Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,68
trundling through to investigate, he let his out in an exasperated hiss.
I’d… never heard him exasperated before. Annoyed. Frustrated.
Not with me, anyway.
But there it was, plain as day, etched so deep into every feature that there was no missing it.
“Maybe I’m trying to process it all too.” He took a step back deeper into the pantry’s narrow corridor, walls lined with shelves of proofing buns and loaves. “Maybe I don’t understand it. Maybe I didn’t expect to be fated to a witch… Did you ever consider that?” He shook his head with a wince, then pressed his knuckles to the middle of his chest like he was fighting a rush of heartburn. “Did you ever consider that I don’t have all the answers? That I can’t fix every fucking problem that comes up?”
I honestly hadn’t, and that was ridiculous of me. Childish. Selfish. Ever since I agreed to join a prison clique, I had looked to Elijah and Rafe for everything: comfort, security, and support. They had been here longer than me and both had centuries of life lived on my twenty-nine years. Instinctively, I deferred to them both, hid behind them and stayed resolute in my decision to not make waves. To survive.
I should have been giving back.
Fated mates was huge in the shifter community. While I wasn’t an expert on the subject, I knew from gossip and general supernatural lore that shifters were raised on stories of finding their soulmates, the ones destined to walk forever by their side. Some never did, but those who found their fated were whole. Fate had selected me for him, apparently, and him for me.
And instead of smacking him, I should have…
Shoving all my feelings aside, I padded after him and pressed a hand to his chest. It then slid up to his shoulder, and even as he turned away, expression terse, jaw hard, mouth in a thin line, I moved closer.
Eventually, I hugged him. Just a hug—nothing more salacious than that. Nothing that would lead us anywhere. I stood up on my tippiest tiptoes and wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him as a tremor ripped through his body. Elijah took it almost as if he had to, standing there with his hulking arms at his sides, his huge hands in fists again. His heart thundered, the beat drumming from his chest to mine, and I just held tighter.
I’m so sorry, Elijah.
Here I was, thinking I was the only one struggling.
But to him, he had just found his soulmate. In prison. And she wasn’t who he had always pictured. She was surly and withdrawn and broken, terrified, prone to lashing out when things got hard or tense or confusing.
She was damaged goods with baggage a mile long.
“Thank you for telling me,” I murmured, threading one hand into his hair, the other stroking the back of his neck. He radiated heat, my body sweltering against him, but I didn’t back down. “I’m sorry I… Now I understand.”
Finally, finally, he hugged me back. Bundled me up in his arms and embraced me like it was the first time, maybe even the last time, he would ever hold me. His grip threatened to crush all the air out of my lungs, but I said nothing, did nothing, just let him take what he needed for once. All this time, he had been protecting the woman he perceived as his mate. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t been trying to draw attention to me…
He had been doing what he was programmed to do, same as me. I was drawn to him, if I really was his fated mate, because that was how destiny arranged it.
But if that was the case, why was I still confused?
Why was I infatuated with Rafe? Why did I lust after Fintan—physically, of course, his impish man-boy shtick so not my thing. If I was fated to a dragon shifter, a good man who had been thoughtful and patient and protective of me from the beginning, shouldn’t other men fall to the wayside? Shouldn’t they not even enter my radar?
I mean, even as I hugged Elijah, a little part of my mind remembered that tonight, I’d lie on the floor and whisper through a mousehole with Rafe. That sometimes those conversations were the highlight of my day.
And that wasn’t fair.
I exhaled softly and closed my eyes, trying desperately to block it all out.