Chapter 15 Thaleo
THALEO
Ifell into Nazreen like a man from the back of his braxilk. Terrifying, exhilarating. I had the distinct feeling that I should try to halt my freefall, or at the very least, slow it down.
But I did not. I did not think myself capable of it. It made me think of what she’d once said to me. That human phrase. Falling in love.
I sought her every free moment I had, and in the most wondrously gratifying turn of events I ever could have imagined, she seemed to welcome my company, bestowing smiles upon me that seemed to dim the very sun in comparison.
Sometimes, we simply talked, walking together while I showed her some new facet of my mountain.
Other times, we collided in a desperate tangle of limbs and tongues.
I thought of the luscious perfection of her body constantly.
Dreamed of the taste of her cunt, the way the slick, supple flesh fluttered around my tongues or fingers.
I brought myself to the point of terrible hardness wondering what that clenching flesh would feel like on my cock.
In the background, I was constantly aware of her return to Gahn Errok’s mountain, getting closer day by day. It made my claws twitch with the need to keep her.
But the Vrika did not come to me.
She was not mine to keep.
In the quiet moments, the moments where I lay alone in my bed and wished she were beside me, always beside me, I found myself bargaining with fate, with the Vrika, with anyone who would listen.
I would promise things, make claims about what I would sacrifice to have her.
Make her my mate, I said to no one but the bleak inside of my own head, and I will do anything.
I tried to be the best and strongest Gahn I could be, as if to prove to the Vrika that I deserved her.
Even while I knew that the desperation of my own wanting, and all this pathetic begging, meant I was not a good, strong Gahn at all.
I was descending into a frantic sort of selfishness that made me alien to myself.
I stared at Nazreen all throughout the morning meal on the day she was to fly back to Gahn Errok’s mountain. She did not look at me, nor did she sit beside me. I had not shared the changes between us with anyone, and I was fairly certain that she had not, either.
Before the eyes of all others, we were as we ever were.
Alone, we were different. Bound by something I could not name and could not escape. I did not even want to escape it.
Now, I was about to watch her disappear once more into the territory of the hateful Gahn Errok. I could not ask her to stay. I had no right to.
But despite this, I still found myself standing and growling, “Wait,” as she attempted to leave the hall with her friends. She paused, turning those deep green sight stars on me. A colour I had come to love above all others.
“All good?” Valeria asked, also halting her progress from the hall. The rest of their party followed suit.
“I…require Nazreen.”
Colour crept into Nazreen’s cheeks at that, and I regretted the awkward crudeness of my words. I’d meant to say something like, “I require some conversation with Nazreen.” But half the blasted words got lost between my head and my mouth.
Valerian and Grim shared a look, as did Tilly and Fiona. Oxriel and Zoren were the only ones who stood idly by without engaging in silent conversations with their eyes.
“I need to do some checks on the shuttle before we leave anyway,” Valeria said, lifting her shoulders and letting them fall. “Are you all packed?”
“Yes,” Nazreen replied, and I hardened myself against a sudden punch of pain at her answer. She was already prepared to leave me.
“Alright, then,” Valeria said. “Meet us outside in, like, half an hour.”
They departed, but others remained in the hall. I needed her alone. Just one more time before she left.
“Come,” I said. The only place I could guarantee would be completely empty at this time of day was my own sleeping cave. This was the very first time I had brought her here. I had a near-destructive need to have her in my own bed. Now.
“Hi,” she said softly when we were in my quarters. It was something I’d come to expect from her at this point. It was a short, breathy, human greeting that she used when we were alone. It did not simply seem to be another version of hello. It felt like an intimate signal, just for me.
Or maybe I was a fool for even imagining it could mean such a thing.
Nazreen had given me her time, had given me exquisite access to her body.
Even given me little slices of her past that I treasured and savoured, sweeter than any moonbark.
But she appeared not to be bothered by our upcoming separation.
Meanwhile, my insides were churning like the mountains after a landslide.
“You return to Gahn Errok today,” I said by way of response. I did not know what else to do. I wanted to drag her into the furs on my bed. I wanted to let her go so that I could try to regain some semblance of sanity without her.
Above all, I wanted her. When I’d once vowed not to want anything for myself at all.
“I do. That was the deal you came up with,” she reminded me.
She tilted her head as she regarded me, and by the skies, she was so cursedly beautiful.
Morning light spilled into my cave, illuminating her in all her starkly contrasting glory.
Soft lips and bony nose. Dark hair and brows and light skin.
White eyes around the shadowy green and black of her sight stars.
The long eyelashes and short blunt teeth.
Weak, flimsy little claws defending a rock-like will and a ferociously protective streak.
The guardedness, the wariness, and the divine sweetness once you somehow managed to steal past them.
A human woman in a Deep Sky cave. A human woman who was not my mate, standing right beside my bed where no other female ever had.
She confounded me constantly. She should not have made sense.
Yet nothing had ever made so much sense to my heart as her.
“Would you ever…” The words felt oddly thick in my throat. “…choose to stay?”
Her mouth quirked unhappily. “I don’t believe I actually do have a choice in that. Do you think Gahn Errok would just let me hang out here without a mate in your mountain? He’d be banging down the door demanding access to the unmated new woman. Just like you would, if things were reversed.”
“Forget Gahn Errok.” I didn’t even want to hear his name in her mouth. It always put me into a foul temper. Always. “If everything else fell away, if there were no other men to consider, what would you choose?”
Her lips parted slightly. She closed them resolutely once more, tension entering her delicate jaw before she answered. “I don’t know, Gahn Thaleo. What would you choose?”
“Don’t call me Gahn,” I murmured. I’d never felt like a Gahn beside her.
“Then tell me, Thaleo. What would you choose? What do you want?” She lifted then dropped her hands in a gesture that seemed to indicate a sort of futileness. “Do you want me to stay here as your not-quite-mate? Tell Gahn Errok you want me, and that’s enough?”
It wasn’t enough, and she knew that. I’d built my entire life around honouring the Vrika and ensuring our people’s survival. Who would I be, if I went back on that now, simply for my own desire for this intoxicating, gutting woman?
“I’m not asking you to do that,” she said, perhaps sensing the disquiet in me. “I’m just pointing out the awkwardness of our situation. I’m not your mate.”
She was so small, her voice melodic and low. How could she make her words feel like a man’s hard blows upon me?
“So I don’t really have a leg to stand on, here. Even if I did want to spend more time with you. I’ll only be gone a week. Seven days. And…” Her sight stars darkened. She looked away. “We should probably get used to time apart, anyway.”
“Why?” I demanded, taking a step towards her.
“Because the longer we’re together the more this…whatever this even is…grows. I can’t…” Maddeningly, she kept her gaze on the wall and not on me. “I can’t fall in love with you if I can’t stay with you.”
“Of course you can stay with me.”
I’d move a mountain to make it so.
“Of course I can’t!” she countered, snapping her eyes back to mine. “For all you know, some other man could get a mate vision of me any day now. One of Gahn Errok’s. Or maybe,” her voice practically crackled with the final words, “one of your own.”
The world tilted.
What if she were mated to one of my own men? Men whom I would gladly lay my own life down for, without a moment’s hesitation? If I would die for them, how could I not give her up?
And yet, how could I give her up? When such a thing seemed like it would be so much worse than dying? At least dying would actually kill me. Losing her would be a sustained agony for the rest of my cursed days.
If the Vrika chose her for one of my men, and I fought to keep her…
I would become the most pathetic, hateful sort of Gahn.
A selfish one who puts his own desires above the wellbeing of his people.
I would become everything my uncle – and I – had ever reviled.
Such a thing would defile my uncle’s memory.
He was a Gahn who gave his life to protect his people. He had taught me to be the same.
And now, here I stood, flailing, barely breathing, like my lungs were being slowly crushed inside my chest, at the mere thought of giving up a woman.
Not my life. A woman.
The panicked reaction in my body told me that they were one and the same.
But they weren’t. They couldn’t be. My life was my people. My tribe was everything to me.
But there, on the other side of everything, was Nazreen.
I reached for her.