all, but I want to see the great city of Lycaon, don’t you? Or what about the docks and Grand Bazaar in Helisson?” I was bouncing and gesturing wildly. “I want to stand in the heat of the mighty forges of Nycitum and all the other lands. Come on, Cli, think about it. Wouldn’t that be a grand adventure? To go from the plains of Onetrus to the theatres of Pallas and everything in between? To see everything that the Canis Empire has to offer?”
My face almost hurt from smiling so wide as I envisioned the years it would take to see all that the wolf lands contained. It would be an adventure of a lifetime.
Clive shrugged. “Sounds like a lot of walking, if you ask me.”
I threw back my head and laughed, giving him a shove. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. It would be a great chance to stretch the legs and let my wolf run far and wide. All the smells, the sights. It would be grand,” I said dreamily. Not that I was likely ever to experience such a thing.
“But … doesn’t your wolf want a mate?” Clive pushed. He shook his head, frowning. “Mine is going crazy, howling for it, basically.”
Rolling my eyes, I moved forward as the line began to advance. “That’s because boys are horny.”
Clive had the decency to blush, looking away from me as he did. “Maybe,” he admitted, “but there’s more to it than that. I want to have ahome, Jada. A place I belong.”
I stiffened, refusing to meet his gaze.
Couldn’t he see? Couldn’t any of them see? The whole reason I wanted to go out and explore was because Ididn’tbelong. I’d ruined my parents’ relationship by killing Lanna. I hadonefriend. Everyone knew me as the sister-killer and talked behind my back about it. There was nothing for me in Arcadia. Nothing at all.
“What about a family?” Clive pressed, not sensing my change of mood, too busy looking around as the line moved. “Don’t you want a family? Children, that whole thing?”
The buildings that had sprung up outside Arcadia’s walls swallowed us whole as whatever had happened at the gates cleared.
“One day,” I said softly, trying not to be awed by the grandeur of it all. It had been years since I’d last visited the city, and it had grown again. Swelling alongside the population as Arcadia, always the second in everything, grew to challenge her big sister city.
Lycaon was the home of the central shifter government, and it was our biggest city, dwarfing Arcadia, as I’d been told. It sounded wonderful, a city so large you could get lost in it. How easy it would be to be swallowed up by it. A nobody without a reputation. Somewhere I could start fresh.
It was a dream come true.
“I can’t wait to be a dad,” Clive said. “To watch them grow and learn.”
“You’d make a fantastic father,” I said, meaning every ounce of it. Clive was everything I couldn’t be in that department. Caring, gentle, and, most of all, a positive look on everything.
“Thank you,” he said, standing a little taller at the compliment.
And Clivewouldbe great at that. All of it. He’d be an excellent mate as well.
He just couldn’t be mine. I couldn’t bear to be the one to hold him back, to bring him down and ruin that infectious optimism.
The divide between us seemed to widen. It had grown as our Fate Night neared, but now, it yawned open like a chasm, an abyss that was no longer passable. We were becoming separate people.
I hoped my mother was wrong. That Fate would know better than to put us together. She was a fickle thing. Protected by the eight stones that housed her power, nobody could predict what she would do. But maybe I could influence her decision a little? Convince her to spare Clive and pair him with someone else. Someone who shared his dream. He deserved that.
“Would you look atthat,” Clive whispered as we stepped past the rows of guards standing at attention by the gates, resplendent with silvery armor that gleamed in the sunlight.
Ahead of us loomed the Alpha’s palace, a city within a city almost. More walls swept around its huge, whitewashed towers, their spires reaching for the sky. Multi-colored banners hung from the tops of each one, snapping smartly in the breeze.
Guards marched along the tops of the walls in groups of four, only visible by the brightness of their armor and the tiny flags attached to the tips of their very real long spears.
