Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Ella
I traced the lines down his arm while he held my naked body tightly to him, both of us breathing hard. My fingers slowed at the curve of his biceps, where the mate marks stopped somewhat abruptly.
They weren’t complete.
“Keep watching,” I murmured playfully, feeling his head turn from the window.
It seemed like such a silly thing to say, and while I had enjoyed the way his attention was on me more than the window, I was calming now, the moment over. He could go back to what had brought us there in the first place.
We split apart, donning clothes in mostly silence.
I kept waiting for the regret to sink in, to push away the afterglow and pleasant thoughts about what we’d just done.
The negatives never came, though. Even feeling him leak out of me brought a little smile to my face, a naughty memory of what I’d just done. What we had just done.
“You look happy,” Dirk remarked, running a hand up my leg to produce pleasant trembles without the earlier eroticism.
Did I? I smiled. The truth was, I felt happy and at ease. Everything with Dirk was exactly what I needed as long as I didn’t fight it.
I could just see fate, if it were a person, smirking wildly and saying, “I told you so.”
“I am,” I said, and there was no accompanying tightness, no sense that I wasn’t being completely honest with myself. I was. Being with Dirk, and around Dirk, was slowly filling a hole in me I had assumed would always go empty.
“Good,” he said as I snuggled in tightly to his side. I pulled one of his arms over my shoulder, feeling the firmness of his muscles underneath my fingertips. “You deserve to be happy.”
I sighed contentedly.
“You know that was ridiculous to make me look out the window. Right?” he growled playfully a moment later. “I wanted nothing more than to stare at you.”
“I know,” I replied lightly. “But I needed it to be that way, Dirk. I had to be in control the first time.”
Dirk shifted, looking away from the window to snare my gaze and hold it firmly.
“You will always control me. My heart, my mind, my soul. Today, tomorrow, and for eternity you will have me, Ella. I will never be anyone else’s. Only yours.”
I shivered as his statement resonated through me. I was his. He was mine. Even if we had yet to sink our fangs into one another and complete the bond, it was only a matter of time.
“So what now?” he asked, switching so easily to a lighter topic as men do.
“Now we wait, I guess. See if something happens out there.”
I knew he meant between us, but I didn’t have an answer yet. Despite it still not happening, a large part of me kept insisting the hammer had yet to drop. That I would be filled with regret and pain, and need to pull away.
Dirk grunted an agreement. “Well then, good thing you don’t mind being locked up in here with me,” he joked, leaning down for a kiss.
I frowned at him, pulling away as my mood soured.
“What?” Dirk paused and then pulled away when I still didn’t come forward. “What did I do wrong?”
I sighed. “Dirk, I know you didn’t mean it that way, but …”
He twitched as realization hit, his face clouding over, eyes dull and unhappy. “Crap. I wasn’t thinking, El. It was just supposed to be a joke about us stuck in this room. Not actually locked up.”
“I know,” I repeated, taking his hand, giving it a squeeze, and trying to remind myself he’d only been joking.
“I’m your mate, so I know you didn’t mean it.
But I can’t help but have my mind go there.
And not everyone might be so understanding.
Milly, okay probably not Milly, but others like us would be upset, thinking you mean cages and shackles, like the hunters. ”
Dirk nodded emphatically. “Of course. I understand. Leave it up to me to screw things up after such a good time,” he growled. “Idiot.”
“I’m not mad. I promise. I’m not. Besides, it’s not your fault, you didn’t grow up like us. You always had your freedom. You don’t know what it’s like to have it taken.” I kissed his arm, right where the mate marks stopped, but Dirk remained oddly stiff.
“That’s not really true,” he said, staring out the hole unblinking. “My life has never truly been free, either. It just hasn’t had the outline that Caz’s did. I’ve always been the heir. The spare, the backup. Expected and demanded to be his clone, nothing more.”
I clenched my jaw in frustration. He wasn’t really trying to compare. Was he? Did he not have the slightest idea what life as a Clippy was like?
“Yeah. Sounds really rough. Having everything in life,” I muttered. “Never having to pin all your hopes on Cerberus killing the Hunters before they get you.”
Dirk pulled away, his mouth and eyes flat.
“You have no idea what I’ve had, or not had, Ella.
I’m not trying to play a game of who had it worse.
Or to say that your life was somehow easy in comparison.
I’m an idiot sometimes, but I’m not that dumb.
All I’m saying is please don’t pretend like my life was all orblight and laughter. It very much was not.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t have been that hard,” I said, my hackles rising.
“You had money. A constant roof over your head. You could sleep at night without keeping one eye open. Clothing that didn’t have holes.
Food that tasted good. Abyss, you had a family who didn’t disown you the moment they knew what you were. ”
Dirk took a deep, shuddering breath. His features were like granite, unmoving and stiff, frozen. “I would much rather have had a family who disowned me and was still alive than a father who killed a mother. Or a brother who killed a father.”
My jaw dropped, and I sat back onto the floorboards heavily. “What? Dirk!”
He sighed and turned to me at last. “I am not trying to one-up you, Ella. I am incredibly sorry for everything you’ve gone through in life. I really, really am. I regret the part I’ve played in it. All I’m saying is you don’t know everything about me or what my life has been like until now.”
I sputtered, searching for words. Dirk and Caz’s father had killed their mother? Caz had killed their father? I braced myself with my hands, my head spinning with all this new information.
“Why would you tell me this?” I asked, stunned.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “To tell you that my life hasn’t been what you’ve built it up in your head as. To share things with you, as my mate, that you deserve to know. To open up to you. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“Y-yeah. I guess. I just … that’s quite the opener.”
He smiled, a sad look on a man who was normally so proud and happy. “At least I’m trying, Ella. Are you?”
I leaned back against the outer wall of the building, feeling attacked. And I should, because he was right. I hadn’t shared a thing about my past with him, despite mine affecting us much more obviously than his.
“Are you okay with this?” I asked. “Do you need to talk about this with me or Caz?”
“Caz isn’t aware I know. About our father, at least. We both knew our father killed Mother, even if he never admitted it.”
“So tell him?”
Dirk shook his head. “He’s trying to be a big protective brother. He thinks he succeeded, that he kept me safe from everything. I don’t have it in me to admit that I knew from the start. It would hurt him, make Caz think he failed. He doesn’t deserve that.”
I chewed on that. It made sense while also feeling incredibly wrong. “Does anyone else know?”
“Anna, I would assume, but I’m not sure. Otherwise, I doubt it. Caz framed it as an assassination and did a very good job of it. If anyone else, say Mirko or orb-forbid someone with actual brains, like Damon, found out, they would use it to remove him from power.”
“And you just told me.”
Dirk’s eyes hardened. “You are my mate, Ella. I trust you not to go blabbing.” He sighed. “Besides, our father was a piece of shit who abused everything in his entire kingdom if it benefited him, including Caz and our mother. He had it coming.”
The scars on Caz’s back that I had seen whenever he shifted.
I understood now. I’d never asked, but I had wondered. Now I didn’t, because I knew the awful truth.
“I’m so sorry for all of that,” I said, reaching tentatively for his hand, trying to bridge the gap that had cropped up. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry, Dirk.”
His fingers pushed between mine, linking us and holding tight. He wasn’t pulling away after all.
“You should talk to Caz, though. Tell him. That burden should be shared. You guys are all that you have left.”
Dirk looked at me for a long time. “Not anymore,” he said quietly.
I looked down, blushing at the attention. “You should still tell him,” I said, stubbornly pushing.
“Maybe.” Dirk looked away for a moment. “Things haven’t always been the best between Caz and me. They are now, and I’m not sure I want to risk that.”
“Really?” I perked up. They seemed very close to me, if a little formal, given that Caz was the ruler of all ice dragons. “What happened? What do you mean?”
Dirk worked his jaw. “I did some things. Things I’m not proud of. Caz straightened me out. Eventually. He was pretty disappointed in me.”
“Even more reason to make sure the air is clear between you two,” I said, shuffling closer.
Dirk put his arm around me.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said in quiet thought, his tone implying he would give it serious consideration, not just blow it off. “But I want to know …”
It was clear he was about to ask me something about my past, but the question never came as his body language changed. He stiffened and leaned closer to the hole in the wall.
“What is it?” I asked, impatient for details.
“A lead,” Dirk rumbled, moving swiftly for the loose floorboards that were our way in and out. “Come on. Let’s go.”