Chapter 8: Titus - Repetition - Change

Titus
Repetition

* * *

The building was almost at full capacity from the dinner rush, but we were still shown to a private booth. It was permanently on reserve for my use only, usually for last-minute business dealings with high-ranking officials and delicate negotiations.

I sipped my wine, watching Bianca nervously run her finger around the rim of her glass. She’d hardly spoken the entire drive here, and considering what had happened, I’d been content to leave her to her thoughts.

But now I had to get her to open up.

So yeah, this was a good spot to be: we were in a ‘delicate situation.’

“You did good,” I said, noticing the way her fingers jumped at the sound of my voice. I’d been doing my best to contain myself around her, because it hadn’t escaped my attention that, while she was no longer afraid of me, shifters still made her nervous. But after today, she was more sensitive than usual.

Not that I blamed her.

I hated seeing her like this.

Bianca’s lips twitched into a sarcastic smile, and she continued to stare at her water. “How?”

“You still talked to Trinity even though you were scared,” I replied. “That was a brave thing to do.”

Her expression closed. “I’m not going to let her examine me.”

I really wished she would, but it wasn’t my decision. “It’s okay.” For now. She might say no, but I fully believed that she would agree on her own sometime soon. However, she had to feel comfortable.

“You’ll go when you’re ready,” I added. “I’ll be there if you want someone with you.”

“What?” She stopped stirring her finger around the glass and finally looked at me.

“It’s up to you.” I shrugged, ignoring the way her face darkened. “But you don’t need to face any of this alone.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” She grabbed her straw and stabbed it through the crushed ice. “Damen says it too, like when I first came home from the hospital.”

Damen said lots of things, he never could stop running his mouth—it caused more problems than it solved. But I could see that she was going somewhere with this. “Yes?”

“Why do you care so much about how I handle this?” she asked. “Why can’t you let me deal with things on my own?”

Because it wasn’t healthy. Because she was avoiding the hard things and not recovering—at least, not until she was forced to confront something head on. And… “Because you’re not alone.” I crossed my arms on the table and leaned forward. “And, sorry to remind you—” No, I wasn’t. “—but you’re not the only one affected by this. We need to talk about our relationship.”

She flushed, and her expression gutted me, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I would wait for forever, but we still had to talk. If for no other reason than to mentally prepare myself for what to expect.

“W-what do you want from m-me?” Her question twisted my heart.

But I needed to know. “Expectations.”

“W-what expectations?” A hitch of fear spiked through the air, and her voice squeaked. “Julian said…” her statement trailed off as she stared at me, eyes wide.

“And you told Julian,” I interrupted. “Miles too, even Damen. But you’ve never told me.”

“But they’ve told you, right?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I began cautiously. I hated doing this, but there were some things we had to discuss directly. “But we still have to talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Her eyes dropped from mine. “I can’t have sex.”

I’d prepared for this. I’d already heard this from the others, Julian and Miles especially laying out her refusal in crystal clear detail, but it was still something else hearing it from her. Her words were a splash of cold water to my face.

“I understand that.” I really did. After what she’d been through, no one would blame her.

But it didn’t mean that I was happy about it either.

“What does it mean for the whole mate thing?” she asked, her ashen expression lifting to meet mine. “It doesn’t matter anyway, I guess,” she continued, not giving me a chance to respond. “Dr. Kohler said I can’t have children—”

“That’s not what she said.” I didn’t like where this was going. She was giving up any hope at all. “You’re just latching on to that because you don’t want to consider the alternative.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, the bare skin of her throat briefly capturing my attention. But her words brought the conversation back to the present. “But I can’t get that physical.”

“There are a lot of things you keep saying you can’t do,” I pointed out, lowering my glass back to the table. Hadn’t she ever considered that she’d been the one creating her own limitations? “Stop focusing on that. What can you do?”

She blinked at me. “What do you mean?”

“You agreed to see Trinity today,” I pointed out. “That was something you could do. You’re still running away from Do Yun, for whatever reason, instead of going to therapy. That’s something else you’re choosing to do.”

Her cheeks turned dark. “I am not—”

“You sit in my lap,” I continued, ignoring her dark glare. Distracting her with anger first seemed to work best when trying to get a point across. “You’ve let me hug you, but are you comfortable with that?”

Bianca peered at me through her lashes, face red. “I keep having this conversation.”

“Not with me,” I emphasized. “Although the four of us play by the same rules, we are not interchangeable. You’re my mate, and quite frankly, I don’t care about the others. You’ll have your own relationship with them. I want to discuss us.”

She averted her eyes. “Okay…”

I reached across the table, grabbing her hand and lacing my fingers through hers. She looked at me, mouth slightly open as her cheeks flushed. “I need to touch you sometimes.” I inclined my head toward our entwined fingers. “Nothing sexual. But I need to be able to feel you, to make sure you’re okay. Is that all right with you?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know what side-effects we’re going to have from this mate bond,” I warned her, “since this has never happened before.”

“Okay…” she began, biting her lip as she tilted her head curiously. “What do you mean?”

Here we go—the moment I’d been dreading.

“Mates share a physical and mental connection, or more in some species,” I explained. My knee started to bounce nervously, and I hoped she didn’t notice.

I had to look confident—for her.

“So, like my connection with Julian and Miles?” she asked.

A surge of jealousy made my vision flare, and a bitter taste touched the back of my throat. “Can we not talk about anyone else right now?” I begged, my thoughts clouding.

More than anything else in the world, I did not like to share.

“Okay,” Bianca said again, her green-flecked eyes moving over my face. “So what—”

“I can hear your thoughts,” I blurted out.

She stopped breathing, her fingers tightened over mine. A long moment passed, the chatting of the other patrons sounding far in the distance, before she finally sucked in a long, shaky breath.

“Like, if we officially become mates?” Her voice was tentatively cautious, and she leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table. “You can hear my thoughts then?”

If.

I shook my head, banishing the thought from my mind. This wasn’t the time to focus on that. There was too much else going on.

“No.” Despite the growing knot in my stomach, my chest began to feel a little bit lighter. I hated lying more than anything else in the world, and secrets should never exist between the two of us. “Now. When I’m in my dragon form.”

She recoiled, but I didn’t let her go, and her brows drew together as the beginnings of a quiet anger began to stir in her eyes. “Since when?”

“Only recently.” I should apologize but couldn’t bring myself to say the words. This was a normal part of shifter culture, and I refused to be ashamed of it. “I didn’t expect it. But it started when we walked through the forest together looking for Miles. I wasn’t sure how to tell you with everything else that was going on.”

The spark ebbed from her fiery expression, turning to thoughtfulness. “So, you heard what I was thinking about your wings?”

White pain laced through my back, along the phantom limb. I’d been born with that memory, and it replayed over again—the tearing of skin as if the moment had just happened. This time I was the one who pulled back, dropping her hands, realizing a second too late how my reaction could be taken.

She blinked rapidly, the lines of her face softening as her eyes lowered to the table. “S-sorry.”

“No.” I shrugged my shoulders, brushing away the memory. It’d lingered throughout all these lives, and I should have been used to it, but the injury would never heal. Even after being reborn into new forms.

But that was because, as Damen stated, it wasn’t really an injury at all.

It was a curse. A reminder of the time I’d failed to protect the one who mattered most.

Bianca, more than anyone else in the world, had the right to ask about it.

“Don’t be sorry.” I closed my hands over hers before she could shut me out completely. “It’s just not a pleasant memory.”

“Sorry,” she said again. I’d almost rather she be angry at me.

“Stop. You had nothing to do with it.” I was lying, already breaking the promise I’d just made to myself seconds before, but I’d rather her not take on that burden right now. “It was something that happened a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “What else did you hear?” she asked, changing the subject.

I was thankful for the diversion, but that also went against her curious nature. Hopefully she wasn’t holding back because she was afraid of my reaction.

However, right now I would take it.

“You were thinking a few hilarious things about Miles,” I began, my spirits lifting at the memory of her inner dialogue. “And that you liked my plaid.”

“I do not…” Bianca began to protest, but at my raised eyebrow she stopped, her face reddening. “Fine, maybe I like the plaid a little.”

“You’re overly concerned with the nature of my work.”

Her eyes shone in embarrassment. “It could be dangerous!”

“And I know you’re a woman with standards,” I offered. “So you have no intention of asking me half the things you want.”

“Oh my God.” This time I didn’t stop her from snatching her hands away, and she covered her face.

“The point is—” I pressed my foot against hers. I waited for her to peek at me through the gaps between her fingers before I continued. “—we’re eventually not going to be able to keep secrets from each other.” It pained me to admit it, but it was true. “Even if we wanted to.”

She was silent for a moment before she added, “But we shouldn’t want to,” in a near whisper.

“No.” My heartbeat was loud in my ears. “We shouldn’t. We should always be honest about what we feel.”

Bianca wasn’t the only one that was headed into unfamiliar, and uncomfortable, territory.

The room grew louder around us, and the air colder. The waitress came then, taking our orders with a familiar professionalism that helped calm my racing thoughts.

We’d all kept our own secrets—a burden that became heavier with every rebirth as we regained the memories of our past lives. Bianca, to my knowledge, hadn’t even gotten close to uncovering the depth of hers.

But as for me…

“I’m afraid to have sex,” Bianca blurted out, staring hard at my hands.

I jerked back, blinking at her. What in the world…

“I’m telling you my secret, since you wanted honesty.” She was trembling, hands pressed into her lap, but pressed forward. “So that’s what you can expect.”

“Bianca…” I wasn’t sure what to say. Did she really think that was a secret?

“I’m fine with hugging, and snuggling, and even sleeping in the same bed,” she rambled, her shoulders shifting as she moved her hands out of my sight. “Sometimes even kissing,” she added, eyes flickering in my direction as her cheeks darkened. “Maybe. Light touching…”

This wasn’t where I was going with this. “Bianca—”

“But we can never, ever, ever, ever have sex.” Her shaking stopped and her jaw locked. “Ever. I don’t want anything near there.”

“Bianca,” I sighed, pressing my foot down lightly on her toes—it was the only way to get her attention, since she was adamantly avoiding my gaze. “You’re thinking too hard about this. You need to stop planning.”

I couldn’t help but laugh internally at the irony, since I’d been planning my every move since I’d first seen her.

“You’re never going to be able to relax enough to enjoy the moment if you’re worried about what might happen,” I added.

She pursed her lips. “That doesn’t sound very dragon-like. In fact, that sounds like something Damen would say.”

Because it was, it was something he told me all the time. He wasn’t always wrong.

And sometimes the unexpected events were the ones that changed the course of war.

“Do you like it when I do this?” I asked, rubbing the top of my foot up the back of her calf.

Bianca sucked in a breath; eyes wide as she stared up at me.

“Well?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious from her scent.

“Yes!” she squeaked.

“What about this?” I leaned forward, tucking a loose lock of her hair behind her ear. I’d been wanting to do this since we’d sat down but resisted—so I couldn’t help but to take a moment to linger, running my fingertips along the shell of her ear before I leaned back into my seat.

“It’s fine!” Her face was on fire now. “Are you sure you’re a virgin?”

I shrugged—this was only the tip of the iceberg. I’d taken Julian’s comments about my lack of knowledge quite personally.

How dare they underestimate my determination. “I read.”

“The others think you’re innocent,” she said quickly. “But you keep flirting with me when they’re not looking.”

“And sometimes when they are,” I added. “Although.” I leaned forward, cupping the side of my mouth. Bianca’s eyebrows raised in question, and the doubtful expression fell from her face as she moved closer. “Now it’s my turn to tell you a secret.”

Her eyes widened.

“I’ve never been with a girl before,” I said, my voice low. “Ever.”

I wasn’t sure what reaction I expected, but it certainly wasn’t her lowering her chin and whispering back, “That’s not really a secret.”

Well, not really. It was just as much of a secret as hers. But—

“I’m going to mess up. I don’t know how to be a mate, and there are still things about humans I don’t understand.” I hated to admit it out loud, every sentence was an admission of where I couldn’t compare. “The five of us… We’re sheltered from a young age. Usually we only have each other, our families, and our officers for company until we go to school. On top of that, Pierson was really strict—”

She tilted her head. “Pierson?”

“My father.” I waved my hand in the air. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s fine. But he’s a lion, territorial, and doesn’t understand dragons. He was also not around. My mother disappeared when I was young. But she was still alive, he could feel her presence, but he never figured out where she went. He never got any closer to finding her before she, suddenly, died.”

I pressed my hands into my lap, trying to fight back the cold numbness at the memory of her voice. “There’s nothing worse than a mate who leaves you, especially if you don’t know why.”

Though, that wasn’t entirely true.

We all knew why she’d left—although my father never told me to my face.

She was warm, kind, and loving—a gazelle. They had the perfect relationship, and why wouldn’t they? A predator and prey pairing was something rare and sacred.

But she was too gentle and couldn’t handle the stress of having a dragon as a child.

I didn’t blame her at all.

“I’m sorry.” Bianca touched the tip of her finger to my hand. “What was her name?”

I opened my mouth, the response on the tip of my tongue, when the waitress returned, carrying our food. “Later,” I mouthed.

But as the evening continued and we eventually left for home, later never came and the subject was forgotten.