by Chant, Zoe
"But ..." He couldn't understand why this wasn't working. "I didn't want to sever the bond, don't you see? It wasn't me!"
"I never thought you wanted to sever it, Heikon! Aaaaah!" With a cry of frustration, she hurled the wadded-up towel, now twisted nearly into a knot, to land in the sink. "I know you didn't want to break it! But whether you did it on purpose to protect me, or just went with it, what it comes down to is that you let me spend twenty years thinking you were dead. You could have come to me. We could have dealt with Braun together. But no, you had to handle it all on your own! And then!"
She seemed to be working herself up to increased heights of frustration and anger. Words spilled out of her—words he sensed she'd been holding inside for a long time.
"You say you were trying to protect me, but what were you protecting me from when you'd deposed your brother and you didn't even bother to tell me you were alive then? I had to hear about it through the dragon grapevine, Heikon! I found out from Darius! Tell me again who you were trying to protect. Was it me, or yourself?"
All he could do was stare at her. He'd never really thought about it that way before. He'd thought of himself as the victim of Braun's treachery, and Esme as a potential second victim, who had to be kept safe from all of that.
I couldn't come to you because—
Because ... why? To keep her safe? Or because he couldn't face her without the mate bond, knowing all that they'd lost?
"I didn't know how," he said helplessly. "I really did want to keep you safe, Esme. But ... you're right. I didn't know what I could say that would make up for what had happened."
"Oh, Heikon." She buried her face in her hands and turned away.
This was all going wrong. He could feel her slipping away from him. Rather than the grand reunion he'd envisioned, now the distance between them was growing by the moment.
You'll find others, his dragon said placatingly. Our mate is out there for us. She'll be everything we've always dreamed of—
"Shut up!"
"What?" Esme said, turning to stare at him with wide eyes—still dry, but looking like tears might not be far away.
"Not you!" Heikon said, horrified. "I was talking to my dragon."
"Oh." She almost smiled. "Yes, my dragon's having a word or two about this now, too. I think you can guess what she's saying."
"Yes," he said.
There were only a few feet between them, but it might as well be a thousand miles. And for the first time in his life, Heikon didn't care what his dragon thought. Having her so close, yet separated from him by walls of hurt and suspicion, tore his heart in half.
"Is there any way I can make up for it?" he asked. "Is there any way we can get back what we had?"
"We can't! It's gone, Heikon. I don't know why I thought it was worth trying again." She blinked her eyes vigorously.
Heikon desperately wanted to take her into his arms, to soothe that devastated look away—but how could he help when he was the cause of it?
"Do you think it's truly gone, Esme? Because I don't. Look into your heart. Ask your heart what it wants."
She gave a sort of a smile, more like a grimace, and dashed at her eyes. "Ask my heart? I keep asking my heart, Heikon. I've done nothing but ask my heart. My dragon is my heart, and every time I ask, I get the same answer. And I think you do too."
Not our mate, his dragon said, and Heikon echoed it soundlessly, his lips shaping the words.
"Now leave, if you don't mind," Esme said quietly. "I'm going to cry and I don't want to do it in front of you."
"Esme—"
Anger flared again. "Go! And don't bother coming to the next dance session. I don't want you there, now or ever. It's going to be kinder on us both if we just stop pretending this can ever happen and move on with our lives."
"There is no life for me without you."
"Stop it!" Green flashed in her eyes, the suggestion of an oncoming transformation. "Don't you understand, Heikon? You're only hurting us both with this asinine insistence that we can go back to being the people we were twenty years ago. But we're not those people. Our decisions have changed us. Pretending otherwise will only break both our hearts."
"Isn't your heart breaking now, Esme?" His voice cracked as he said it.
"Of course it is!" she cried, flinging her hands out. "But at least it's breaking only once, rather than over and over again, for a lifetime, every time I'm reminded of what we used to be and what we no longer are. Go, Heikon, please!"
It was the please that did it. He could no more refuse a request from his mate than he could turn into a fish and swim away. He still paused with his hand on the door and looked back at her, over his shoulder.
Her hair was coming undone, falling over her shoulder in great swatches. Tears stood in her eyes. She was distraught and wild and still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Don't give up on us, Esme. A clanlord does not beg, but I'm begging you."
"Go!" she said, and it was only as the door closed that he glimpsed her putting her face in her hands. That was his last sight of her, as she began to cry.
He stood for a long while outside her door. He couldn't bear to let go and give in, but what could he do when his mate herself refused to fight for what he knew was still between them?
At length, he went down the stairs, used the alarm code, and let himself out.
It wasn't over. He wouldn't let it be over. But it was clear that what they were doing now didn't seem to be working.
There is another way. I'll find it.
As he shifted and took to the skies, he thought, I won't give up on us, Esme. Not now. Not ever.
Esme
When she woke in the morning, alone in her too-large bed, Esme thought, Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
She kept thinking it, with great determination, as she went through her morning routine. She made herself a cup of tea and an omelet, and took both of them out to the rooftop deck, where she had patio furniture and a covered pavilion. It had finally stopped raining, but the weather was cool, and she wrapped a robe around her shoulders and looked across the rain-washed rooftop with its plastic chairs.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. A nice happy life. Right? she asked her dragon.
Y...esss? her dragon replied.
That was not the solid affirmation she was hoping for.
Ever since last night—ever since she'd kissed Heikon—her dragon had been strangely distant. Its usual bold protests about Heikon not being their mate were muted. She would've thought it would be delighted to have Heikon out of their lives, even if she was still fighting with the prickling of tears whenever she thought about it. At the very least she would have thought she'd have her dragon's backing to put steel in her spine.
And now this.
He's not our mate, is he? she thought at her dragon, trying to suppress a quiver of hope. Maybe the kiss had brought it back. Maybe ...
No, her dragon returned. That, at least, was quick and sure. It had no doubts.
So what's bothering you?
I don't know, her dragon said. Something's not right. None of this feels right. I just don't know why.
It wasn't usually like this. For shifters, their inner beast was usually the most confident and sure part of them. It was their instinct, their deepest nature. It was the part that acted without thinking and needed to be reined in by the rational, human mind.
To have her animal expressing uncertainty and insecurity baffled her. Her dragon was the one with all the answers. Even when she disagreed with it, she relied on its rock-bottom certainty to give her strength.
And now, when she needed its stubborn self-assurance more than any other time in her life, it was going to do this?
You're very frustrating sometimes, you know that?
We could hunt, her dragon suggested, with an inward ruffle of wings.
Can't, she sighed. I have responsibilities this afternoon.
Inward sulking.
We'll fly later. I promise.
The idea of flying was enough to perk her up a bit. Still, she dragged through the morning and early afternoon, fighting periodic bouts of misery, hoping against hope that Heikon would walk through the door.
I did tell him to leave. In no uncertain terms.
Oh come on, he's not going to take that for an answer, is he?
Apparently he was.
* * *
At least she was reasonably busy. She had an early-afternoon salsa class today, then the kiddie dance class she taught at 4 p.m. after school let out, and finally the regular ballroom class in the evening.
Usually one or another of her adult ballroom students came in to help with the kid class. Today it was Lupe. Esme thought at first that it was just her own dismal mood making it seem like something was bothering the human woman. Anyway, Lupe was always a little bit quiet and serious. But then Esme went back to the changing room to pick up a spare set of dance shoes for one of the kids, and heard weeping in the bathroom.
It's none of my business, she told herself. Whatever problems Lupe was having were probably human problems anyway, and not something she could understand or help with.
But still, after the class, when they were putting things away and preparing for the evening ballroom class, she noticed Lupe's eyes were red from weeping. Esme took a deep breath and decided to go for it. Maybe helping with a comparatively simple human problem would distract her from her own problems. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"It's only—it's George," Lupe cried, and burst into fresh tears.
Esme found herself in the awkward position of holding the shorter woman, patting her shoulder, while Lupe's tears dampened her dancing dress. "I ... er ... what is it? Is he ill?"
"No, he just ..." Lupe sniffled. "He doesn't even know I exist."
"That's hardly true," Esme said. She'd noticed who typically paired off in the class, and it seemed like George and Lupe danced together frequently.
"But he doesn't know how I feel about him." Lupe pulled away and wiped at her eyes. Esme gave her a handkerchief. "Thank you. I don't know what to do."
"Tell him?" Esme suggested. She honestly couldn't see what on earth Lupe saw in George, who to her seemed boring in the extreme. He was a former salesman who droned on constantly about every client he'd ever had. But everyone had different tastes, she supposed. There were probably those who would find Heikon insufferable and not to their tastes at all.
Surely not!
The thought came from her dragon.
I thought you didn't like him.
I don't not like him, her dragon said. He's just not our mate, that's all. But he isn't boring!
Meanwhile, the suggestion had triggered a fresh bout of weeping in Lupe, who was just getting herself under control enough to speak again. "What if he doesn't feel the same way? What if he laughs at me?"
"That's the risk you run, when you put your heart out there," Esme said. "But if you don't take chances, you'll never know, right?" She looked at Lupe, the small human woman living her short human life, and oddly determined to spend the rest of it (for reasons Esme couldn't fathom) with that dull salesman.
But he made Lupe happy. He made her laugh; his stories, trite as they seemed to Esme, could draw Lupe out of her shyness and make her come alive, sparkling in delight.
"You should listen to your heart," she said slowly, the words coming with increasing conviction from somewhere deep inside her. "A life in which you risk nothing is hardly a life worth living. If you don't ask, or if you ask and you're rejected, either way you'll have the same thing—nothing. But only one of those options gives you the chance of getting everything you wanted."
"I ... never thought about it that way," Lupe said damply, looking a little brighter.
"Neither did I," Esme said, almost to herself.
* * *
All throughout the evening class, her hopeful gaze kept slipping to the door. But it remained shut—stubbornly, cruelly shut. Wherever Heikon was, he wasn't here.
She had thought she wanted him to leave. She'd thought it would be better for both of them.
Now she kept thinking about her earlier advice to Lupe to take a chance, seize the moment.
It might be that there's another mate out there for each of us. It might be that we'd spend our lives unable to fully commit to each other, with our animals pushing us apart.
But ... what if I'm wrong?
The worst possible thing that could happen was that she'd end up alone, and that was what she had already.
She looked for Lupe and George, and found them dancing close together, with Lupe's head resting on his chest. Normally George rotated through all the female dance partners, but tonight he'd had eyes only for Lupe, and earlier this evening Esme had seen them over by the coffeepot with their heads together, talking quietly.
George and Lupe weren't the only ones who seemed happy tonight. Albert and Greta had been inseparable as usual, and tonight they had a new student, a tall gawky woman named Beatrice who had immediately gravitated toward Judy.
Esme wasn't sure if humans had mates in the same way shifters did, but there was no denying that there had been a connection between Judy and Beatrice as soon as their eyes met across the room. Right now Judy was showing Beatrice a sequence of dance steps, with her hand in the small of Beatrice's back, both their faces filled with animated delight.
All her students were pairing off, it seemed, while Esme danced alone.
"You seem sad, dear," Miriam said in her fragile voice when Esme came over to help her pour a cup of coffee. "Thank you."
"Only thinking about missed opportunities," Esme said. She leaned a hip against the table with the coffee things, and looked out at the dance floor. "Were you married, Miriam?"
Miriam smiled, and mischief danced in her eyes. "Three times."
"Really?" That was a lot, for humans. "Do you regret any of them?"
"Not a single moment. Well ..." She seemed to drift off into a wistful reverie. "Maybe Herbert. He did have a great love of the ponies. Gambling, you know," she added, seeing Esme's baffled look.
"Oh," Esme said. That did make a great deal more sense than horse shifters.
"But what that man could do after the lights went out ... oh yes," she said, sipping her coffee carefully with the cup held in both shaking hands. "No regrets."
"I'm glad for you," Esme said. Her heart ached.
"And what about you?" Miriam asked, looking up at her. "Where's your young man tonight?"
"My, er ... my what?" Esme was aware that her protest sounded extremely hollow.
"That lovely young man who's been coming in. Don't think I can't see the way you look at him. The entire class can see it." Miriam smiled. "Or didn't you notice that in a group of people rather over-burdened with single women, nobody set their cap for that stunningly handsome young man?"
"He was mobbed by every woman in the room the minute he walked in, Miriam," Esme said dryly. "Including you."
Miriam laughed, a bell-like sound that made her sound much younger. In times like that, Esme glimpsed the woman she'd been, a woman who must have turned heads everywhere she went (and three heads in particular, apparently). "Oh, you can't blame a girl for wanting a little attention from a man who looks like that. But no one stuck around—didn't you notice that? All he had to do was reach a hand for you, and everyone got out of the way. And you should have seen your face."
Esme touched her face as if it had suddenly changed on her. "What do you mean?"
"You light up when that man walks in the room, sweetheart," Miriam said gently. "All the time I've been coming to this class, you seemed a little bit sad. It was the first time I've ever seen you without that shadow in your eyes."
Surely not, she thought. There had still been a shadow across both of them, the shadow of what they'd once been and could never be again.
"Heikon and I have a history, Miriam," she said. "It's complicated and sad."
"Doesn't
every great love affair have some tragedy in it?"
"We don't have a great love affair."
But we did, didn't we? she thought. For a few moments there, before things fell apart, it had felt like a love to shake the world. It had been the sort of love that humans wrote ballads about, singing them long after the lovers had vanished in dust.
"There," Miriam said. There was satisfaction in her cracked voice. "That's the look, right there. You're thinking about him, aren't you?"
Esme started to protest, but what was the point? "Yes," she said, and for the first time all day, she could feel a genuine smile peeking out.
"And why are you here with us old biddies when you could be where he is?"
"Well, for one thing, because someone has to switch out the records," she said, noticing the music had stopped, and went to do something about it.
But once the class was finished and everyone had gone home, she tidied up by rote, her mind a thousand miles away. Or at least a hundred or so, where Heikon's Aerie was.
Why are you here, when you could be where he is?
Why indeed? she thought.
She went up to the roof. Darkness had fully fallen, and the clouds had pulled back for the first time in a week, showing the stars. It was a beautiful night to fly.
She let her cashmere wrap fall from her shoulders. With darkness to cover her, she shifted, embracing her dragon as they became one.
There had better not be one word out of you, she told her dragon sternly as her wings flexed, beating strongly downward, sending two of the patio chairs tumbling as she took to the sky.
We fly, her dragon said, in agreement or possibly just distracted with only one thing on its one-track reptile mind. Can we hunt along the way?
Perhaps a little. But the important thing is getting where we're going.
I know, her dragon said, and it didn't quite acknowledge the importance of her mission ... but it didn't argue about it, either.