the counter top, then picked up the cup of litah and stepped around his mother. “I’ll show you exactly how much to give her, and how long you must wait to give her more, before I go.”
“Very well, my son,” Mee'ta answered, her eyes full of concern.
Synclare lay sniffling and trying to catch her breath when Lo'San returned with her litah.
“Here, Sink Lar. Drink this,” he said, kneeling beside the bed as she lifted herself to lean against the pillows behind her.
“Thank you,” she answered, as she brought the hot, sweet liquid to her lips. She detected a slight bitterness from the medication laced through it, but all that did was give her hope that she’d soon be asleep. She drank the litah down as quickly as she could, then handed the cup back to Lo'San. Settling back against the pillows again, she couldn’t help but need to ask Lo'San why he’d kept the truth from her. She watched as he rose to his feet to return the cup to the galley, and couldn’t help the words as they fell from her lips.
“You weren’t honest with me. Why did you hide the truth from me?” she asked.
Lo'San turned to face Synclare, confused by her question. “I don’t understand. What truth did I hold back?”
“Lo'San. I’m not a fool. I know you probably did it to protect me, but don’t you think I should have known?” she asked.
“I didn’t think it important. I still think it’s not important. It is true that I once loved her and hoped for a life with her, but I no longer love her. It was a long time ago. She refused to forgo all other mates. I left because I couldn’t share her — it was better to be alone than to have to share Ph’eel. I could not be a part of that world any longer. What I once felt for Ph’eel doesn’t matter now. We are mated and that is forever. It cannot be undone,” Lo'San said, thinking she meant what he once felt for Ph’eel.
Synclare sat in their bed, her mouth hanging open in shock. He’d never told her that he was in love with Ph’eel, and that she refused to have only him for a mate. He told her that he’d been claimed and refused to accept the claim.
“I thought you said you left home because you refused to accept her claim,” Synclare managed to get out.
“I did.”
“You didn’t say it was because she refused to have only you for a mate,” Synclare added. “You let me believe that you just didn’t want to live that life.”
“I did not want to live the only life available to me with her. She is cold and calculating,” Lo'San insisted.
“And refused to be exclusive with you. And now your brother is mated to her, and looks resentfully at the both of you each time Ph’eel is kind to you,” Synclare said, closing her eyes when the medicine she’d taken began to make her loopy.
“Sink Lar,” Lo'San said, shoving the cup toward a dresser as he returned to her side and took a seat beside her. “It is all in the past. I am not the male I was then. I am a mated male. The things I wanted then do not apply now.”
Synclare turned her back to him and held onto her pillow. “I was asking why you didn’t tell me that I should have responded to the fertility treatments by now. I didn’t mean Ph’eel and any feelings you had for her.”
“I didn’t wish to cause you unhappiness. And I was hopeful that the treatments would be successful.”
“Why did you think that I was asking about Ph’eel?” Synclare asked.
“That is what I first thought of when you said I’d withheld the truth,” Lo'San admitted.
“It must have been heavy on your heart,” she commented.
“Sink Lar, I was a different male then. It matters no longer.”
She gritted her teeth fighting a wave of nausea, and Lo'San reached out to smooth her hair away from her face.
“I can’t watch you suffer like this again. We are finished with the treatments,” he said.
“I want children, wanted to give you a family,” she said.
“Those things are no longer important, Sink Lar. You must release that desire. I see now that we should have just remained as we were,” Lo'San said.
Synclare’s heart broke a little, and she lifted a hand to push his away from her. “Go away. I’m fine.”