If she was, did that mean she wasn’t serious about the man waiting for her?
His thoughts spun in circles in his mind, gathering speed, becoming a dizzying blur that had him unsure which direction he was going but aware that danger lay ahead. Her coven had been serious about her returning and bearing a child. Daimon had grown up in a world where goddesses were often betrothed from birth, their family deciding who they would marry.
Had Cass’s coven done the same with her, selecting the man she would be with and expecting her to follow through with it?
Would she follow through with it?
She glanced at him, the feel of her eyes on his face only strengthening the storm building inside him. He had come here wanting to give in to her, but now he wasn’t sure he could do it.
He wasn’t sure he could get over what he had learned about her or the thought she was destined for another man.
He needed to drive that home so he would stop forgetting it, before he did something stupid.
Like falling for her.
It was going to hurt like hell, but it was better to wound himself now than let her utterly destroy him when she left.
“You’re good at this.” He waited for her to look at him again, cursed her for smiling at him and looking happy that he had complimented her when he wasn’t done. He felt like a bastard when he added in a casual tone that hid everything he was feeling, “You’ll make a good mother.”
Her head jerked up, her gaze colliding hard with his. “What do you mean by that?”
Her pulse was off the scale.
She knew exactly what he meant and the fact that she did turned his stomach, had cold sweeping through him as his mood darkened.
Daimon shoved his feelings down and forced himself to continue, driving the wedge between them deeper.
“I saw the letter on your desk.”
Chapter 16
Cass cursed Daimon in Russian. A whole string of them. Every single one she could call to mind. He deserved all of them as he stood there, casual as anything, his expression flat and empty, concealing all of his feelings from her. She wished she could do the same, masking the anger and hurt that swamped her, the fierce need to explain things even when she knew that whatever she said it wasn’t going to make things better.
He had already made up his mind about her and what he had read.
“You snooped at my private things?” she snapped once she could say something that wasn’t a swear word.
“It was right there.” He folded his arms across his chest, the navy roll-neck long-sleeve T-shirt he wore tightening over his muscles as they flexed. “It was pretty hard to miss.”
A little like the bite in his tone.
He had read the letter the coven had sent to her. That was the reason he had turned so frosty with her back at her home, had announced he was leaving with or without her, and had been flip-flopping between pulling her closer and pushing her away more rapidly than before.
He was jealous.
Even when there was no need to feel that way.
He was angry too.
It flashed in his eyes as his irises brightened, turning as white as snow ringed with black, flecked with diamonds.
“Besides, you’ve done your share of snooping.” He threw the words at her.
She planted her hands on her hips but couldn’t deny that. Just because she might have poked her nose in here and there, didn’t mean she didn’t get to be angry when he did the same thing.
She wanted to lash out at him, slave to a powerful urge to slap him for looking at the letter she had discarded on her desk the moment she had opened it, tossing it aside without reading it when she had seen the coven letterhead.
It would only make things worse, and she ached for things to be better, back to how they had been before he had turned cold towards her. Only a minute ago, things had been good between them, better than they had ever been, and she had been enjoying it. For a moment, she had honestly believed he was close to giving in to her.
Now, he was so far away from her that she felt like a fool for thinking something was about to happen between them.
She nibbled the corner of the brownie she had cut for him, needing the sugar and the sweet fix, a dose of chocolate to keep her spirits up and maybe give her a little courage.
She should have kept the ambrosia on hand in the kitchen, regretted taking it to her quarters now.
“It’s tradition.” That word sounded cold, hollow, no doubt revealing how she felt about it. She was done hiding things from Daimon though. He might be happy switching emotions every minute, and keeping everything to himself, but she wasn’t. He was the only one who knew what awaited her, and gods, she needed to talk to someone about it, even when there was a chance she was only going to do more damage to the fragile bond that had been developing between them. If she was lucky, it would both lift some of the weight from her shoulders and make him see that she wasn’t really getting a choice. “When a witch in my coven reaches two hundred years old, they must return home to bear a child with what you and your brothers call a Hellspawn. The child will be female and a witch. It’s the way of our coven.”
It sounded so sterile when she put it like that, and she wanted it to be that way.
What she didn’t tell him was that she had been putting it off. She was loyal to her coven and planned to
