Solar’s eyes went tight with pained understanding. He’d told her the other day that he didn’t like hearing stories about her past, but he didn’t want her to erase them either. They were part of her. They made her who she was. She relied on that principle now and carried on.
“I suppose it could have been a lot worse. He never hit me or hurt me physically. He mostly just loomed over me. He was inevitable. He was my future. He was always there, panting after me, making me jumpy, letting me know that he was watching my every move and waiting for the day when I hit fertility. So that he could claim me.”
She gave a little shiver and Solar tugged her even closer to him. “But that wasn’t even the worst part. What was much, much worse was having to sit by and listen, able to do nothing, while he gave orders. I listened to him give orders to wipe out whole towns. To pillage and destroy. To imprison and enslave.”
Zara laid a hand over her eyes for just a moment. “I had to listen to him plan, over and over, ways to find you, Solar. And not just to kill you. But to torture you. Make an example of you.” She paused, momentarily overcome.
“And then today,” she continued. “I’m flying above the dragon realm, and it’s stretching out in front of me. So beautiful, so untamed, so worth it. And I’m the one who can protect it. Me. For so long I couldn’t even defend myself. Much less the whole dragon realm. All that time, I was just his little wife. One of his many little wives. Silent, harmless, only there as a decoration in his great hall for visitors he wanted to impress.” There was bitterness in her voice. Venom. “And now, here I am, with an opportunity to act? To help stop him? End him? And not only that, but to do it using my fertility season? The very thing he made me fear for practically my entire life? I get to use that as a weapon against him? His downfall. Solar, I have to do this. I have to. For myself and for the realm.”
Solar was quiet for a long time. A very long time. Long enough that the light in the hut went from dim to pitch black. Zara knew that the rest of the Surgeres were most likely sitting around the campfire right now. Dinner would be ready any minute. And still they laid, wrapped around one another and quiet.
“The plan is good, Zara. It’s as sound as we can make it, considering the sheer danger we’re going to be putting you in.” Solar finally broke the silence. “But even so, I was hoping that I would come find you, talk to you, realize that you’d cooled down. That you didn’t really want to do it all that much. I prayed that would be your answer. Because at this point, you’re the only one who can pull the plug on this.”
Solar dragged his hand over her head and kissed her roughly for a moment. “But I can see that’s not possible, is it? You’re gonna do it.”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
He was quiet again for a long time before he spoke. “I can’t stand the thought of you near him, Zara. I never want you to be in any kind of danger, but especially danger from that disgusting monster. He’ll be close enough to touch you. To hurt you. To try and claim you if he gets the notion. Which, in some sick way, we’re hoping that he will try, because if he doesn’t, then the plan won’t work.” Solar was getting more and more worked up. He dragged his hands over his face. “I think about him close to you and I want to set fire to the jungle. I want to rip the scales off of his body. He can’t be close to you. Especially when you’re still technically his wife.”
Zara recoiled from Solar as if he’d slapped her. “I am not his wife, Solar.”
Solar winced. “I didn’t mean it as an insult to you, Zara.”
“No,” she reared up on her knees and leaned over him, grabbing his face and making him look at her. “You listen to me. I stopped being his wife the moment you rescued me. I gave myself over to you in a way that I never had to him.” She hoped that her light eyes were capable of boring into him the way his were always doing to her. She wanted him to feel the intensity inside of her. She needed to show him. “Even when you were trying to push me away, Solar, I still gave myself to you. I trusted you with my safety, my wellbeing, my body.” She paused and gripped him even harder. “I trusted you with my soul.”
Emotion slashed across Solar’s face and he reached out for her. She let him touch her but she wasn’t finished. “And now that we’re mates, Sol, there is no such thing as ‘his wife’. Those words never even existed to me. Not the way that you do. You’re my mate.” Her words were coming out choppier and choppier. Language was starting to fail her. He was stroking her back, trying to soothe her, but she was wild. Passionate. She needed him to believe her, to understand, more than she needed her next breath. “You’re- you’re my husband, Solar.”