doesn’t matter if you’re not happy. Tell me what I can do to make that happen, and by the gods, I’ll do as you ask.”
Oh gods, here we go. I wasn’t sure how well this would go over. But if Ethan wanted me back, I had conditions— ones I wasn’t sure he’d like, but that he’d have to accept if we were to be together again.
“I need time, Ethan. I’m not ready to be your fiancé again, or a true mate,” I stated. “I just want us to be a regular boyfriend and girlfriend. There was too much pressure on our relationship to be everything. I don’t need that kind of stress. I just want to have fun.”
He frowned. “Like you had with Finlay.”
“He was different.” I moved closer. “I cared about Fin, but I never loved him like I love you. Yet at the same time, I didn’t feel all this… strain to get everything right all the time. I could mess up. I didn’t have to keep secrets, or pretend to be perfect for the press. To get Fin to love me, all I had to do was be myself.”
“That’s all I want for us.” Ethan squeezed my hands. “It was never my intention to make you feel like you had to be more than what you already were.”
“You’re a prince. That comes with a lot of baggage that I can’t carry anymore. I’ll handle dealing with your mom, and suck up being the headline in all the papers.” I took a breath. “But when we’re together, and it’s just you and me, I don’t want things to be complicated between us. My life is complicated enough. I’m the Worldweaver. I’m the only one who can save the fae. And I need you to help carry my burdens, not make them heavier. I know I said earlier that I’d help you with your issues. But it can’t be just one of us doing all the lifting. We have to work together.”
Ethan’s eyebrows knitted together. “I know I’ve asked a lot of you since we’ve met. Too much. I don’t want to do that again.”
“But will you? I can’t take being in a super serious relationship right now. I’m in college. I’m twenty years old. You want the wedding, and the happily-ever-after. I want that too, but not right now. What I want is a good time with the person I love.”
Ethan’s face was confused as all fuck. “It’s a foreign concept to me. Nothing in my life has ever been simple.”
“Why can’t it be simple with us?” I pressed. “We make things harder than we have to.”
Ethan nodded. “I understand I can be… theatrical when my emotions run away with me.”
“That’s an understatement,” I mumbled under my breath, but Ethan forged on.
“I must ask you this,” he began. “Before we traveled to Octavia Falls, you were undergoing the ceremony to break our bond. I could feel it on my end. You didn’t finish, but you still have a chance to. Is that something you’re considering?”
I grasped his arm. “If you took our bond away, I’d still love you. I don’t need the magic to know you’re brave, or kindhearted and giving. I don’t need a bond to realize that you have a good heart. Now that the demon’s gone and I know you’ve changed, you can be my safe haven again. I can fight everyone, fight all of Droga’s armies, but I need to know I have somewhere to go home and rest at the end of the day, an escape from the world. Ethan, I’m asking you to be my home.”
Ethan’s eyelids beaded with tears. He pulled me to his chest and held me so close, I could hear the beating of his heart.
“I will be your home, onawilke,” he promised. “And if it’s fun you want… I can happily oblige.”
Ethan kissed me. It was gentle and slow, not the powerful, wolfish claim that I’d remembered from him before. He was asking me if this was okay. After not kissing him for so long, the feel of his lips on mine made me come to life. I responded with urgency, leaning into the kiss and melding my mouth with his in delight.
He made a few noises of pleasure and boosted me onto his lap. I felt his length underneath me and pressed into it, enjoying the strong feeling of him against me as I moved over the top of it, back and forth. We kissed long and