She paused, gathering her thoughts, wanting to get this out before Qara came back, but also wanting to get it right, for Kip’s sake. Because she’d never, ever said this out loud. It would make it too real.
“But…” she started and stopped. “But when I grew old enough to understand love better, to experience wanting, and have my first kiss, I waited for this sense that something was missing, or not right, without him in my life. You know?”
Rune lay there passively, but she hoped maybe he could hear her.
“Like a black hole at my center that could never be filled because he was gone. Except that didn’t happen, and my thoughts of him never changed from what they’d been as a girl. He was my friend. I missed him. I ached for Qara and Chaghan’s loss, but that was all.”
She dropped her gaze to the hand she was holding, big and capable and limp in her own, and ran her thumb over his knuckles, her heart stirring at the simple touch.
“Not what I feel for you,” she whispered the words, then glanced up, half hoping to find him watching her.
He was still out cold. Unresponsive.
“Wake up,” she whispered. “Wake up so I can tell you. Do you hear me?”
No response. Not even a twitch of an eyelid.
Disappointment tugged at her. She didn’t give in, though.
“I’ve been waiting all this time to discover how you make me feel. A simple touch and my body comes alive. A look and I forget my damn name. In a good way. I walk into a room where you are, and everything about me sort of…re-centers…around you. I’ve never been like that. Despite being a human in a dragon shifter world, I’ve been independent. Just ask my parents.”
Her lips twisted wryly, and she shook her head.
“But around you, it’s as though there’s an extension of myself in the room. I want to know what you’re thinking, and something inside settles when you’re close.” She stopped, almost choking on that last word. “I probably sound stupid.”
“No, baby…”
She jerked her head up at the low growl, but Rune was still asleep, face pinched, probably in pain. She turned slowly to find Chaghan in the doorway with a tray of food, Qara beside him silent tears running down her face.
Oh hells. They heard? “I’m sorry—”
Chaghan cut off her whispered apology. “No. You have nothing to apologize for. Much as we love our son, we love you, too. You’re our daughter.”
Qara nodded. “You know that, don’t you?”
Hadyn opened her mouth and closed it again. She did, but she also knew, deep down, that they had clung to her because of what she was supposed to have been to their only child.
“We want nothing but your happiness. If falling in love with Rune makes you happy, then we’re happy for you.”
Hadyn’s face crumbled. “I can’t explain it. But it’s huge and…”
“Real,” Qara supplied softly.
Hadyn stilled at that. Because her mother was right. As crazy as it seemed, what she felt for this man was real. “Yes.”
“Then grab on tight, and don’t let go,” Qara said. “No matter what.”
Hadyn swallowed around the lump in her throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
Chaghan left his mate to come into the room and set the tray of food on the table beside her. “We’ll come back to check on you later.”
They left with supportive smiles, but the way he wrapped an arm around Qara, Hadyn knew they were going somewhere quiet.
To grieve.
…
Rune’s first lucid thought was that someone had strapped his legs down, which never boded well. He peeled sleep-crusted eyes open, and the next sense to come online was his hearing, as the constant beep of a nearby machine penetrated his consciousness. It took another second for his vision to unblur and let him see more clearly around the room.
Infirmary.
Well, that was better than a dungeon in some ways. But in others…
He lifted his head and grimaced at the sight of both legs casted and bound, oddly appearing to sort of float in the air. That couldn’t be right. It took his mind longer than it should’ve to realize he was in traction.
He dropped his head back against the pillow with a groan. “Dungeon would have been better,” he groaned. Slurred was more like.
A gasp at his side had him opening his eyes again, his heart giving an extra thud at the sight of a gamine face, Hadyn’s hair sticking up, all mussed and adorable, green eyes losing the haze of sleep and snapping with sudden alertness.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Your powers of observation must be legendary,” he teased. Or tried to. It came out more grumpy than teasing. Probably because of the relief clogging up his chest.
“I can tell that you’re going to be a terrible patient,” she chirped back, standing to look into his eyes, her gaze moving to check the monitors. “How do you feel?”
“Like a dragon shifter in traction.” He paused, trying to scrape his memory for how he got here. “What happened?”
She smiled, and that smile shot an arrow straight through his heart. Cupid has less accurate aim.
He would’ve tipped his head if his brain wasn’t pounding, each ache and pain hitting him all at once. He tried to concentrate through the onslaught. “Something has changed,” he croaked, searching her gaze. Because something in her gaze…his dragon almost purred in his head.
She shrugged, red coming up in her cheeks. “I had a bit of a realization while…”
Rune waited for whatever was coming out of her mouth next. Honestly, he never was sure with her. He lifted a hand that was remarkably unsteady, still weak as a godsdamned newborn human baby, and smoothed back a spiky strand of her hair. “What?”
“That you’re mine,” she said, almost shyly. “And I want to be yours. Always.”
A new kind of relief punched through him, then he groaned as his body throbbed not in a good way. “Thank the gods,” he mumbled through the aching.
“I thought you might like that.”
Like it? Even strapped down and miserable, he was in fucking heaven.
She was his. As soon as all this was over, he’d take her back to his beach house in South America. They could stay there, together, as she lived out her days. In peace, finding pleasure in every second of time they might be blessed with.
“So…you want me, huh?”
Despite the pain going on in his lower extremities, his dick jumped at the thought.