“Dev?”
His eyes popped up. “Huh? Oh, yeah. See you later, Firecracker.” He gave me a tight-lipped grin.
With that, he jogged up the stairs, lost in thought and I watched him go. I wanted to go with him to make sure he was alright because he was obviously trying to hide the pain by focusing on me and my messed up casting skills. It wasn’t healthy, but who was I to judge on what was healthy?
I decided to let him be. If he was in his potions lab, he wasn’t out doing something destructive and I knew he’d at least be safe. I’d talk to him at dinner and hopefully gauge where he was at then. I planned on even asking Matias to help me figure out how I could help my uncle because he was better at reading people than anyone else I’d ever met. It was just one of the many, many things my vampire mate was exceptionally good at doing.
* * *
I never made it into the infirmary that day. Oh, I walked by the door several times, but I never gathered the courage to actually turn the knob and go inside. What I saw in the detention center that day and Ainsley’s death shook me up more than I wanted to admit, even though I was sure anyone in my position would have felt the same.
I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my life, but that freaked me out in ways I couldn’t even describe. The broken, worn out bodies, the hopeless stares…
I shook my head to try and clear the images from my head as I walked toward the dining room. It was a little too early for dinner, but I knew that if I didn’t find a place to sit down, I’d keep pacing and I needed to get myself together. What I needed was to talk to someone so I didn’t close myself off again, but what would I say?
I rounded the corner from the living room and saw Irna standing in the dining room door, leaning against it with her back to me. She was staring into the room but made no attempt to move. I carefully approached her and peeked around her shoulder to see Dev sitting at the far end of the table, alone. He was staring at the table’s surface, but I knew that the gleaming wood surface wasn’t what he was really seeing.
“What are you doing?” I quietly asked her.
Her gaze never shifted from my uncle. She looked to be at war with herself, torn between taking him for herself and comforting him through the loss of the man he loved. I felt for her and the situation she was in, really I did. It was heartbreaking to be near the one that fate provided you and having him reject you over and over again, in the nicest way, of course.
But she chose to be near him, chose to stay in the California house instead of moving somewhere else. There are dozens of rebel factions all over the United States and even more around the planet. Sure, she was there first but Devlin wasn’t going to go somewhere I wasn’t, not after what he went through. At least, I hoped he wouldn’t.
Irna’s right foot slid forward as if she were getting ready to walk toward Dev, but I put my hand on her arm, stopping her movement. She looked down at where I grabbed her then back up to me in anger.
“Let go,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.
“What are you doing?” I repeated, but refused to let go. I felt bad for her, but I still didn’t trust her. Not one single bit.
“I’m going to my mate,” she seethed. “Now let me go.”
I yanked on her arm, dragging her into the living room and shoved her onto the closest couch. After righting herself, she began rubbing where my hand grabbed her and stared at me menacingly.
“He’s not your mate, Irna,” I sighed, exasperated. “He denied you, remember?”
She winced at the word and I couldn’t help but drop my offensive stance.
“He still cares about me, I know he does.” Irna looked down at her open hands, as if she were trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince me.
“I’m sure that he does, but not the way you want him to. I’m sorry, Irna. He’ll never want you the way you want him.”
“He could, you know. Love me. I just need to spend…”
“He won’t. Especially not now and more than likely, not ever. You have to know this.”
She looked up into my pleading eyes as I tried to get her to just listen to me. Being around Devlin and not being with him had to be torture, and not just for her. Devlin did the right thing by not giving in to the mating bond, just to ease the tension between them. He’d never love Irna romantically, and she needed to understand that.
“I can help him…” she then said and I sighed again, sitting down next to her on the couch.
“It’s hard to be around your unbonded mate, isn’t it? Physically?” She nodded her head and continued to stare out into space. “Dev is in more pain than either of us can imagine at the moment. Do you want to cause him that added discomfort of being around you right now?”
She wiped a stray tear from her face and looked at me. “But they weren’t mates. He couldn’t have loved him that much...”
“He did.” My words came out a little harsher than I had planned, but it angered me that she thought just because they weren’t fated mates they didn’t belong together. “I have never met two people who loved each other as much as Dev and Ainsley. They may not
