Free ClosertoFire by Alexis Reed

commiserative gaze
     
    Lily watched Bane walk to the back of the restaurant,
appreciating the smooth, silent way he moved even as her mind whirred with
worry. She turned to Darek. “Is he mad?”
    Darek shook his head but Lily was unconvinced. Her record
with men was beyond terrible. She’d caused more fights than she could count,
just by being in the vicinity of more than one man. Bane and Darek had talked a
good game about sharing her, but the way Bane had looked at Darek just now was
unsettling. The serenity she’d felt ensconced between them seemed naïve in the
harsh light of day.
    “Maybe this isn’t the greatest idea,” she said, looking down
at her plate. “You guys have a great friendship. I know you said that you
believe you’re supposed to share me somehow, but it’s only been forty-eight
hours and Bane’s already mad at you. Maybe once we work out this Inquiry thing,
it would be best if we went our separate ways.” A weight, heavy and cold,
descended on her chest at the thought. She knew of painful breakups only from
books, but ruining a friendship like theirs would just be wrong of her.
    When she chanced a look at Darek, he was smiling ruefully.
“Lily, I’m afraid we have no choice in the matter. And you misunderstood. Bane
needs you, but he doesn’t want to rush you. It’s the waiting that’s killing
him. He’s only jealous because I’ve taken you and he hasn’t. Go to him.”
    She looked up at him, torn. “Look, you guys are…just beyond
wonderful. But you don’t know me. Every guy I’ve ever touched—” She snapped her
mouth shut, noticing the dark flare of jealousy in his eyes. “See, that’s just
it,” she hissed. “You look at me like that when I mention my one
disastrous teenage hook-up, but you can just sit out here and wait for us to be
done or something?”
    A muscle in Darek’s jaw worked. He slid out of his seat and
came over to her side of the booth. “You don’t understand how this works. I’m
not jealous of Bane and he’s not of me. This feels right because it is .”
He put his arm around her.
    His warmth, his scent were comforting, but the knot in her
chest remained. “I never thought I’d find a man I wanted to be with, who
could—I don’t know— survive being with me. That I found two is just
beyond imagining.”
    He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, frowning.
    Something in his posture seemed odd. Lily raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
    Darek drew in a long breath. “There’s something we haven’t
mentioned yet. Dracambri—our species—we have soul mates,” he began. “They’re
called wyrmates . We don’t choose our mates like humans do. We find them. And when we do, we know it, head to toe, horns to tail and
everywhere in between. It changes us. We become a part of them and they of us.”
He nuzzled her neck, breathing in. “See, you already carry my scent. Once you
carry his, the bond will be permanent.”
    Her shoulders tensed. “What does that mean?”
    “Bane should be explaining this.” Darek shot an impatient
glance in the direction Bane had taken. “It means that once wyrmates are
bonded, each carries a part of the other’s soul. If one dies, the other rarely
survives.”
    Lily blinked, clenching her hands together under the table.
“Okay. So do dracambri always mate in threes?”
    “No,” Darek said. “Not often, but sometimes.”
    The man at the bar pushed back his chair to leave. The loud
scraping noise made Lily jump. “So I’m your wyrmate?” she asked, testing the
word in her mouth. “Yours and Bane’s?”
    Darek smiled. “Yes.”
    Lily stared, unsure how to respond.
    “Bane and I have a long history,” he said. “There aren’t
many female dracambri left. It makes sense that we’d share a wyrmate.” He
swirled the ice in his glass, watching her closely. As she had earlier, Lily
sensed another, more predatory creature in his dark, watchful gaze.
    Lily tapped her knees with trembling fingertips. “You