Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Watching me contemplatively.
“I fucked up,” I said quietly. “Then he fucked up. We sorted it out. I care about him greatly. And if we work, I’ll do my utmost to make him happy.”
Nayden shifted his head like he was stretching the side of his neck before he nodded and looked away.
I let it go, pulled out my Palm and text commed Gayle to see how she was doing.
It took a while to get her text back where she shared she was okay.
I didn’t believe her, so I told her I’d be at Spikeback that night to get the full story.
All I got to that was a listless (yes, even through text) See you then.
Hmm.
It wasn’t until an hour and a half later, when Nayden deposited me in my flat and was walking into the lift that he addressed our earlier topic.
“You can care about him. You can make him happy,” he said while standing in the lift. “And both of those are good. But they don’t mean you’ll provide him with a good queen.”
For some reason, especially considering I had no desire to be queen, I was wildly insulted by that.
I had no chance to share this with him.
The doors to the lift closed.
And he was gone.
Chapter 15
Stands
I was sitting cross-legged in the center of my bed, the room dark, the lights of the city the only illumination.
And I was deep in my thoughts.
It was a week and a day after the first Wednesday I spent the night at Berg Castle with Tanyn.
Gayle was still at Spikeback. She’d resumed her daily routine, just going home from work to a castle.
And I was spot-on about her text. Listless was the only way to describe her.
She was getting on with it, but how she was doing it, she was still breaking all of our hearts.
Also on that, we could say Cormac was enraged Gayle had been rescued.
Fortunately, Tanyn, Aleksei and Bainon were correct. Cormac’s father, King Niall, made a stink about it, but he didn’t push it too far.
The worst part about that was Cormac had no communication with Gayle about any of this after she was rescued. It was all done directly—with Cormac comming the males and sharing a piece of his mind—and through reps—with them blustering about foreign invasions committed by allies, saying Cormac’s was justified, he was seeing to his mate, and theirs was not.
Nevertheless, the diplomats managed to battle this out behind the scenes, and that had gone quiet.
But the hits kept hitting Gayle, since Sirk showed at Spikeback the Friday after she returned for some private time with her.
Time he used to break up with her.
Although I could see his reasoning, his timing pissed me off. She was barely home two days before he put an end to them.
Sure, if he intended to seek his mate, the end was always an eventuality, but the male could have given her a few more days to deal before he lowered that boom.
As such, I was pissed at Sirk.
Thus, I got his sequence from Laura and shared that in a text.
He didn’t dodge it, he replied, You must know, it’s for the best. And it didn’t do either of us any good to put it off.
I did know that, but he was being deliberately obtuse about the timing.
I let it go.
It wasn’t my battle to fight (as Tanyn reminded me when I complained about this to him). I said my piece. I took my gal’s back. There was nothing more I could do (all of this also what Tanyn told me).
So with no other choice…
Onward.
On his weekend with me, Tanyn and I hadn’t spent the entire time in bed.
After hours, I’d taken him to my gallery so he could see it and be suitably impressed.
He was.
And he was this so openly, it meant the world to me.
He wasn’t just impressed, he was proud.
Of me.
And that felt awesome.
Further during his visit, Laura and Aleksei invited us to dinner at Spikeback.
Now it was me worrying about timing, because I’d shared with Gayle when I saw her Thursday night that things with Tanyn were serious, and getting more so quickly, but I didn’t want to force her to witness it.
She would have to eventually.
But to my way of thinking, now was not the time.
It was Monique who intervened in that, telling me maybe Gayle should see two beings falling for each other, those beings not fated mates.
Maybe it would give her hope.
So we went to dinner.
Gayle didn’t give much away.
This wasn’t a surprise.
I’d noticed she’d been retreating behind a wall of faking it. I worried about this, but I also thought she should have some time to deal how she needed to deal, and if that time became too long, I’d do something about it.
For now, we all just had to let her do what she had to do.