#Chapter 464 – Dedication
Ella
I frown at him, starting to get angry again. “What does that even mean, Dominic!? You just know – well obviously if I just knew, then I’d have told you definitively yes or no!”
“Well, maybe you do know and you’re trying to spare my feelings!”
My eyes go wide then and I lean forward, staring at him, a little appalled. “I am trying to figure out a very important question about my life and my identity, Dominic,” I growl. ” So no, I am not trying to spare your feelings I am asking you to help me. So please, tell me how it is that a person would just know.”
Sinclair sighs in frustration, his eyes narrowed at me before he shuts them and does his best to think.
“Sometimes I forget,” he murmurs, ” that you’ve only had your wolf for a few months. Please, Ella, forgive me. I – there must be some things that are instinctual to me, and to Roger, that to you and Cora are…harder.”
“Yes,” I say, nodding, agreeing. “So .” I hesitate now, because I’m about to ask him for details that I’m honestly not sure that I want. But I steel myself, knowing that I need them. “How did you know…that Lydia was your fated mate?”
He sighs a little and opens his eyes to look steadily at me, a question in his expression. I nod seriously, letting him know that I understand what I’m asking. So, he sighs again and begins.
“It was…instant,” he explains, his eyes going a little distant with the memory. “The intensity of it was like my attraction to you – because I was always attracted to you, Ella, even when you were just the human nanny that lived down the road. But with Lydia? When I saw her after I reached my majority, the bond was instant.”
I think back to when I saw Calvin for the first time and – well…I did notice him, didn’t I? And when he looked at me, I couldn’t look away? Was that…
“Can you tell me more?” I push, needing more details. “Like…what did it feel like?”
He nods, continuing though I can tell it is hard for him. “I was just fucking sixteen. She was…god, she was Roger’s lover, his girlfriend, and they were very serious. But the first time I met her again after I’d reached my maturity, I felt her come into the room. And though she was across it, and in a group of people, my eyes went instantly to her, and I was immediately aware of what she was to me. The bond – my wolf instantly knew, I instantly knew, and there was no doubting it.”
“And then for two years?” I prompt. ” You just…knew?”
“It was more than just knowing,” he says shaking his head at me. “It was my wolf pining for her, and having very strong, carnal, bodily reactions to her presence whenever she was around. And she felt the same way – but Roger, we all thought, was dad’s heir. And that,” he says with a shrug, “was more important to her than the bond. At the time.”
“So, she was able to…deny the bond?”
“Not really,” he murmurs. “Her wolf, I’m sure, was as crazy for me as mine was for her. But Lydia was a very determined, calculating woman. She had a great deal of willpower, when properly incentivized.”
We both lose ourselves in our thoughts for a moment, and I have to admit that jealousy coils in me even though I know that Lydia is dead, and that our own fated bond is stronger than theirs ever was. Still…it’s not easy to think about Sinclair loving anyone else but me.
It really does make me want to defend my claim on him in a very real, bodily way.
So, on some level, I suppose I do understand his reaction last night – his very real need to end the threat to our relationship.
But as I think about it further… honestly, I’m not sure that there is a threat at all.
“What?” Sinclair asks, and I look up to see him studying me.
“I don’t know,” I say, my frown deepening.
He makes a sound low in his throat, urging me to speak, and I take a second to collect my thoughts before I cock my head to the side.
“And there was nothing like…physical in the air between you? No…literal sparks, or anything?”
“No,” he says with a frown, shaking his head. “But you’re…goddess-born, Ella, who knows what the hell goes on with you.”
I sigh, shrugging, recognizing that as a possibility. But I press forward. “And you instantly…wanted her? Like, sexually?”
Slowly, he nods, but I’m grateful he doesn’t go into detail. “It was all I thought about for two whole years, Ella. It was consuming. And I’m sure she felt it too and every mated pair that I’ve ever talked to about it has felt the same. The sexual connection is…intense.”
I’m quiet for a long moment before I speak again.
“Honestly, Dominic,” I say quietly, “I don’t feel at all like that about Calvin.”
“What?” he asks, confused.
“I mean, I like him a great deal,” I say, giving a little shrug, “and he’s very handsome-”
Sinclair growls at this and I swat at him, scowling a little. “Would you stop?” I scold, “again, like with what I said about Roger being hot, it’s just an observation – it is a fact that Calvin is a very good looking man – ”
The growl deepens and I can’t help it – I laugh. “Stop!” I say, swatting at him again.
“You stop!” he orders, frowning at me. “”This man put his hand on you –
he told you he thinks he’s your mate, and you expect me to sit calmly while you say you think he’s handsome!?”
“Okay, I take it back,” I say, sighing and rolling my eyes. “He’s very ugly – complete trash, face-wise. A toad – ”
Sinclair groans, burying his face in the pillow, because he knows I’m lying. But I smack him again, because I want him to listen to me.
“Seriously, though,” I say, sitting up a little and shaking my mate’s arm until he looks at me. “Honestly, Dominic, I think there’s some connection with Calvin but what you said about like, knowing instantly? Or like…pining for him, and your wolf going crazy, or anything carnal?”
Sinclair stares at me and I shake my head slowly.
“Dominic, I don’t have any of that.”
My mate sits up now, staring at me eagerly. “Are you serious?” he asks.
“I promise,” I say, my face sincere. “I even asked my wolf when you were gone, and she said she didn’t know
“She would know, Ella – ”
“Well then,” I say, giving a little shrug. “Dominic…I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think he’s my fated mate.”
My big, scary, sweetheart mate gives a heavy groan then, falling back on the mattress and covering his face with his hands in relief. A huge smile finds my face as I study him, as relief sweeps through me. Because honestly – until Calvin said the word mate? I hadn’t been thinking it at all.
It was only him that put the idea in my head, that made me freak out. Because I figured he would know.
Sinclair pulls his hands down his face a little, studying me. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
I roll my eyes at him. “I swear on everything that matters, Dominic,” I say all in a rush, eager for him to believe me. “I’m serious – if that’s how people feel when they meet their fated mates? I do not feel that way about him, and neither does my wolf.”
My mate moves faster than I can see and I give a happy little shriek as he pulls me over the baby, tugging me tight to his chest and wrapping me up there like he’ll never let me go. I laugh a little when I realize what happened, snuggling my face against his chest and breathing in his warm, delicious scent.
“God, Ella,” he murmurs on a sigh. “I was so fucking scared -”
“I know,” I murmur back, pressing my hands against him. “I’m really glad you didn’t kill him now.”
“I’m not,” he growls, and I laugh a little. “He still made a move on you, Ella. And even if you’re not into him, he’s definitely into you.”
“Okay,” I say, admitting it a bit now and biting my lip. “I guess…he is. But Dominic, he’s not completely to blame here, all right? There is something between us and even if it’s not a mating bond…it’s something.”
Sinclair peers down at me and I look up at him for a long moment and then he nods. “I can deal with that,” he murmurs quietly, accepting it. “As long as you and me?”
“We’re good, Dominic,” I murmur, resting my head against his chest. “I’m very in love with you and nobody else. You’re my mate.”
“And you’re mine,” he says back, finality in his voice as he holds me like he’ll never let me go. “I love you so much, Ella. If I lost you…”
And I nod, understanding the sentiment even if he doesn’t finish the thought out loud. I take a deep, relieved breath and peering over my mate’s body to look at my little sleeping baby. Pleased, contented, I reaching out a hand to trace a soft finger down Rafe’s belly.
Because nothing, nothing exists that can tear our little family apart.
And quite suddenly, after all of this?
After the stress of a sleepless night, and these insane questions, and this reaffirmation of our dedication to one another?
As I feel my mate breathing softly beneath me, and stare at my sleeping baby…I realize that I’m ready.
Even with war on the horizon, and this new looming question of what the hell is between me and this Prince of Atalaxia…
I know, without a doubt, that I’m ready for baby number two.
And I smile and turn my face to my mate, because there’s no time like the present to get started trying.
