throat closed and she sucked down a breath, refusing to let the tears fall. She had to be strong. She had to survive this place, and that meant she couldn’t let her softer emotions get the better of her. She needed to be a powerful warrioress worthy of her parents’ names.
The tears still wanted to come though, burning the backs of her eyes as she fought the rising tide of melancholy, trying to break free of it. She wouldn’t cry now. She would cry once she was reunited with her family, and they would be happy tears.
As she stared at the opposite end of the cavern, a solution to her problem presented itself.
Anger was swift to surge through her, obliterating her sorrow and all the softer emotions she had been drowning in, as Thanatos emerged from the end of the tunnel. His glowing blue gaze scanned the cavern and narrowed as it settled on her.
“I told you to stay put,” he snarled and stormed towards her, rage rolling off him in fierce waves that stoked her own fury and had her rising onto her feet.
“And I told you not to order me around!” She tilted her chin up, embraced the darker side of her blood that was seething with anger, pushed her to put him in his place and make him pay for wounding her. For daring to pursue another female. Her blood boiled at that. “I do not need your help anymore, god of death. Leave me. I will find my own damned way home.”
Rather than shocking him, that declaration only angered him further, had him striding up to her. She turned her back on him. He grabbed her left arm in a bruising grip and pulled her to face him.
“You are not going anywhere without me,” he growled, blue eyes on fire as he glared down at her, his broad mouth compressing into a thin line.
“The same rule doesn’t seem to apply to you.” She scoffed at that, at the way his eyes gained a confused edge as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. He knew. She was sure of it. The hurt that had bloomed inside her out in the valley was swift to return, erasing all the warmth thoughts of seeing her family had caused, making her feel cold as ice inside even as she burned with rage. “I saw you go after that female. Did you get what you wanted from her?”
Thanatos leaned back slightly, still frowning at her. “You saw the female too?”
She rolled her eyes and yanked her arm free of his grip, refusing to flinch when it hurt her. “It was very hard to miss her… or the way you went flying after her with your tongue hanging out.”
He arched an eyebrow at that. “What?”
Calindria wanted to pace away from him, needing the space, but she planted her bare feet to the ground and refused to let him see how much he had hurt her. He would never see her softer side again. Never.
“I might have spent six centuries in a cage, but I am not innocent. I know when a male wants something… intimate.” She stared him down.
He squared up to her, closing the gap between them down to only a few inches, his head tilting downwards as he forced her to look up at him to keep her eyes locked with his.
“Do you now?” he purred.
She swallowed and cursed her nerves as they rose, as they swamped her and pushed her rage down. She clung to that anger, refusing to let it fade, using it as a shield to protect herself.
“I do.” She put force into those two words, but uncertainty still flooded her as he gazed down into her eyes.
Her heart raced, her mouth going dry as his eyes dropped to her lips.
Gods, she wasn’t sure she could breathe. He stole all the air from her lungs with that hungry look, with the silent promise that shone in his blue eyes, one that said that if he kissed her, she would feel it all the way to her bones.
To her soul.
But he didn’t kiss her.
He stepped back.
“I am sorry,” he muttered and paced away from her, running his hand over his black hair. He twisted at the waist and glanced past his wings to her. His throat worked on a hard swallow, his voice low and holding a hint of something like nerves or fear. “Did I frighten you?”
She shook her head. He hadn’t frightened her