Page 333 of Awakened

“In the interim,” Idril continues before anyone else can interrupt, “I think it’s best if we stay away from each other. I know your sides of the Bonds are probably unsettled. That will settle as they come to terms with reality.”

The more she speaks, the more controlled she sounds. Her fists are curled tight, and her unbothered tone is fucking killing me.

I hate it.

I wish she’d scream. Yell. Call us names and shout at us. Anything but this controlled, indifferent bullshit.

Vae’s jaw is clenched as tight as his fists. Tears pool at the bottom of his lashes, and he shakes with the need to wrap our Mate in his arms. “What, exactly, do our Bonds need to come to terms with?”

“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she asks, voice soft as a whisper. Her eyes brighten with tears, but she blinks them back.

“I want to know,” he insists, refusing to back down. He won’t, either. He’ll keep pushing. Needling her until this shell cracks.

Idril’s eyes flutter, then close. The sigh she releases is weighed down with exhaustion. For a long moment she stands there, taking deep, even breaths. Then her eyes open and land on Vaelenor.

“It will take your Bond a few days to accept that it’s truly unwanted. Rejected. That thread—the golden thread reaching for your Mate—won’t disappear. I don’t think that’s even possible. And it reaches for its other half at even the barest hint that it might be wanted, even if it's only for a moment. For a breath.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath and exhales, packing her emotions away again, hiding the pain.

The memories.

“But every time it reaches out, just to be rejected once again, it loses a little more faith. Hope disappears, replaced little by little, rejection after rejection, by acceptance. Until one day, it only moves to make itself smaller. Because everything else is too painful.”

My blood feels frozen in my veins. Sluggish. Each word feels like I’m being stabbed, forced to face what she’s been dealing with for the last week and a half.

Alone.

Her words ring in my ears, burrowing deeper and deeper until they’re fucking branded into my marrow and etched into my bones.

Unwanted.

Rejected.

It will lose faith.

Hope will eventually disappear.

The night of Soren’s arrival surfaces in my mind, and I stumble back like I’ve been shot.

There was a moment… when we walked into the attic. When her screams cut off, and her expression went eerily blank. She had taken a deep breath…

And her whole body deflated. Every inch relaxing for the first time since we took her from her father’s house. Her eyes lit up with hope, joy, and disbelief.

Until she lifted her head, and her eyes landed on Vae and me.

The joy disappeared. Replaced by agony. But it all happened so fast—a fleeting moment, there and gone in a blink.

But I noticed.

Noticed, and filed it away.

At the time, I attributed it to post-dream confusion, but now…

Everything we’ve felt tonight, she’s already been through. Gods, no wonder she was spiraling that night. No wonder the sconces reacted the way they did.

She had just discovered her Scent-Match Bond. Her Fated Mates. The same males who made her life a living hell after twenty-two years of abuse and abandonment, bruises and deprivation.

And her immediate reaction was to hide it from the very males she should have been able to turn to for strength, love, and protection. To trust more than anything in the world. Without question. Without hesitation.