“Ryder, I'll handle the club until you want it back. I got one club, don't need two. If you ever come back, it's yours,” Vlad says with a look of sympathy in his silver gaze. I fail to hide the pain. She’s inside of me now. They can see it. Fucking hell, I cannot afford to show weakness.
“Not sure I'll be coming back, Vlad. Eventually Dristan might, but I have responsibilities that need me. It needs to be done and it’s time to face it, finally.”
“If you need me, you know how to contact me.”
“I do, and the same goes for you, Vlad. If you ever need us, I mean ever, send word and we will be there. You've been a big help. You will be greatly rewarded for your services.”
I shake his hand and take a long look around the club I'd built. So much information gathered here, right under the Light Fae’s noses. Years of living in this world, and it is quickly drawing to a close. It is time to go home, and let the beast run free. He'll need it, when Syn is gone, that she belongs to someone else.
I hate it, fucking hate it. If it had been anything besides my fucking homeland, I'd fight like a starving fucking wolf to keep her. I can't fight this, though, not even for her. The entire world depends on it. Too much could be fixed from her and Adam's union to ignore it.
Chapter Twenty Eight
I felt his eyes watching me before I fully woke up. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest as he watched me sleep. I sat up slowly, sensing he was going to talk about what had occurred with Adam and his father this morning. As he continued to stare at me, my heart flipped once before it shattered inside my chest. He was going to choose Faery over fighting for me.
“I need you to know that if there was another way, I’d take it in a fucking heartbeat, Synthia. The fact of the matter is…right now, this is all we have to work with. I need help finding a few more relics which, when secured, will help heal the land, and allow it to help the child you will give birth to.” He stopped as if saying it tasted foul on his tongue. “It will help the child that you and Adam have,” he paused, and closing his eyes so briefly that I wasn’t sure I had seen it, “bond with the land,” he finished painfully.
“You think the same thing that they do?” I asked, carefully schooling my emotions. I wanted to scream and cry, deny that I’d go. In the end, we both knew the truth.
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s what Ristan has seen. He has shown it to me. You give Adam a child; a son.”
“So, you expect me to just go along with it?” I snarled, tired of everyone telling me what to do. I wanted him! I blinked at the realization that I wanted to stay with Ryder. I swallowed the cry that tried to gain passage from my lips. I was so stupid. He had a harem of women waiting for him, and here I was…falling for him. Stupid heart! Stupid emotions! Why did they always showed up too late to be useful?
“There’s something Ristan needs to show you. After that, you can decide on what’s the right thing to do, Synthia,” Ryder said softly.
Ristan materialized by the door a moment later, as if he’d been waiting for Ryder to just say the words. His demeanor was sad and uncharacteristic of his normally smartass-self. “Syn,” he said softly, bowing his head to me slightly. His patterned eyes said what his lips would never say, ‘I’m sorry’.
I watched him walk over to the bed and sit beside me. He held out his hand as if he expected me to accept it. “What?” I asked, unsure of his motives, or if I wanted to actually see what he would show me. It was so much easier to walk away, oblivious to what was happening around us, but knowing could set me on a path I didn’t want to walk.
“Synthia, allow him to show you what you would fix,” Ryder said, still leaning against the wall with his face now hidden in the shadows.
I placed my hand inside Ristan’s much larger one and met his swirling gaze. “Beam me up, Scotty,” I whispered, terrified of what I was now bound to see.
“Remember, it’s only a projection and no one will know we are there, Flower.”
One minute we were in the bedroom, and the next we were standing in a large medical facility. It looked like something from an apocalyptic movie. Women sobbed as they held lifeless infants against their breasts, men watched them with helpless defeat marked on their brows. Healers and their assistants looked around, hopeless, while infants wailed from small makeshift cribs. Death hung on the air, holding close for the next victim to pass away.