Chapter 17
SERATH
I can’t believe what Selas is saying to me right now. “You left her with him?”
Selas sighs. “She’s perfectly safe.”
“With him .” I take the steps to the observatory watchtower three at a time. I don’t bother to turn on the lights. I don’t need them. Besides, I need to be incognito while I spy on Cam and her ex-lover.
I spot them on the gravel path that leads to the tower.
He looms over her like a dark cloud, his large frame blocking most of her smaller one from view, but I can see the oval of her face turned up to his.
It’s impossible to read her expression from this distance, but I’m hoping it’s one of indifference. Disgust even.
Dammit, I need the telescope, but my feet remain rooted to the spot as the male reaches up to touch her face. Why is he touching her? What the actual fuck?
“Serath, calm down.” Selas places a hand on my shoulder.
“Stop that!” I shrug her off. “I don’t need calming down. I need that impudent wretch to get his hands off my woman.”
“What are we looking at?” Orix drawls from behind us.
“Serath is spying on Cam and the Ulrickson male,” Selas says.
“Without the telescope?” Orix sounds genuinely confused.
I take a step toward the contraption, but Selas blocks me.
“Don’t,” she says. “You’ll just make yourself feel worse.”
Orix’s adopted cat pads closer and meows as if in agreement.
But I need to see. “I have to see her face.” Need to see how she looks at him.
“She deserves her privacy,” Selas says.
Bullshit. “If she wanted privacy, she wouldn’t be on the path in plain view.”
“You want her to have privacy with him?” Orix asks.
My chest rumbles, the beast inside waking up.
“Will you stop goading him?” Selas snaps at Orix.
Far below us, Cam pulls away from Levi and puts distance between them.
The knot in my belly eases. “That’s my girl.”
“Oh boy,” Selas groans.
I don’t need an audience while I act like a lovesick youngling. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“You mean aside from watching you spy on your mate?” Orix retorts.
They’re both right. This is ridiculous. What am I doing?
Something soft rubs against my ankles, and I look down to see two peridot eyes staring up at me. Taz meows and bumps his head against my leg as if to say, It’s okay. We understand.
I exhale and step away from the window.
“You need to give her as much space as you can,” Selas says. “It’ll be hard enough having her under this roof every night. Hard seeing her every day. Hard for both of you.”
“Stop. Saying. Hard.”
Orix snorts, and I shoot him a dark look. He holds up his hands. “Hey, I’m just thinking what you’re thinking.”
“Cam deserves to have someone in her life. A real lover.”
Her words slice into me, tugging a low growl from my lips. “Stop.”
“No. You need to accept that,” Selas says. “You can’t expect her to be chaste all her life. And you can’t be either. I know what I said to her in the training room the other day, but it isn’t sustainable, not if she ends up as part of our team permanently.”
“You mean if Romi isn’t…If he can’t be an elite anymore,” Orix says.
“Yes,” Selas replies. “We need to be prepared for the worst, in which case, Cameron will stay on as elite for years. You’ll both have to learn to lead separate lives while under the same roof.”
“You’re saying I should encourage her to fuck other males?” Even saying the words makes me furious. “I’ll kill anyone who touches her.”
“So you want her to suffer? To need relief all the time?”
Fuck. “Stop it.”
“That sexual tension will need to be relieved or else—”
“Enough!”
Silence fills the space between us. “I can’t think about it. I can’t know. But I won’t…I won’t intervene.” Fuck, it hurts to even say it.
But she’s right. She’s my mate and my beast wants only her. But until a fated pair have consummated, they can control their beasts enough to take their pleasures elsewhere. At least, that’s the theory. But I don’t know of any fated pair that have tested it. Cam and I will be the first.
I feel sick.
“Giving her permission to take a lover doesn’t mean she will,” Selas says. “The woman is about as stubborn as you are.”
“But she can’t have Levi,” Orix says, joining us at the windows. “The spawn of Ulrickson is too much of a risk. The Mason boy, however…He’s a safe choice.”
The inferno in my chest rages on, logic fighting primal nature. Beast fighting the goyle.
“She’s on her way here now,” Selas says. “I’ll let her in, and you…” She shakes her head at me. “Go take a cold shower and calm down.”
Cold showers are about to become my best friend.