Chapter 21 #2
I nodded, and without saying anything else, the Beta left the room. But Hayden’s presence in Torin’s personal space didn’t feel right. I thought I was betraying Torin but needed to speak to my bodyguard to clear the air.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the apartment and downstairs into the boardroom. Then I shut the door behind us and let go of Hayden’s hand, but he grasped mine and intertwined our fingers.
The tingles at my fingertips spread to my wrist and elbow, and my skin warmed under Hayden’s touch. The touch of a mate. The sparks that exploded under my skin were a sure sign that Hayden and I still shared a mate bond.
“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, Hayden, but I told you not to come around the perimeter of Torin’s pack.” I attempted to keep my voice steady, but it broke at the end.
The warriors were already distracted, and so was Torin, making us all easy targets.
“You’re not safe here, sweetheart. I’d like you to drive with me to the kingdom today,” Hayden said in a low, seductive voice.
My body shivered. Hayden seemed to have one purpose—to get me to the kingdom.
“I can’t,” I said and shook off his hand. “I’ll call Dad today, and I’ll explain.”
But could I tell the King I had two mates? After learning the vampire Alpha was my mate, I didn’t want to think about Dad’s reaction.
I walked to the window and turned my back to Hayden. I didn’t want him to notice my flushed cheeks. Feeling the mate touch of two men must be the worst curse there was in our realm.
“Are you reluctant to return to the kingdom because it’s not your home anymore?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Home is where your heart is, sweetheart. If you’re with the right mate, the location of your home doesn’t matter. I’m asking you to give me the chance to get close to you so you can learn more about me. I hope you’ll learn to love me. Only then will you have found a home.”
I blinked back sudden tears. I was an emotional mess. It would be so easy to ask Hayden to mark me. Without hesitation, he would probably do it here, in Torin’s boardroom.
But I was hesitating. Wasn’t it because completing my mating with Hayden would mean I would have to inherit the throne immediately and make the kingdom my home? Or was there another reason I couldn’t fully understand at the moment?
My ears rang as more blood rushed to my head, making my thoughts jumbled.
Hayden had to leave before Torin found him in his manor and tore down the place. I turned to face Hayden and opened my mouth to speak but halted, startled.
Hayden had moved behind me with his stealthy movements.
“We’re mates, Princess.”
“But Torin is also my mate, Hayden. How’s that possible?”
Hayden’s blue eyes turned icy.
“He’s hiding something and lying to you.”
“Ah-ha. That’s what the Alpha is saying about you.”
“I thought your choice was obvious. You won’t be in danger with me,” he said, moving into my personal space. “You’ve explored enough with your other mate, and I’m starting to feel hurt.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“I can deal with the fact that you have two mates, but what seems unfair to me is that you spend your time with one of them. You should give us an equal chance. Don’t you agree?
” He took a deep breath. “I could have made it very hard for the Alpha to have access to you, so I haven’t talked to the King yet because I trust you’ll make the right choice.
But if you get hurt one more time because of Torin, I’ll step in. ”
His voice was so low and menacing that I believed his threat.
“Mating is for life, Hayden. I need time to figure out everything. And I need answers first.”
Hayden let out a heavy breath that tickled my forehead. When I inhaled, my lungs filled with his scent of orange and lemon.
“For life, you say.” He paused, studying my eyes for something. “You’ll age, and Torin won’t. Eventually, he’ll replace you with another.”
Hayden was telling the truth. The more he talked, the deeper the hollowness in my chest got.
I turned to face the window again. “You should probably go,” I whispered.
My bodyguard moved so close behind me that his body engulfed my small frame. His hard chest brushed against my back, and hot flashes traveled all over me.
He rested one hand on the window on my left side, his head leaned in near my ear. Hayden blew a hot breath on the window, fogging it.
He drew a daisy wheel and said, “When you were younger, you drew daisies on foggy windows in your room or the car. To me, there is a reason why your birthmark is a daisy. It symbolizes innocence and purity like your heart, sweetheart.” He stepped back from me.
“Please think about what I said. Don’t make me wait too long. ”
After a moment, I watched out the window as Hayden got inside an SUV and drove to the place I so desperately avoided.
I blew another hot breath over the same spot on the glass, and the daisy wheel reappeared.
I traced it with my finger all over again until my heartbeat slowed enough for me to return to Torin.
I slipped under the blanket next to the Alpha, who was now lying on his side facing me.
As soon as I settled, Torin opened his eyes and stared at me with so much intensity that my breathing hitched.
His gaze lowered to the edges of the bandage showing under my shirt, and I was sure he could scent my blood.
Was I selfishly making it too hard for him? I shouldn’t be so close to him since I caused him to struggle with his vampire side.
But he didn’t show any signs of shifting. He wrapped my hair around his finger and rubbed it to feel its texture. Then he let it unravel and drop.
“I stayed away from you to protect you, but here we are. I keep failing to protect you,” he whispered, and there was so much regret in his tone that my heart clenched.
If he was not remorseful for wanting to drink my blood, he regretted it when I got hurt and he couldn’t protect me.
“But you did. Thank you for saving my life.”
His eyebrows furrowed, and I didn’t want us to argue, especially after a long day.
“I’m sorry for accessing your dream realm when you told me not to do so,” I said.
“I’m impressed you figured out the access point. I didn’t even know my access point until recently,” he said, giving me a small, genuine smile.
“I saw the burning cottage on the sketches and thought it was important to you somehow.”
“I see it in my nightmares all the time. It must be significant, but it must have happened before I was turned.” Torin turned on his back and stared at the ceiling.
“But don’t you want to find out what happened to you in the past? You can dig into records and ask the other Alphas for help to look at their old records. Maybe there’s something about your family,” I said.
Torin scoffed. “The other Alphas are not dying to help me, Anna. But regardless, I could research, but what if I find out things I don’t like?
” He exhaled loudly. “What if I find out I had a family, a pup, and his or her generations are still alive, the kids of their kids? What if they don’t want anything to do with me?
I’m part something werewolves hate. It’s better to leave it alone for now. ”
An image of Torin holding a child’s hand with a smiling woman by his side popped into my mind. I bit the inside of my cheek, closing and reopening my eyes.
Ignoring my other disturbing thoughts, I focused on Torin’s emotions after finding out he had a traitor in his pack. Today wasn’t the day I’d get any answers from him.
Torin turned to me and asked, “What happened to Hayden?”
“He left, but I spoke to him about being mates. He doesn’t know why I have two mates.”
Torin sighed and squeezed his eyes shut but reopened them immediately.
“Something is not right,” he said. “Do you feel the same when he touches you?”
His strained voice did something to my insides. The tension in his tone tugged at the very fabric of my being.
“Torin, don’t do this to yourself.”
“I hate that you feel the same desire and lust and attractiveness toward him. It makes me angry and pains me and…” A rumbling sound came from his throat.
“At first I thought being mates was all about the physical stuff. I thought all I wanted was sex and was curious about it. But that’s not it. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted.”
“What do you want, Anna?”
“Intimacy. To be touched. Looked at. Admired. Smiled at. Laugh with someone. Feel safe. Feel like someone’s really got me. That’s what I crave.”
“You can have those things with me, as my Luna. Once everything settles down, we can have the Luna ceremony, even though it was delayed,” he said.
“Your unmarked Luna,” I corrected.
Torin cared about me, but I wasn’t sure he loved me—at least in the way I wanted to be loved. How could he completely love me when he hadn’t accepted a part of himself and he didn’t love himself fully?
I couldn’t accept the Luna position on Torin’s terms without being marked by him.
I would stay by his side, though. But marking meant so much to me, and I was unsure if I could be truly happy in the long term.
I would second guess my choice, feeling out of place, not fully belonging to his pack or to him.
Choosing to walk this path felt like a compromise and the path of least resistance, but also the one with the most misery.
The other option was to walk away from Torin, refusing to be his Luna. Then I would lose Torin, but I wouldn’t compromise on what I believed to be important. My heart clenched at the thought, and I took a deep breath to steady my nerves.
Helplessly withering while Torin still lived young was not something my heart could survive. I could enjoy this moment with Torin, but we had no future.
Torin lifted on his elbow and kissed my forehead. But instead of the usual warmth I experienced upon his touch, my mind went blank this time, and then a disturbing image popped into my brain and didn’t want to leave.
I saw myself old, maybe about Lisa’s age, with a permanent limp in my tired strides, deep wrinkles, and white hair.
And Torin was as handsome as he was right now.
The image changed to me lying on my deathbed with Torin beside me, holding my bony hand covered in dark spots.
It was as if I was looking at us above the bed instead of from within my body.
My chest rose and fell abnormally slowly. I was about to take my last breath while Torin had eternity before him.
The image popped out of my mind like a bubble and disappeared, but the moisture in my eyes stayed. I swallowed hard, trying not to choke.
Torin would never be truly mine. The vampire kept a part of him hidden and distant from me. He’d never belong to me and me alone. And he wanted me to be his but on his terms.
Torin observed me, staying silent as if he knew I was working something out in my mind and needed time. He intuitively understood me on a deeper level.
I cleared my throat and found the courage to speak. “Torin, I can’t be your Luna. Not in the way you want me to be.”
Torin’s eyes flashed, but he remained silent and in his human form. His chiseled jaw tightened, and the wrinkle between his thick brows deepened as a wave of disappointment, sadness, and pain washed over his handsome face.
My heart was breaking. I could feel his body radiating his inner turmoil, the emotional storm brewing inside. He tried silently to accept my words.
At last, he nodded and said, “I respect your decision, Anna.”
Even if Torin was able to hide his emotions in the kingdom, he couldn’t do so in front of me. I’d grown attuned to the subtle changes in his body. I could see the palpable hurt in his glistening eyes. The faint tremor that ran through his body. The slight quiver of his lips.
In that fleeting moment of vulnerability, I saw beyond the facade he wore so well.
He was a man grappling with longing, trying to mask his fractured heart.
As I lay here, enveloped in the ache that surrounded us both, I realized that sometimes I had to let go of people, my ideas, or goals, even when every fiber of my being screamed to hold on.
I was not a woman who swept issues under the rug, but right now, my heart ached so much that I was ready to move on and forget.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for switching the books.”
Torin blinked, and his jaw muscles twitched as if he’d woken up from whatever trance he was in. “I know it was important to you, so I wouldn’t have given it to them. I was going to free you before you got hurt.”
“And you did.”
He frowned, but I ignored it.
“Now we have two magic books.”
Torin’s amber eyes brightened. I forgot he was asleep when I found the second book.
“You’re a magnet for trouble, Princess.” Torin smiled.
“Or a magnet for magic books. But before we can study the books, we need to do something.” I took a deep breath. “We need to call my father.”
Torin swung his hand to the other side and picked up his phone from the nightstand.
“Wait. Let’s go sit in the living room,” I said and swallowed the dryness in my throat. “I’ll feel weird if we’re in bed talking to Dad like he knows something is up.”
Torin rested his hands on his chest. “He’ll eventually find out we’re mates, Anna.”
“But Dad is not ready to think of you as my mate.”
“In other words, the King wouldn’t approve of me as your mate, would he?”
I flinched at the pain in his tone. “How do I explain my two mates?”
Torin sat up abruptly and swung his leg over the bed. “I don’t care if you have an entire queue of mates. There’s only one man you’ll be with, and that’s me, Princess. Because you own my heart.”
His words resonated in my soul—a surge of warmth swelling within my chest. I knew I could own his heart, but first, I had to gather the pieces and put them together in the puzzle.
After we sat next to each other on the couch, we placed the phone on the table in front of us. I perched on the cushion with my back as straight as a ruler and as tense as a crossbow string.
I sent a mental prayer for Dad not to demand that I go back to the kingdom. I gained physical freedom today, but was I about to lose my independence to the King’s overbearing orders to stay in the kingdom from now on?
Torin clicked and swiped on the phone, leaving it on speakerphone. Dad picked up at the first ring, and I held my breath.
“Alpha Torin, I was waiting for a call from you,” the King said, his voice clipped and harsh.
I cleared my throat, unable to swallow. “Dad, it’s me.”
A long silence followed—the calm before the storm.