Paris inhaled long and hard, before sighing it all out. His tanned cheeks turned red. “I didn’t want to meet my mate,” he said softly, with shame burning his words. “I’ve always been scared of what it would do to me. That it would pull focus from my art, that I would lose my mate and never be able to create again. I needed to get away from you, because I have never been so fucking scared in my life. I had found you, and I didn’t want to leave you. The second I laid eyes on you, I knew I was done. That I was forever changed. That I would never be the same again. My heart started beating only for you.”
She shook her head. “But you walked away.”
“I did. And it hurt. Literally.”
Corinne listened as he explained the pain associated with being apart from a mate. The madness that could take hold.
“What if I don’t want to be with you?” she asked, her hands over Peanut.
His jaw clenched hard and clicked with the force of it. His green eyes were full of pain and fear. “Then I’ll do what I can to convince you that you belong with me. We’re a family, Corinne. We belong together.”
She bit down on her lip. “This is a lot, Paris. I need time to think.”
He nodded and stood. “I understand. I didn’t handle this thing between us very well. I should have told you back at your apartment the night we met that you were my mate.”
“Is that why I’m pregnant? Because the mate thing circumvents birth control?”
“I don’t know. When we agreed to one night only, my dragon warned me, in my thoughts, that he would make sure that wasn’t true.”
Corinne inhaled sharply and looked away. She clutched her unborn child. “I think you should go.”
“I’ll give you time to process this, but Corinne, please don’t shut me out. I want to be there for you. For Peanut. I…” he swallowed hard. “I don’t want to miss a thing. Not when it comes to us…”
Corinne didn’t look at him, but took a shaky breath.
“Just promise me you’ll text me if you need me?”
She gave him a curt head nod and walked away, closing the bedroom door behind her.
Corinne lay down on the bed, curled into a ball and placed her hands over her stomach.
“Well, Peanut, what do you think about all of this?”
The silence was deafening. She knew that Paris deserved more than her silence, but he had dropped about twenty bombs on her in the span of two seconds. She was a pregnant woman, on the run from a very bad man.
Her baby daddy was rich enough that he could keep her safe and protected.
She was mad at Paris, not because he had kept secrets. She would have been a hypocrite to be mad about that. The reason why she was upset was that Paris had given her hope.
Something she hadn’t had in a very long time.
Corinne knew that it was dangerous to hope for too much. Paris was offering her everything she wanted now: love, safety and a good life for her kid.
No matter what happened to her, Peanut would have a dad and the Warwick family. So the baby wouldn’t need her.
Not when all she brought to the table was danger and secrets.
Chapter Twelve
Paris
Paris watched Corinne go into her bedroom. He couldn’t even be mad at her for her reaction. His brothers had been right. He should have been honest with her from the very beginning about the shifter and mate thing.
I told you that you were being the world’s biggest idiot. Now she is mad at us, and we’ve got no way of knowing what she will do. You need to fix this, Paris. You need to find out everything you can about her, get to know her, and show her just what it means to be a mate. Love her, protect her. Fix this.
He wholeheartedly agreed with his dragon. So much so that he decided that he had punished his beast long enough. Paris needed to take a good long flight through the night sky to clear his head and come up with the right plan to prove to Corinne that he could be the man she and their kid needed.
He had been a reclusive artist with very little contact with the outside world for a very long time. He had been insane the last two months, as he tried to ignore just how much he was missing Corinne.
His mate.
Now that he knew she was pregnant, he couldn’t walk away.
Actually, he found he didn’t want to.
What he wanted, more than peace and quiet, more than artistic recognition, was Corinne. A life with her. With their kid.
As he drove out of the Paris city limits, he called Pascal. The man might be a flighty artist, but he was a pro when it came to finding information online. He asked his friend to find all possible information about Corinne. Paris was going to make sure he knew everything about her so that he didn’t fuck this up.
It was clear she had secrets and old hurts, and he would find out what they were so he could show her that she was safe with him. That their baby was safe with him. He would do whatever he could to show her that life as his mate would be worth it. It would be worth the risk of sharing her life with him.
When Paris finally got to the countryside, and the Warwick estate in the commune of Mantes-la-joie, he hopped out of the car and took a deep breath of relief. The French called the townships communes, for whatever reason. Though it was barely an hour outside of Paris, Mantes-la-joie bordered the Seine, a long river, and it was close to the Vexin Natural Regional Park. It was just remote enough that Paris could shift into his dragon and fly across the sky without scaring the humans.
He stayed up in the clouds well into the night, until he had flown so much, his wings were getting sore from the exertion. His dragon’s wings beat against the windy sky, and he let the strength of the air beat back all of the fear he was feeling.
He stayed up a little longer, letting the air clear his thoughts.
He could convince Corinne to love him.
He had to.
We will, his dragon agreed.
Paris knew he had to show her what it was like to be loved by a dragon shifter. What it was like to be his priority.
An idea started to take form in his head, and he finally flew back down to the ground to set his plan into motion.
After his flight, he mentally apologized for keeping his dragon locked up for so long. He couldn’t do that anymore. He knew that the beast was just as much a part of him as his art. As much as Corinne and their child. The more he ignored his dragon, the wonkier his behavior was. Like staying away from his mate for two months.
What the hell had he been thinking? Paris had to get better at coping with his emotions. Numbing himself with art wasn’t working, obviously.
He had nearly lost everything that made life worth living.
And really, what was life if not an imitation of art? Maybe if he stopped obsessing over what kind of artist he wanted to be, and what kind of painting he wanted to create, and lived his life a little bit, he would be able to experience new things that gave him a fresh perspective on life, on art.
Besides, he hadn’t been able to shake the idea of setting up a huge canvas with Corinne and painting it with her. But that was an idea for another day.
First, he had to get his mate to fall in love with him. If she did, he would make sure to uphold and honor that love for the rest of their lives.
Paris was excited to get back to his apartment in the city to start on his plans to seduce the hell out of his Corinne. He was just sitting down at his laptop after shoving a quick dinner down his throat, when his phone rang. He looked down at the screen, his heart in his throat. He was only able to settle his breathing when he saw that it wasn’t Corinne calling with a pregnancy emergency, but that it was Pascal.