Chapter 25 The Argument

Chapter 25 The Argument


Three days of silence stretched between us like a wound that refused to close. I threw myself into work, my hands always busy, my mind always elsewhere. Every shadow in the corridor made my heart stutter, hoping and fearing it might be him. Every time it wasn't, the ache deepened.

Eira watched me with those knowing old eyes but said nothing. She didn't need to. The healing ward was quiet, the patients stable, and I had organized her supplies three times over. She knew avoidance when she saw it.

Orion shadowed me still, his silent presence a constant reminder of the man I was running from. He never asked questions, never commented on my frayed nerves. He just watched and waited, a good soldier following his orders.

On the fourth day, the waiting ended.

I needed evening primrose for a poultice. The garden was the only place I could go without Orion hovering too close, the one space where I could pretend to be alone with my thoughts. The sun hung low in the sky, painting the world in shades of amber and rose. I knelt among the plants, my fingers working automatically, my mind a thousand miles away.

The crunch of gravel behind me was soft, but I knew it instantly. The air shifted, charged with a familiar electricity that made my skin prickle. My hands stilled over the primrose.

"Anika."

His voice was low, rough. It rolled over me like thunder, stirring everything I had tried to bury. I didn't turn. I couldn't. If I turned, I would shatter.

"We need to talk." He was closer now. I could feel the heat of him at my back, could smell the familiar scent of pine and leather and pure male.

I forced my voice to steadiness. "Nothing has changed since your study."

"Everything has changed." A pause. "You know who I am now. What I was. What we were."

The word was a knife. I spun to face him, my control cracking. "Were. That's the key, isn't it? We were something. Past tense. Now I'm your property and you're my owner and nothing about that changes because we shared a few kisses under a tree when we were children."

His jaw tightened. "Is that what you think? That nothing has changed?"

"I don't know what to think!" My voice rose, sharp and desperate. "I don't know how to reconcile the boy who taught me to track, who gave me a flower, who promised me a future, with the man who bought me like livestock. I don't know how to look at you without seeing both of them, and I don't know which one is real."

He closed the distance between us in two strides. He was so close I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. The blue was stormy, turbulent, full of a pain that mirrored my own.

"They're both real," he said, his voice a fierce whisper. "The boy who loved you and the man who needs you. They're the same person, Anika. They always were."

"Loved?" The word caught in my throat, emerged broken. "You never said you loved me. Not then, not now. You said I was beautiful. You said you wanted me. You never said those words."

A muscle leaped in his jaw. "Seventeen-year-old boys don't know how to say those things. They feel them in their bones, but they don't have the words." He stepped closer still, until his body was a breath from mine. The heat of him was overwhelming. "Thirty-four-year-old men do. I loved you then. I love you now. That is the truth, whether you want it or not."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I stumbled back a step, but he caught my arm, his grip firm but gentle, pulling me back. My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild, frantic thing.

"You can't just say that," I breathed. "You can't just stand there and—"

"Why not?" His eyes burned into mine. "It's true. It has been true every day of the seventeen years we were apart. It has been true every moment since you walked into my hall, covered in the dust of your destroyed village, hatred burning in your eyes. I loved you then. I love you now."

"Then why didn't you—" My voice broke, tears spilling over. "Why didn't you find me? Why didn't you come back after you secured your pack? Why did you let me believe I had imagined you, dreamed you, made you up?"

His grip on my arm tightened, not painfully, but desperately. "Because I was protecting you! Because my world is blood and death and enemies who would use anyone I love against me. Because my father was killed by someone who targeted my mother first, and I could not—" He stopped, his chest heaving, his composure shattering. "I could not let that happen to you. I would not survive it."

"So you decided for me." The tears were hot on my cheeks. "You decided what I could handle, what I deserved, what my life should be. You didn't give me a choice."

"There was no choice to give!" His voice rose to match mine, raw and agonized. "You were fifteen. I was seventeen. What choice could either of us make? You would have followed me into a warzone. You would have died, Anika. You would have died, and it would have been my fault."

"The choice to trust me!" I wrenched my arm from his grip, my hands coming up to shove against his chest. He didn't move. He was solid as stone, a wall of muscle and regret. "The choice to let me decide if you were worth the risk. The choice to believe that I might rather face danger with you than safety alone. You took that from me. You took everything."

We stood there in the dying light, both breathing hard, both stripped raw. The air between us crackled with years of pain, with the unbearable weight of what could have been. The sexual tension was still there, a low, persistent hum, but it was tangled now with grief and fury and a love so deep it was indistinguishable from the hurt.

"I should hate you," I whispered.

"Then hate me." His voice broke on the words. "Hate me with everything you have. But do not pretend I don't love you. Do not pretend that this—" He gestured between us, at the charged space, at the racing hearts, at the pull that neither of us could deny. "—is nothing. Because we both know better."

He stepped back, and the loss of his heat was a physical ache. He looked at me for a long, agonizing moment, his eyes tracing my face as if memorizing it for another seventeen years of separation.

Then he turned and walked away.

I watched him go, my body trembling, my face wet with tears. The garden was silent except for the distant call of a night bird and the pounding of my own heart. His words burned in my chest, a fire I could not extinguish. I loved you then. I love you now.

The argument changed nothing. It changed everything. And as the last light faded from the sky, I sank to my knees among the primrose and let the sobs take me, torn between the girl I had been and the woman I had become, caught forever between hatred and a love that refused to die.