“Fine.” She threw up her hands. “If I tarry up north, I cannot supply all of you with what you need for blood. Therefore I go unto the Sanctuary for my recovery and I wait to be summoned. Then I come unto this side and service you and after that I must needs return. So no, I cannot go to the mountains.”
“Jesus . . .” What a bunch of users they were. They should have anticipated this problem—or Phury should have. Unless . . . “Have you talked to the Primale?”
“About what, precisely,” she snapped. “Tell me, sire, would you be in a hurry to present your failures on the field to your king?”
“How the hell are you failing? You’re keeping, like, four of us going.”
“Exactly. And I am serving you all in a very limited capacity.”
Layla burst up and walked over to the window. As she stared out, he wanted to want her: In that moment, he would have given anything to feel for her what she did for him—she was, after all, everything his family valued, the social pinnacle for a female. And she wanted him.
But when he looked inside, there was another in his heart. And nothing was going to change that. Ever . . . he feared.
“I do not know who or what I am, exactly,” Layla said, as if she were speaking to herself.
Well, looked like both of them were on the same train to nowhere with that question. “You won’t find out unless you leave that Sanctuary.”
“Impossible if I am to service—”
“We’ll use someone else. It’s just that simple.”
There was a sharp inhale, and then, “But of course. You shall do as you wish.”
Qhuinn stared at the hard line of her chin. “That’s supposed to help you.”
She glared over her shoulder. “It does not—for then you would leave me with nothing. Your choice, my repercussion.”
“It’s your life. You can choose.”
“We shall not speak of this anymore.” She threw up her hands. “Dearest Scribe Virgin, you have no idea what it is like to desire things you are not fated to have.”
Qhuinn let out a hard laugh. “The fuck I don’t.” As her brows popped, he rolled his eyes. “You and I have more in common than you think.”
“You have all the freedom in the world. What could you possibly want for?”
“Trust me.”
“Well, I want you and I cannot have you. That is not of my choosing. At least by servicing you and the others, I have a purpose other than mourning the loss of something I dreamed of.”
As Qhuinn took a deep breath, he had to respect the female. There was no pity party going on over there at the window. She was stating the facts as she knew them.
Shit, she really was precisely the kind of shellanhe’d always wanted. Even as he’d been fucking anything that walked, in the back of his mind, he had always seen himself with a female, long-term. One with impeccable bloodlines and a lot of class—the kind his parents would have not only approved of, but might have respected him a little for getting.
That had been his dream. Now that it had shown up, however . . . now that it was standing across his bedroom and looking him in the face . . . he wanted something else entirely.
“I wish I did feel something deep for you,” he said roughly, meeting truth for truth. “I would do almost anything to feel what I should for you. You are . . . my fantasy female. Everything I always wanted, but thought I could never have.”
Her eyes got so wide they were like two moons, beautiful and shining. “Then why . . .”
He rubbed his face and wondered what in the fuck he was saying.
What the fuck he was doing.
When he took his palms away, there was a slickness left behind, one that he refused to think too much about.
“I’m in love,” he said hoarsely. “With someone else. That’s why.”
THIRTY-ONE