Page 100 of The Ice Prince's Fated Mate
Chewing on my lip, I sought the words, but they were elusive. I didn’t even want to think about it, let alone say it out loud.
Caz growled impatiently. “My mate is in my quarters, recovering. I would prefer to be there. I left my kingdom in your hands, brother, and I come out to find that you’ve decapitated a Hunter and spiked his head to the wall with a cryptic message in his blood. Youwillanswer me.”
A frustrated slap of alpha power batted at me.
“I let him live,” I whispered. “That last night before I put Cerberus behind me. I let him live, Caz, and heliedto me.”
“How?”
I rose to my feet, staring my brother in the eyes, every bit his equal in height and size. “He swore he would never traffic Clippys again. I took his eye. He took my mate, sterilized her, andsoldherto humans.”
Ice was forming around my fists and the corners of my eyes, the air plunging in temperature as my anger swirled all around us, searching for a focus.
“And then I went and claimed her. When I’m the one responsible for her pain.” I hung my head, the ice flaking apart in the wind, carried away in my defeat. “How could I have done such a thing to her? Now she will forever have the reminder of who I am. What I am, and what was done to her. Every time she sees my face.”
Caz was quiet as he contemplated my thoughts.
“I don’t deserve her.”
He shocked me by laughing. Short, sharp, somewhat bitter. “No shit.”
I jerked my head up, staring furiously at him, only to recoil when I saw that same self-loathing in my brother’s eyes.
He nodded. “I don’t deserve Anna either. She’s too good.”
“Too pure,” I whispered. “Better than us.”
A half-smile twisted up one side of Caz’s face. “Ironic, isn’t it? That the most powerful dragons in the kingdom aren’t good enough for two Grounded.”
“Yeah. Ironic.”
“Brother, I have some bad news for you.” He took me by the shoulders and stared right into my eyes. “You’re going to keep screwing up.”
“You can go back to your hidey-hole any time now,” I grumbled. “All that sex should have made you happier.”
“We did more than have sex,” Caz said with a snort. “But my point is, I keep screwing up. You will too. Anna forgives me because I apologize and learn. And that’s the question you need to ask yourself. Can you apologize? Can you learn from your past, Dirk, or are there going to be more heads stapled to the main gates?”
I looked away.
“What do you want more, Dirk? Revenge and your twisted version of justice until one of them gets the better of you? Or your mate.”
“You’re assuming I’ll have a mate, once she learns the truth.”
“She doesn’t know?”
I shook my head. “No. Not yet.”
“Ella needs to hear it. From your lips, Dirk. That’s the first step you have to take. Admit what happened. Admit everything. Be the person she wants you to be, that you need to be. Don’t be the Elite she hates. BeDirk, the mate she wants.”
“I’ve already caused her so much hurt,” I whispered. “I can’t cause her more. How would I be any better than Father at that point?”
Caz’s face turned to stone. “If you so much as harm a hair on her, I will add your head to the gates myself, brother.”
“I would never,” I said quietly. “Though I wish I’d been aware enough back then. We could have stopped him. Maybe Mother would still be alive.”
“You were young, Dirk. You couldn’t have known.Ididn’t know he would do that to her.”
“Kill her, you mean,” I said the words out loud. We didn’t talk about our mother much. It hurt too badly, knowing we could have prevented it.
