Page 88 of The Ice Prince's Fated Mate
Ella
I stared,my jaw dropping slightly, words fleeing me. That was not at all the answer or attitude I was prepared to hear.
“Of course I don’t want to hear it,” he said, his face softening.
He reached out, taking my hand in his. The size difference between us was evident everywhere as I was all but swallowed up in his grip.
“You’re going to tell me about something horrible from your past. If I have to hear it, Ella, my mate, it means it happened to you. I want there to be no story. I don’t want to hear it, because I don’t want you to have to tell it.” He lifted my hand, kissing the back of it. “But I believe I need to. And I think you need it, too, which overrules whatever I want. Anytime. Every time. You always come first.”
I stared at him, waiting for the innuendo to his final comment to pop up.
It never did. He just stared openly at me, his eyes bright and blue as always and his expression serious. Waiting. Just like a mate.
Mymate.
The call from my dragon in my head only emphasized that point.
“I do,” I said, not as nervous after his assurances. “It was before I met the girls. Decades ago. I was running with another group of Grounded, out in the Wilds. We were seeking freedom where we could, fleeing from the Hunters who wanted to lock us up and sell us. That part wasn’t any different.”
Dirk’s face was solid stone, an ugly azure glint in the depths of his eyes. I tried to interpret the look but couldn’t.
“It wasn’t much, what we had, but it was ours. As much freedom as a ‘Clippy’ could have in the Ice Kingdom.” I bit my lip. That was the easy part of the story. “Eventually Hunters found us. Some escaped.”
A rumble echoed in Dirk’s throat. “You didn’t.”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t.”
“The markets.”
“Not this time,” I said, earning a slight widening of his eyes.
“Where did they take you?”
“To the surface,” I whispered, shaking as I spoke about it at last. “Clippys are stronger than many humans, but several large, physically fit males can overpower me still.”
Dirk was on his feet, his eyes flashing from blue to silver and back. “They sold you to humans?” he howled in pure rage, the temperature in the room plunging.
“One of them did. Not the rest. I don’t know why it was just me.”
Dirk’s shoulders were heaving as he forced himself to breathe, his fists clenched until his forearms looked ready to burst. “Not many hunters have contacts on the surface. Most despise humans too.”
I nodded, my fingernails digging into my palms. I did not want to relive the next part. But I had to. I had to tell Dirk.
He deserved to know before things went further.
“That’s not all,” he ground out. “Is it?”
Slowly, I turned my head from side to side.
“Before they took me there, they … they …” I couldn’t do it. The words wouldn’t come out, but tears did.
Dirk’s anger disappeared, and he was at my side, holding me close and kissing the top of my head. “I know what they do,” he rumbled with the dark promise of thunderclouds on the horizon. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Y-yes, I do,” I countered, surprising myself. “I have to say it out loud, Dirk. You have to know.”
“Know what? That they sterilized you? That they took from you what wasn’t theirs, so you wouldn’t bear any half-breed children? That your healing meant the scars would be gone before they sold you? I am aware that …”
“That I’m broken,” I whispered. “That I can’t give you babies.”
