Page 62 of A Scar in the Bone
How wrong I had been.
Kerstin smirked and nudged me with her elbow. “Of course you didn’t say that. Because it would be a lie. You were lucky to have him.” When her gaze lingered on Vetr, I knew she was thinking how alike the two brothers were, at least superficially. I heard it in her sigh of longing. She went on to say, “Vetr is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She was young. In her mind, looks, attraction were the things that mattered.
My gaze again slid to Vetr, holding that baby. I couldn’t help it. I felt an answering pull, a deep tug inside myself.
Maybe it was because of his resemblance to Fell—maybe a part of me was as shallow as Kerstin. Or maybe it was the baby in his arms that softened his edges and made me think of him in a different way … made me think about the things he had said to me in the dark … the whispered words that hit me in the gut, the way his hands and mouth had moved over me like a plea.
You’re worth the wait.
Or maybe because he had flown me from Penterra, cradling me in his arms like I was something precious—and then he had sat at my bedside for weeks, nursing me, coaxing me out of my svefn.
I rubbed my aching palm over the leg of my wool trousers as though I could rub out that pulsing jump beneath my skin. For the first time, I resented it. That constant buzz that ebbed and flowed like the tide, never stopping, never going away, never giving me peace.
I didn’t want to feel it anymore.
I wanted the echo to fall silent.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t Fell … so it should just … quit.Stop.
Let me go.
I wanted to be free. I wanted to feel like everyone else in the pride, existing in the moment. Seizing this life and living it as best they could. Together.
“I doubt Vetr will still be available by the time I can even choose a mate.” She gave me a surly glance. “Too many others panting after him. He’ll pick someone soon, I’m sure.”
My stomach clenched at this, my body reacting, rebelling viscerally at her words, feeling the pressure of time weighing on me, but I said nothing. What was there to say?He wants me.No. Kerstin would not understand my lack of receptiveness to his proposition.
“In a couple of years,” she continued, “I will have to pick someone.”
She glanced at the group by the fire again with another sigh. Looking at them, I saw boys, scarcely men. She saw something else … her future.
I shifted my weight uncomfortably on my feet, adjusting my basket, and I wasn’t certain what unsettled me more. That Kerstin would choose someone she didn’t want. Or that Vetr would eventually choose a mate that wasn’t me. The latter possibility streaked through me in a cold wash, jarring me.
Panic surged inside me, an invisible noose tightening around my neck incrementally, warning me that I would regret it if he did that, if he chose another when I did not yet know my own mind, while I was still trying to decide. A part of me would always wonder if I had made a mistake.
He’d said he would be patient … but how patient could he be with the burden of the pride on his shoulders, with the pressure to take a mate and grow dragonkind, when he had someone as beautiful as Gudru sneaking into his den at night?
My stomach continued to turn on itself as I looked at him across the space.
I didn’t want him.
I don’t.
He lifted his head from where he bent it over the baby, and his gaze unerringly locked on me, as though he knew I’d been watching him all this time. His silver eyes slid over me, gliding down my body slowly, stirring my fire to life everywhere he looked, and then his eyes moved back up to my face, where they settled.
At least I didn’tthinkI wanted him.
But neither did I want him to choose someone else.
It was wrong, I knew. Flighty and capricious as a spoiled child who could not make up her mind about what ribbon to wear in her hair. It was behavior I would have assigned to either Feena or Sybilia.
And yet I also knew I had to dosomething. Because doing nothing was its own decision, and I was not about to let life happentome. Not anymore.
I would chart my own course. I would not revert to the girl who obeyed and did her duty as others dictated. That girl was gone. Iwas what took her place, and I would make my own choices, wrong or right.
I didn’t look away from him or his molten silver eyes that peered into my very soul. Slowly, the corners of his mouth lifted in a smile, and my stomach pitched and rolled again.
