I crouched down a few feet away from him. My breath was still coming short from the kiss. I swiped at my mouth. Despite everything, being this close to him still short-circuited my brain cells. I couldn’t let that keep happening.
“Blue,” he said, trying to reach out for me.
“If you touch me again, I’m not going to react well.”
Kai retracted his hand. A whisper of the bite he’d given me still heated up the side of my neck. “Will you at least hear me out?”
I tried to shake the dizziness. If I moved farther away, he would know exactly what I was doing. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He lifted himself up until he too was crouched on bent knees. Now he was looming over me. He didn’t seem to even notice he was doing it. I remembered the way he automatically reacted when he thought Astrid was going to hurt Chanelle. Bile rose in my throat. For goodness sake!
Kai ran his hand through his hair. “In the beginning it hadn’t been an issue,” he said.
“So when we first met, you still had every intention of going through with the bond?” I cleared my throat to keep my voice from faltering.
He looked into my eyes, his green ones cloudy to the point of almost blackness. “No. Nelle and I were over well before then.”
My jaw clamped at the sound of her nickname. “You have to understand why,” he said quickly. “We were still kids when she broke up with me.”
“Were you even together?” I didn’t want to hear any of this. But shoving my head in the sand probably wasn’t the most rational thing to do under the circumstances.
“No. But the blood vow...it made things...inevitable.”
I threw my arms up in the air. “Then why are we even having this conversation?”
I pushed up, ready to stomp out of there. Kai’s arm whipped out. He shackled my left wrist and dragged me to my knees in front of him.
“You have to understand what I was like back then,” he said. His tone and the way he looked at me were urgent. “All I cared about was getting stronger, being better so that I could seek revenge on the demons who killed my family. I wasn’t very...nice.”
I snorted. “Par for the course if you ask me.”
“You have no idea. The way I was when you met me, it was nothing compared to what I was like back then. Astrid and Max got the worst of it. Why they stayed is still beyond me.”
“Astrid says you stopped speaking to her.”
He nodded, this time looking at the ground. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear he was ashamed. “I couldn’t do it anymore. She and Max reminded me of everything I could lose. I was so angry and scared that something would happen to them and I’d be completely alone. I pushed her away, but it didn’t make me any better. The only time I wasn’t so angry was with Nelle. When the Council came at me with the blood vow, I didn’t even think about what it would mean to sign it. All I knew was that when I was with her, I didn’t feel like I was going insane with rage.”
I knew the feeling. If he kept talking, I might hulk out. “Gran tried to stop me. Max’s dad beat me almost into unconsciousness to try and talk some sense into me. It goes against everything the shifters stand for. To give up the chance of a proper mate for something as clinical as a contract. But I just couldn’t see anything beyond what had happened.”
He stared past my shoulder like he wasn’t seeing this current reality. “Six months after signing the contract, Cassie said something to me that changed everything. I was training her to fight. Forced her to, actually. She hated every minute of it, but she showed up every day. I found her crying right over there.” He pointed to the spot where my Arcana tree now grew.
“I asked her why she kept coming, and she told me that she would never see me otherwise. That I wouldn’t know she existed. Because pain was the only thing I recognised, and I didn’t feel it with Chanelle because I didn’t care about her at all.
“It seems everybody could see it but me. Chanelle broke it off not long after for those very reasons. Said that she wouldn’t stand to be treated so poorly. At the time I thought it was done with. I have no romantic feelings for her, and she made her feelings about me abundantly clear when she left.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. What could I possibly say? He wasn’t finished, though. “That period after first semester when you went to Zambia, I checked in with Nelle. Made sure she would keep her word and disavow the pact. She told me she would.”
“And you believed her?”
“I had no reason not to.”
He couldn’t possibly be that naïve. My top lip curled. “Aside from the fact she’s a...” the sentence was out of my mouth before I could think. I reined it back in. He raised his brow knowing exactly how the thought of her made me feel. I refused to feel jealous of someone who only had a claim to him by rights of some contract. Sometimes refusing to do things worked. This time, it did not. Still, I made my face unclench. I had to get points for trying.
“Why has she decided to renege now?” I asked.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She thinks if I can commit to somebody else, then I’ll be able to be with her the way she wants.”
“Why her?” I could understand why the Council wouldn’t want me. Who knew what my blood would do to any
