Chapter Thirty-Two
Mia
“I’ll come back,” Liz said, shaking her head and giving Tor a strong, stern look.
“Yeah, I know,” he said in response to the unspoken words on her face. “Thank you. Please assemble a team, minimum four, to return with me. We have an issue to handle, and I don’t want to lose any more people. Get me the best fighters who can be here within half an hour.”
Liz nodded sharply, glancing at me with what I thought might be sympathy, but I wasn’t sure.
“I’ll have them. Surge is here.”
“Good,” Tor said stiffly. “Thank you.”
The woman left, and I faced Tor, crossing my arms. “Go on.”
He looked away, then back at me. “Mia …”
“No. Listen, I know you haven’t been telling me something.
At first, I thought it was about dragons, but that wasn’t it.
That wasn’t specific to me. Something changed in you, Tor.
Before I was put in that cell to after, you’ve been acting differently with me.
Freer, more open, and relaxed. Giddy, even.
It was too obvious to ignore. I just didn’t know what it meant.
But now you’re going to tell me so that I can finally feel like I’m not in the dark anymore. ”
I shivered at my choice of words, reminded of being under the mountain with that thing, the Vorgan, an hour earlier. Tor reached out an arm to try to help, but I stepped away from him. His eyes fell, filling with pain, but he nodded, retracting his arm, understanding why I’d done that.
“For as long as I can remember,” he said at last, “dragons have taken mates. That is what we call our partners. Those who we wished to spend time with. They are much like your husbands and wives. Other dragons that we are compatible with. Lives are forged together, children created and reared, and the cycle goes on.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, what, Liz thinks that you and I, we’re going to do that?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay, good. Because with humans, at least, this is the sort of thing you talk about beforehand.”
“I know,” he moaned. “I know. But listen, Mia, it’s not quite that simple.”
“How so?” I said, arms still crossed. “You like someone, you spend time with them, ask them out, eventually you ask them to marry them, and you start a life together. Just like that.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his drawn face, his gray eyes never wavering from mine. “I know, Mia. However, with those of us who are of royal blood, closer to the God-King than others, it’s different.”
“God-King? He’s real? Not like, a Jesus, who we think might have been real?”
“Oh, no, he’s very much real,” Tor said, pointing to the horizon. “He lives at the top of Mount Drakonus. He’s our immortal ruler. That’s why, though I’ll lead the Storm Clan, I am a prince, not a king. A reminder that we are all subordinate to him.”
I watched as he twisted the ring around on his right hand as he spoke.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” he continued, sliding the ring back into place and ceasing his fidgeting with it. “Those who have royal blood, we’re different.”
“Different how?”
“Stronger, faster, with more powers,” he said. “But also more responsibility. It’s expected of us that we won’t just find someone we can put up with to mate with for life. We are matched, from birth, to find an Eternal Mate. Our true soulmate.”
“Uh-huh. Right. So, what, Liz thinks that I’m your, what did you say, Eternal Mate?” I said, laughing. “She does know I’m a human, right? That’s impossible.”
Tor wasn’t laughing.
My smile faded. “It can be a human?”
“Until recently, our mates were dragons. We would find them, and, according to those who came before, we would know we had found them. The connection was deep and strong and immediate. A near-physical call to be with the other person, insatiable desires to be around them, to need them, want them, and the craving to do whatever it took to start a life with them.”
“I see,” I said, my throat closing up as I recalled the insane, intense urges that Tor had awoken in me when I first saw him.
They had never gone away entirely. In fact, they were always there.
I’d just learned how to tame how he made me feel with his touch or the longing in his eyes.
I had put up walls, not wanting to let him in.
Even when I went to his bed, I never really let my guard down. Not entirely.
“This time, it was different, though,” Tor said. “When it came time for the four of us to take their places, well, none of us had mates. We knew something was wrong, and—”
“Wait. Hold on, slow down,” I said, raising a hand to stop him as he spoke faster and faster.
“Four of you? No, no, Tor. I don’t do that.
That’s too many to handle. I’m a one-man sort of girl.
I don’t know what you think you know about me, but that’s not it.
I’ll support the girls who want and can handle that. You go get it, but not me.”
Tor frowned, then his face exploded in horror. “No! No, Mia, that’s not what I meant. Not like that. I meant the other princes!”
“Oh,” I said, sagging slightly in relief.
“Yes, yes, not … not that.”
“Okay, good,” I said, breathing a bit easier. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would the four of you have to take your throne at the same time? Is that what you meant? Because that’s how it sounded.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“All the other princes just died? At the same time?” I asked. “That sounds … suspicious.”
“Every one hundred years, the cycle begins anew,” Tor said. “The ruling prince and princess of each clan, Eternal Mates to the end, fly to meet the God-King. He calls them, I gather, and they simply know it’s time. They go to him, and then the firstborn sons ascend to the throne.”
“What happens to the others? Your parents, Tor, what happened to them?” I asked nervously.
“Nobody knows,” he said heavily. “The God-King, he calls them, and they answer. But nobody ever returns. The only sign we have that we are to take over is when we find their totem. It appears on our beds.”
He lifted the ring to show me the sapphire worked into the dark metal band. At the very heart of it, a single flame glowed.
“A piece of the God-King himself, so it is rumored,” he said, spinning it around his finger. “I found this on my bed the day after my father and mother were called. It was a sign that I was to ascend to take the throne.”
“But your mate?”
He smiled. “I didn’t have one. The entire clan has been in limbo since, unable to do anything. We had no idea how much longer it would go on. Not until Ember found his mate.”
“Ember?” I asked.
“The Prince of Fire,” Tor explained. “He accidentally found his mate, and she was human.”
She was human.
I felt like I’d been gut-punched.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I asked, my throat dry and hoarse.
“Yes, Mia,” he rumbled with a confidence I didn’t understand. “You are my mate. My Eternal Mate. The woman who will stand by my side for the rest of my life.”
I didn’t know what to do. There were all sorts of responses to that. None of them felt right. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. There was no way he could possibly know that, not after such a short period of time! That was absurd. So very absurd, it was laughable.
So that’s what I did. I laughed.
Tor’s face darkened so swiftly that I took an involuntary step backward. But it wasn’t anger that formed on his face. It was pain. He looked down and away, expression clouding over before he pulled his gaze away.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, feeling bad. “But I mean, come on, Tor. There’s no way you can know that I am this, what, Eternal Mate, already. I’m sorry, but no. This is too much. I would like to go home now, please.”
I turned away, both to hide and to avoid seeing his reaction. It was the right decision, though. I knew that.
Yes, if I was honest with myself, there was something between Tor and me.
Denying that would be lying to myself. Which was why I would stick with my original plan and cut things off between us.
End it, whatever “it” was. No more. It was far easier to let myself hurt now and move on than it would be to give any more credence to the thought that I might be mated to a dragon.
“Very well,” Tor said quietly, seeming to cave. “I’ll take you home.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
Yes, it’s time to go home and get back to normal. Whatever that looks like now.