We should have been enough. But then she’d started pulling away again. She started planning a new guild, and her entire soul pulled from us as she focused on rebuilding it. I’d sent funds, helped where I could, and threw everything I could throw at her pet project to make it move faster so that she’d come back to us.
The guild was built, running, and she still hadn’t returned. I’d told Alden we needed her, and he’d said she’d been told to come home, to prepare for war. He’d written that shit out for her, but she still wasn’t ours, or she would have returned sooner.
I’d played my cards, and she’d tossed them back at me. I’d told her the truth, and she’d pulled further away. She kept things from me. There had been simple things that she could have told me, such as the fucking Goddess of Chaos was playing games in our fucking house. As it so happened, I was aware of it the entire time.
I also knew Thanatos had been outside my bedroom. Lucian had also known he’d stood in the shadows with Spyder, protecting our babes from Synthia’s irrational belief that she had to do it alone. I’d included her in plans, yet she’d ignored them. I didn’t have time to walk her through them again.
We had explained the necessity of her being here, being present when we met with the head of the castes, but she’d been gone weeks without even realizing it. Ristan had pulled her aside and reminded her how time worked between worlds, and she’d frowned, shrugging her delicate shoulders like it hadn’t been some big fucking deal. It was. If I’d known that she had been aware of who she was consorting with, we could have fucking ended it quickly and efficiently.
I wouldn’t have had to let it play out to see if my wife was plotting against me. Instead, I’d let her assume I’d fucked someone else to capture the spies running through our halls. I’d begun stacking the deck without her, as I thought she was stacking it against me for our enemies.
I was as much at fault as she was, but I wasn’t the one holding on to another world. I was right fucking here, waiting for her to choose us. Her world didn’t want her, wouldn’t accept her in her true form, but we would. Faery was reaching for her, and she refused to reach out and take the power it offered to its goddess.
She wanted me to be her bad guy.
Well, here I fucking was, no longer donning some mask of civility for her. She could deal with who I really was, or she wouldn’t get me at all. I wouldn’t pretend to be something I wasn’t anymore. I wasn’t willing to ignore what was happening or the lives we had lost because she refused to let go of her past and reach for the future.
Hunting her had been thrilling, but the end result hadn’t been satisfying. Watching my pretty wife twisting in pain had hurt me deeply, but the thought of losing her hurt much worse. I didn’t have time to fuck around.
I needed what she was born to be, and she belonged at my side, ready to fight those who wanted us dead. I wanted my wife to pull her pretty head from her ass and come back up swinging because that was what she fucking did. She always got back up.
“Are you here, or should we do this another time?” Zahruk asked.
“My wife is in a bloody fucking pit, asshole.”
“Damn and I thought my mother was a bitch for tossing us into the prison,” Asher snorted from where he leaned across the table, watching us. “Hope you left her something to do there.”
“I don’t know, Asher. What was there to do in the Seelie prison? Maybe you and Synthia will have more to talk about when she gets home.”
“Funny, not even you would be that cruel,” he chuckled as he crossed his arms, studying me with a smirk on his lips.