Chapter Ten
Soren
The bed is still a mess.
The blankets are twisted where Margot was beneath me, one pillow half on the floor, and the room still holds too much of my heat. I should straighten it, open a window, do anything other than stand here staring at the place she was only minutes ago.
Red.
She said it and I stopped. No questions, no hesitation, exactly as I promised her I would. The moment the word left her mouth, nothing mattered except giving her the space she'd asked for.
I would do it again without hesitation, but I hate that she needed to say it.
What I can't stop thinking about is everything she said before she left.
She saw a woman leave this house and believed the worst thing she could have believed—not about me, but about herself.
That none of this was different. That she had taken every uncontrolled thing I'd done because I wanted her and mistaken it for something she could buy by the hour.
A month ago, she would have been right.
She isn't anymore.
I started closing my roster days ago. No new clients, and the existing ones moved carefully rather than dropped because they trusted me and I wasn't going to repay that trust by disappearing without explanation.
Gael helped arrange the transfers to Corvin and Mikael, and the woman Margot saw tonight was one of the last appointments I'd already committed to.
I had planned to tell Margot tonight.
Not after the session, as I'd originally considered.
Gael made certain I understood exactly what was wrong with that idea.
I was going to tell her before I touched her that I'd stopped taking other clients, that whatever was happening between us had gone well beyond anything I could pretend was professional, and that if she wanted to walk away, I would let her.
I told her most of it.
I just didn't know she'd already spent twenty minutes in the parking lot convincing herself of the opposite.
By the time I finally leave the session room, I have no interest in seeing anyone downstairs. I go directly to my rooms and leave the lights off when I enter.
I don't need them to know what's here.
Her hair tie is still beside the lamp, and next to it is the ridiculous little frame I bought for the peonies I pressed because six centuries of life have brought me to preserving flowers for a woman who doesn't know I kept them. The robe I stole from the laundry sits folded at the foot of the bed.
Then I see the open drawer.
I cleared it several days ago without allowing myself to examine the decision too closely. There had been nothing important inside, only things I'd accumulated and forgotten, so I moved them somewhere else and left the space empty.
For her. So that she would have her own space in my nest.
I stare at it now and wonder what exactly I imagined she would put there. Clothes, perhaps. Something for her hair. One of the books she's started buying simply because she wants them. Small, ordinary pieces of her life appearing among mine until neither of us remembered when it happened.
For a dragon, making room in a hoard is no small thing. Somehow, I'd done it for Margot before I'd even admitted I wanted her here.
The thought brings something old and unpleasant with it, a certainty I haven't heard this clearly since I left my clan.
They would understand this perfectly. They would look at the empty drawer, the pressed flowers and the robe I couldn't bring myself to wash, and tell me this is precisely what comes of mistaking care for strength.
I pick up the hair tie.
It would be easy to undo all of it. Put the robe back with the laundry, throw away the flowers, fill the drawer and call Gael tomorrow morning.
Tell her to forget the transfers and reopen my calendar.
I know how to be that version of myself.
I was him for centuries, and until Margot walked through my door, I'd been perfectly content to remain him.
My hand closes around the hair tie.
I don't throw it away.
The robe is easier. I move it from the bed to the chair, then take the pressed peonies from beside the lamp and set them near the door. The empty drawer slides shut with barely a sound.
My dragon has been restless since she left, straining toward the gates long after she disappeared, but as I put away the last evidence that I expected her to come back, something inside me changes.
My dragon goes quiet.
Not peaceful. Not accepting.
Just the old, familiar silence of an instinct that has learned there is no point asking for what it wants.
I stay in my rooms for two days.
Food appears outside the door. Evander, obviously.
Nobody else in this house considers feeding six people's worth of food to one depressed dragon a reasonable response to heartbreak.
There are no notes and no attempts to make me come downstairs, only plates that disappear when I'm finished with them and return full several hours later.
By the second morning, even I'm tired of myself.
When I finally walk into the kitchen, everyone is there, which would be less suspicious if half of them had any reason to be awake this early.
Grath takes one look at me and pushes a plate across the counter. I sit and eat because, as far as Grath is concerned, refusing food he's personally put in front of you is a grave personal insult, and I'm not in the mood to add an offended orc to my list of problems.
Ronan watches me over his coffee. "She'll come back, mate."
"Maybe," Corvin says from the other end of the table. "Maybe not."
Ronan glares at him. "Real helpful, asshole."
"He knows lying won't make it true."
"I'm sitting right here," I remind them.
"We know," Mikael says. "It's the first time in two days."
I keep eating.
He lets me get through another mouthful before adding, "You're taking the nest apart."
My fork stops.
Mikael leans back against the counter. "What have you done with your nest?"
I keep eating. "Nothing that concerns you."
"That bad, then."
"I said nothing."
He studies me for a moment. "You've spent two days locked in your rooms, and I know you well enough to know you're not up there clutching her robe and composing tragic poetry."
Ronan snorts into his coffee.
"I don't write poetry."
"Thank every available god." Mikael's amusement fades. "You're taking it apart, aren't you? Putting away everything that reminds you of her so you can convince yourself none of it mattered."
I set down my fork.
Mikael's expression tells me that was answer enough.
"Don't do that, Soren. If she's gone, be angry. Be miserable. Sulk for a month and make the rest of us suffer with you if you must. But don't pretend you didn't want her there just because this went badly."
"Stop it."
Godric's voice comes from near the cold fireplace. I hadn't noticed him there, perched on the stone ledge with his wings tucked close behind him.
I leave before anyone else decides to diagnose me.
The cold outside is preferable to another conversation, so I cut around the back of the house and end up in Evander's garden. Most of the garden has gone dormant for the season, though Evander has somehow convinced the hedges that winter doesn't apply to them.
Gael finds me there within ten minutes.
She sits beside me without asking and says nothing. After several minutes of waiting for whatever lecture brought her out here, I decide to save her the trouble.
"I'm reopening my roster. The transfers can be reversed."
Gael looks out over the garden. "No."
I turn to her. "I wasn't asking."
"I know." She finally looks at me. "I'm still saying no."
Despite myself, heat gathers beneath my skin. "They were my clients."
"And you transferred them because you no longer wanted to do the work."
"I can do the work."
"I know you can. But your heart isn't in it anymore, Soren."
I look away.
Gael is quiet for another moment before she says, "You know what I find particularly irritating about this?"
"I suspect you're going to tell me."
"You spent such a long time refusing to become what your clan wanted, and one frightened woman walks out of your room and suddenly you're prepared to prove them right."
My jaw tightens. "This has nothing to do with my clan."
"It has everything to do with them. They taught you that caring too much made you weak, and Margot has spent most of her life believing that needing to be cared about makes her weak.
She got scared and ran, Soren. You got hurt and immediately decided the problem was that you cared about her at all. "
A thin curl of smoke escapes my nose.
Gael glances at it. "There he is."
"Careful."
"Oh, please. If you intended to incinerate me, you'd have done it three centuries ago."
"Four."
I almost smile.
Gael turns toward me. "She used her safeword, and the moment she did, you stopped and let her leave. You didn't follow her, demand an explanation or make her responsible for how you felt about it. You did exactly what you promised her you would do."
"She needed to get away from me."
"No, Soren. She needed to know she could get away from you, and you proved that she can."
That lands differently than I expect. Gael seems to know it, because for once she doesn't rush to fill the silence.
"She saw another woman leaving, convinced herself she'd misunderstood everything between you, and panicked. You don't get to turn that into proof she doesn't want you simply because it makes walking away easier."
I drag a hand over my face. "And your recommendation is what? Wait until she books another session?"
"No." The answer comes immediately.
"She isn't your client anymore, Soren. You made sure of that the moment you told her how you felt." Gael rises and brushes an invisible speck from her coat. "So stop sitting here waiting for her to come back to you as one."
I look up at her.
"Go talk to her. No session room, no contract, no expectation that she gives you anything because you showed up. Tell her what you should have told her before either of you got this far, and then let her decide what she wants."
"And if she tells me to leave?"
"Then you leave."
My dragon dislikes that answer enough that scales threaten along my arms.
Gael notices. "Yes. Even if your dragon doesn't like it."
I exhale through my nose. "You're enjoying this."
"Immensely."
She starts back toward the house, then stops. "Take the peonies."
I stare at her.
"The pressed ones?"
"Yes, they're appallingly sentimental." Her mouth curves. "She'll love them."
Then she walks away.
I stay in the garden until the cold finally gets through my coat, thinking about Margot saying red and the way every part of me had wanted to reach for her afterward.
Back upstairs, the nest looks exactly as miserable as Mikael accused it of looking. The robe is shoved aside, the pressed flowers are sitting on the floor and the drawer I cleared for Margot is closed.
I start with that.
The drawer slides open, empty and waiting, and this time I leave it that way. If Margot ever wants to put something in it, she can. If she doesn't, it remains a drawer.
The robe goes back where it was. I return the flowers to the nightstand, then find her hair tie in the pocket of yesterday's pants, because I've been carrying it around for two days like an adolescent.
"For fuck's sake."
I set it beside the lamp.
Then I change—jeans, a sweater and a coat.
Nothing I would wear for a session and nothing chosen to make an impression.
When I pick up the pressed peonies, I briefly consider how absurd I must look and decide I have forfeited the right to dignity somewhere around the moment I learned how to press flowers.
I get Margot's address from her client file.
I stare at it for several seconds after I find it, fully aware that her home address was provided for administrative purposes and not so her former Dom could appear on her doorstep carrying pressed flowers.
Gael would probably have several things to say about that particular breach, despite being the one who told me to go to her.
I write it down anyway.
I need to talk to Margot once, somewhere outside the house and outside the arrangement that brought her to me.
After that, the choice is hers. If she tells me to leave, I will leave, and she will never have to worry about me appearing at her home, calling her, or finding some other excuse to force my way back into her life.
Once.
That is all I'm allowing myself.
I take the car, because arriving at her window on wings would be both alarming and difficult to explain to the neighbors. The drive gives me far too much time to rehearse what I'm going to say, and by the time I reach her building I've gone through enough versions to hate every one of them.
It no longer matters. I'm here.
I take the pressed peonies from the passenger seat, find her apartment and knock before I can reconsider.