Chapter 167 Crushing heartbreak
I shot up with an explosive inhale, my head spinning with vertigo like I had just survived drowning.
Those large arms were still around me, my eyes met Mordaine’s as he flew off Ottoman, hurtling for me. “That was your memory. What do you remember, what did you see?”
The hope in his eyes made my chest ache. “I… I.”
I remembered the setting with a striking vividness, but the words kept eluding me. I could not coin words out of the wave of colors and images in my head. The bed dipped as he sat before me, staring into my eyes.
“Gardens…” I whispered, and then repeated it more audibly. “The city of gardens. It was so long ago,” My eyes fell behind him to find Hale leaning forward, eyes narrowed in concentration. “But it felt familiar, and I remembered the setting and layout of my… family home?”
I shivered and Finn rubbed my arms from behind me for friction. I swallowed, still holding the dragon’s gaze. I took his hand in mine, exhaling at the reassuring weight and size. “Who is Tarek?”
Hale shot to his feet, so suddenly he startled everyone. Mordaine turned his neck slowly. Hale bit his lip hard when their eyes met.
“This will not work.”
“Mon amour.” Mordaine breathed in a broken voice, his shoulders caving in.
“I’m sorry.” Hale was avoiding eye contact with everyone at this point, feeling his pockets as if to check for his keys, “I will have my assistant come pick my things up.”
“What?” Finn bounded off the bed behind me, rushing towards him, but Hale was halfway across the suite already.
“Hale.” I rose to my feet, reeling from confusion.
He froze to the sound of my voice, and a visible tremor ran down his back. The room was suspended in silence for several seconds before he turned to me.
I walked forward and grabbed his arm, searching those midnight blue eyes.
“What is going on? Where are you leaving for?”
He paused for a heartbeat, then he grabbed my face and pressed his lips to mine. “Remember you can no longer nurse negative emotions.” He pressed another peck to my lips, “You have to remain calm. Stay with him, both of you.”
But my grip tightened around his arm, my heart racing now. “What are you talking about? Do you think you cause me distress? You do not cause me negative emotions. Why are you leaving, and to where?”
My eyes bounced between three of them. “I don't understand this, what is going on?”
“Hey, hey…” he caressed my cheek, turning my face back to his. “You are not at fault here. I am.” That vein was throbbing on his forehead again, from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. His face was a violent shade of red. “One day, fairy. I hope I will be able to explain this to you.”
“Hale,” Finn whispered in a choked voice, the dread in his voice making my heart freeze over.
His hand, cupping my cheek, shook, but he did not look back. “You don’t need me, fairy. They are the only two who can help you.”
I flinched, pulling away from him. Then my head swiveled back to Mordaine, and… I had never seen him this way. He stood like a terrified child lost at the center of a crowded mall.
“Take her.” He said now, “If you’re going to leave, take her with you.”
Those words confirmed my suspicion, and my heart ripped like a worn cloth. They were pushing me between themselves like a used doll, a compensation. They found out I was this Nymphaea woman reincarnate and suddenly could not continue with the previous arrangement. And now Hale was leaving because he felt he had no claim to me.
This realization, even as I remembered they were fighting when Finn and I had just arrived, hit me harder than finding out I was a Selenied.
“She was always yours.” The dragon pressed now, “Take her.”
Finn came to my aid then, because this scene playing out was sending a wave of nausea over me. “What the hell is this?” He yanked my trembling body to his side protectively, sweeping a wounded look between the men. “You cannot make her choose.”
Hale’s eyes met mine, and he turned his back to us, his fists bunched beside him.
Rhea was a mess inside me, wailing in distress in a way I couldn’t. This was my mate, the man I could tell things I would never admit to anyone else, because he would understand and say things like let’s be bad together.
The memory of the last four years flooded my mind, and terror seized my heart. I cannot. Another separation from him would kill me.
It was more than the danger of what would happen to Rhea. My heart could not stand it.
I opened my lips to say this, ready to stomp on my own pride, when he turned around. He looked at the men to my side and then his eyes fell on me. “I need time… and in that time you have to stay with someone.”
My lips trembled as the back of my eyelids started to burn. He was asking me to choose. He was still too elegant to spell it outright. That would be crude and cruel.
But in the end, he was asking me to choose between the men I met weeks ago, and the man I almost walked down the aisle to.
I turned to look at the dragon who did not love me, and my spine hardened.
He was solid, he could be irritable, and curt and immoral, but he was solid.
My connection with Hale, though... it was so deep that I did not have to say the word. He knew. When our eyes met again, he had a genuine smile, marred with a sadness that stained his eyes like bad ink. He gave me that famous teasing wink of his, and walked out the door.
Finn released me and ran after him.
My courage bled away, and my knees buckled under me. But it seemed there would always be an abundance of arms around me, because Mordaine hugged me from behind, cuddling me in a toasty bear hug.
This heated blanket sensation his body produced by default grounded me. It calmed my nervous system, and blocked my brain from panic.
I was walking out of the bathroom an hour later when Finn returned. His eyes met mine, and my heart stopped. I would recognize that look anywhere. Hale had broken up with him.
“Finn,” I reached for him. He took my hand, caressed the back of it with his thumb but continued to walk towards the couch.
I frowned, my eyes straying to the balcony where Mordaine stood staring down at the city, his back turned to us. This was not right.
Hale would never leave like this over… I turned to look at Finn as he collapsed on the couch with a lost look. Hale was anything but flighty or irresponsible.
He would not cause so much heartbreak simply because he could not share.
Night take me, I had been wrong. I had misjudged him. This had nothing to do with my real identity, whatever was going on was worse.
The light flickered overhead, and I bit my lip hard, breathing through my mouth.
I spent the next hour convincing my brain that everything was fine. That Hale had simply gone home first to wait for us, and we would see him soon.
I knew this was not true, but I convinced myself it was because I did not want to be responsible for any more disasters.
Mordaine walked into the suite once during the night with an elegant bottle he had not been holding when he went out there. He set it down in front of Finn and said, “Drink.”, and when Finn started to protest, he added, “You need it.”
I watched them from the bed at the other end of the suite, even as Mordaine returned to the balcony and Finn finally brought the wine-shaped bottle to his lips.
He looked progressively drunk as hours crawled by, and his skin had a pink glow I doubted I had ever seen on him.
Mordaine remained at the balcony till the sun came up again.
I knew this because I did not sleep. I was up the whole night trying to puzzle out what the problem was, but I did not have enough information and kept hitting a wall.
By morning, we all looked like we had aged five years, and I could not imagine spending one extra day like this. The moment we arrived L.A. I would storm that man’s office.
In the first class cabin of the aircraft that the dragon piloted back home, Finn and I held hands. He dozed off a few times, and woke up trashing in his sleep, but I did not sleep a wink.
I passed time counting down the hours till I got to demand answers from Hale and Mordaine.
But the gods must have been laughing at me. Chaos welcomed us the moment we arrived in Hollywood.