72. Never
~ GRACE ~
I almost fell apart when it all became clear. I tore back to the stable, ready to abandon all of this. I’d known he rejected me. But this? A mate?
I’d thought things had improved. That he’d softened. That he cared. But, he found me so disgusting that he rejected a divine bond?
It wasn’t until I got to the stable and Koa chittered and screamed, attempting to soothe me, but losing her words in her stress, and I saw what this did to her, that my sight cleared.
He wasn’t the first man who’d fled at the idea of being close to me. But he was the first to be given such value, who rejected me so outright.
I had been humiliated. Shamed. And I would feel that for a long time. But it wasn’t just me. Now he had hurt my dragon.
I was furious.
All those early accusations that I was the one who couldn’t be trusted? That I was hiding things?
All that running away and demanding I tell him the truth? While he’d hidden this?
How dare he?
I had been tormented. Broken. Convinced I was the problem, that I wasn’t enough for anyone. When in truth, it was only that I was intended for One, and he found me lacking.
Poor Koa. I’d lashed out in anger at her first—why hadn’t she told me?
But it wasn’t fair of me, and I knew it. She’d tried. Suddenly all those conversations about the mate, all those times she showed me Kham when I asked questions about Voski, made sense. She’d been trying to parse out how her bond related to mine, and shown me in the only image she knew.
Luckily, Kham knew precisely where Voski was, and Koa flew me out there.
The moment I saw him, red-faced and gaping at me from the meadow where, weeks earlier, I’d gone looking for Koa and found him instead, my rage burned.
That pull in my chest that day hadn’t just been Koa. It had been him?
I hadn’t planned to strike him. I didn’t like violence. But when he just stood there, gaping, and I realized all the ways he’d lied. He was offensive to me. Then, while I ranted and shouted and he stared, all those pulling, tearing pieces in my chest demanded an explanation.
“Why? What is it about me that is so abhorrent that you cannot stomach the idea of me as a mate? Why don’t you want me?!”
He flinched—then that fire blazed in his eyes. “Don’t want you? Don’t want you?!” He swore, looming over me. “Are you fucking joking?!”
“I would never joke about you, Voski,” I hissed.
His eyes went wide. “Don’t want you? Is that what you’ve told yourself?”
“That’s what you’ve told me. You’ve shown me!”
His jaw went tight. “You want the truth?”
“Yes!”
He leaned over me and hushed the words, his lips peeling back from his teeth with the fire of his fury.
“You have been a torment to me since the moment you appeared. You drag at my soul. Everything in me pulls, aching, hurting. Even my bones want you. Your presence haunts me. Your smile cuts my skin. Don’t want you?
Ha!” he spat. “I wish I didn’t want you!
I wish I could breathe without thinking your name, or seeing you in my mind’s eye.
I wish I never cared, watching my brothers touch you.
I wish your laugh didn’t slip under my skin—I begged God for that freedom! ”
He continued, but those words echoed in my head.
I begged God for that freedom.
All my anger, all the fury that had driven me out here, fizzled and died in the face of that.
Those words… so hard. And passionate, from a man who could be so cold.
My vision began to blur, but I swallowed the tears back.
Made myself listen. Made myself hear him.
Because maybe, finally, I could be done with wanting him.
“…don’t want you? That’s a fucking joke. I don’t want you, I need you. Like air to breathe. I’ve battled to stay away. Fought a fucking war. Don’t want you? That is the biggest pile of steaming bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
I blinked. Then swallowed.
He stood over me, panting, his face red, and eyes ablaze. Then he shook his head.
I need you. Like air to breathe.
“Is that true?” I breathed, struggling to parse out his rage from those words. Because they were words that wanted to fill the gaping hole in my chest. The thoughts I’d prayed to hear one day. Yet they’d been spoken with such venom. “Voski…” Softening, I reached for him.
When he flinched, the tiny thread of hope that had sparked to life, died in my chest like a suffocated ember.
It was the final blow.
My tears came from nowhere, but I didn’t even bother to wipe them. “Not again. Please,” I begged him. My voice cracked and his brow pinched. His hands twitched like he’d reach for me, but his eyes were black. “Please,” I begged him. “Please don’t walk away again. I can’t take that any more.”
He clawed both hands into his hair and took another step back, but then stopped dead, shaking his head, his fingers fisted in his hair.
And I realized, I could feel him. Sense him. That hole. That ache deep in my chest, it had a shape. It had a form. And now that he stood in front of me, I finally fit the pieces together. The pull.
It was shaped like him.
It sounded like his voice.
It felt like the circle of his arms at night when he held me and soothed my fears.
Why had he done that if he didn’t want me?
My breath rushed out of me, then refused to return. My chest pumped, but I had no air.
Voski looked miserable. “Grace—” But he cut himself off.
I inhaled sharply, finally. “What?” I croaked. “Just tell me. Please, explain.”
He tore his gaze away and scanned the clearing behind me as if searching for a lifeline.
The pit in my stomach widened to a chasm.
“There are things in my past. Things you want no part of—believe me. And they… Grace, there’s some things you can’t unsee, or undo.
Things that are better left in the dark, but you carry them.
That’s not your fault,” he rasped. “It’s mine. ”
I would have laughed. Actually laughed. But if I did, I worried I might lose my mind and never stop. Everything inside me screamed for him. Ached for him. Yearned. All that bubbling, unsated want, all the fearful thoughts. They were all because he refused me.
He’d even tried to escape me the night I passed the flying assessment. In the alley next to the tavern, he’d been about to run. He’d only stopped because I killed that man and—
My stomach heaved and I staggered back a step. Voski went still, staring like a hunted animal.
“That’s why you’re coming to hold me at night?” I said hoarsely, through sheets of tears. “That’s why you’re helping me? Not because you care, but because this bond requires it of you?”
He dropped his head and his hair fell between us. “No, it’s not that. I do care. I just…”
“You don’t want to care,” I breathed the words, a part of me slain by them.
But they held the weight of conviction. Of truth.
And when he grimaced, I was no longer confused.
Instead, I was devastated. I turned my back on him, looking for Koa, for comfort.
But she and Kham had stayed deeper in the forest to give us space to talk.
“Grace, please,” Voski said hoarsely.
I shook my head, though everything in me wanted to turn, to throw myself into his arms and beg him to reconsider.
But I already knew how that ended. I couldn’t let him keep hurting me.
I couldn’t keep giving him that chance. I may not have known about the bond, but he’d made himself abundantly clear.
Perhaps it was a mercy. Perhaps he’d been kind not to tell me when he didn’t want it?
That thought broke me. I would have been ecstatic to accept the bond—if I’d known it existed. But, I couldn’t keep living with this torment. This unsated yearning. Voski pulled at me. And he wouldn’t give in. I would be dangled out, like a dying fish on a line.
I couldn’t do it.
‘Koa?’
‘I am here.’
I choked on the next inhale, my body quivering with the turmoil of unrequited need. ‘He says he’s rejected the bond. He wants it to die. What happens if I reject it also?’
‘A rejected bond is sad. A sad, sad thing,’ Koa sent.
‘I know that,’ I had felt it. ‘But, what happens?’
I felt her agitation, but she never failed me. She only showed me the truth. In a mix of words and images, she showed me.
‘The bond is tender sapling that grows into guardian of the forest. But it must be watered. Love. Light. If two dragons are called, but reject the bond… it dies.’
The image in my head was of a sweet, small plant sprouted, but was deprived of sun and water, so died before its time.
Voski had been right? All it needed was me to reject it also?
“Grace, I’m sorry.” Voski’s voice was ragged. Tortured. He sounded like I felt.
“I don’t want your pity,” I mumbled. “I need freedom. I can’t live like this. I need light.”
“You are light, Grace.”
“Then why—?” I whirled to face him and cut off as our eyes met. His were bloodshot and wild. Terrified. Miserable. Just like me. But I wasn’t the one who ran. “You are a coward.”
He flinched, but held his ground. “You don’t understand—”
“You’re right, I don’t! But I was never given the chance to understand. Never.”
“It was wrong. I know I was wrong. I’ve been wrong. But there’s so much more—it has nothing to do with you—”
“Then, I don’t need to hear it.”
His face went blank. He stared at me through messy strands of hair that he’d raked with his hands too many times, so they fell like scattered grasses. His throat bobbed and he reached for me, but I backed away, shaking my head.
If he touched me it would hurt—because everything in me wanted that. But then I’d sink and he’d turn away again, and now I knew he didn’t want me. He was just driven to me. Against his will.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I squeaked through tears that embarrassed me further. “I’ll free you. For both of our sakes.”
He frowned. “What do you—”
“But let me be clear: You are the one who should be ashamed. You are the one who should regret this. I wanted you. I would have taken you with joy. I would have loved you.” My voice cracked.
Voski’s eyes widened and he stepped closer. “Grace, what—”
“I refuse you,” I whispered. A shriek of pain clenched my chest, but I gritted my teeth and plowed on. “I refuse it. The bond. The connection. All of it. I deny it—argh!” I cried out as pain sang through my bones.
“Grace—no!” he gasped, throwing himself at me as I fell to my knees, sobbing, choking on pain, and fear. I was on the grass, on all fours, when he reached me, sliding to his knees beside me, grabbing my shoulder, cupping my face.
But I pulled away. “D-don’t want your c-comfort when you wish you d-didn’t have to g-give it!”
“I was scared—I am scared. But I was trying to explain, not—”
The dragons screamed in the distance, and something awful tore at my heart.
Claws.
Talons.
The dragons—
I sucked in, grasping at my chest. My hollow, aching chest. It hurt.
“Grace! What are you doing?! Stop!” His hair fell down over eyes so wide they were white all the way around—and a whole new fear shrieked in them.
“I’m f-freeing you,” I mumbled, fingers clawing into the dirt because it felt like my heart was tearing from my ribs. My lips didn’t want to work properly. “No more torment for either of us. Koa says it will die. And we’ll be free. That’s what you wanted!”
“Grace, no. No!”
“Please, stop, Voski, I can’t do this any—”
“You can—we can! Grace, we will!” he rasped, then took my face in both his hands. He was panting, lips peeled back from his teeth, his breath tearing in and out of him. “I should never have said those things about begging God to take it away. They aren’t true—please, Grace. Don’t give up. Please.”
Our eyes locked and I couldn’t move. The pain in my chest, the sensation that I was slowly being torn in two, eased a hair as something warm and tentative threaded from under his palms, where my skin prickled, sinking into me, feeding through my veins, then rushed toward that aching chamber next to my heart.
“Grace, please?” He said my name like a plea, and the echo in his eyes, his dark, pained gaze, left me trembling.
“I’m scared,” I whimpered.
“Me too,” he breathed. “But I’ll get us through this. I promise.”
And when I didn’t respond, he kissed me.