She looked around and nodded for a few other guards to take the newcomers’ information and check people out. They didn’t want anything to get inside that shouldn’t be there. “She’d almost be better off in exile.” Lea said without any emotion as she wrote down his name. “Aura’s no princess of ours any longer.”
Ziem was completely flabbergasted by that, and he was the kind of wolf who showed every emotion he had on his face, magnified a hundred times. “What? But the…the kidnapping, the rescue, dramatic breakout, legends coming alive, what the hell?”
“She picked the wrong male.” Lea shrugged and then nodded toward the small hut by the fence where Aura had set up her house. “That’s her. Same house and all. Doesn’t really come out much or do anything, since her falling out with the Alpha. So basically, everyone pretty much doesn’t like her.”
“But…I’m confused. And I just watched the finale of Lost last week, so I want you to appreciate just how big a deal me being confused right now really is.”
Lea looked back up at him and sighed, since she felt bad about explaining what had happened to her Alpha. It wasn’t pleasant, after all. “They were supposed to get mated, you know that, but then she booked it. He went out looking for two years, found her, but then she picked a Shadowborn who ended up ditching her for a Lightborn slave. I really don’t know why she even stays here, but she is Ironborn, after all. It wouldn’t look good to welcome newcomers and then kick her out for something stupid like that.”
“She…” Ziem put a hand to his head and rubbed at his eyes a little to clear his head. “Gods of silver and gold, that’s gotta…ouch.” He pointed over at the hut Lea had pointed out. “You said she’s still here? Like now?”
She nodded. “Hardly ever leaves the place. Not even to see her parents, but even her parents aren’t really interested in seeing her now.”
He sighed heavily and patted her on the shoulder once as he moved past her. “I’ll catch up with you a little later, alright? I gotta…go.”
“Okay. Good luck, Ziem. Go see the Alpha when you’re settled in. You’re technically still an exile seeking asylum, so he’ll have to formally revoke it.” She said with a shrug, and then she was back to work.
He said goodbye to his other friends, several of whom he had actually bitten himself, and so they were more or less his brothers by wolf tradition, even though they were turned rather than pureborn. He made his way over to the hut, where he hesitated for a moment, not really sure what to say after so long away from her. He had thought he would come back and find her mated to Nick. This…was something that he hadn’t really prepared for. But that didn’t keep him from knocking. “Knock knock.”
Aura jumped at the sound of someone actually coming up to her house, so she stopped her jewelry project and got up to answer. When she opened the door and saw who it was, she was surprised beyond words. She looked a little different than he’d last seen her. Thinner, if that was possible, and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she was still beautiful. “Ziem?”
He grinned, and it just about broke his face open in the process. “Good. So I haven’t gotten so ugly you don’t recognize me. I was worried there for a minute.”
“You were never ugly in the first place.” She smiled at the sight of him and she took a step out to hug him, but she held back. Aura didn’t want to make things any worse for him if he was back after exile by associating himself with her. “I, uh, you probably don’t want to hang around here long.”
“I just got done not hanging around here, or didn’t you notice? You remember, that day I went out for cigarettes and never came back?” He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug more or less against her will. “I missed you.”
She actually melted into the embrace, touched that anyone was talking to her, let alone hugging her, and so she hugged him back tightly. Almost desperately. “I missed you too. I had no idea what happened until the next morning…” She sighed as she thought back to being a teenager and getting caught kissing someone she really wanted to kiss, even though it had made his life terrible after. “I never got to tell you I was sorry for what happened. Even though I was never sorry for kissing you.”
“Well, that makes two of us on that, then.” He let her go with the same wide smile on his face. “And don’t be sorry. I tried to write to you, but they kept sending back my letters, of course. They actually kicked me out of the continent, but I went up to Ireland and I’ve been hanging out there for a while. Might as well be a different continent, right?” He sighed and put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t be sorry. I’ve been alright. Better than that, even.”
She kissed his cheek gently. “You look amazing. You must be taking care of yourself.”
“No, actually that’s because my pastime for the last few years has been mostly bar fighting.” He chuckled and grinned at her, leaning against the doorframe of her hut with
