Chapter 449

“Daphne, I am not asking you to be my mistress!” Jesse bites out, his teeth clenching.

“Did you come here with romantic intent?” she asks, prim and formal. “Desiring to continue, in some way, our relationship?”

“Yes,” he says, working hard to reel his temper back in, ashamed at himself for losing it even for a moment. “I came to tell you that I love –“

“And do you still have a mate? With whom you have a relationship?”

He pauses, seeing the trap but knowing that she’s got the truth on her side. “Yes,” he says, short and cold.

“And you have no intention of rejecting that mate? Or she of you?”

Jesse takes a deep, long breath. “No, I have no intention of rejecting her.”

“Then what else am I to conclude, Jesse,” she says, low and angry, leaning forward towards him. “But that you’re asking me to be your mistress. So that you keep your mate as the priority in your life, but have me too? A bit on the side?”

He stares at her for a long moment in shock and then groans, trying to lay back on the bed but miscalculating the distance and banging his head against the wall, covering his face with his hands. Because she’s right.

She’s right.

He hadn’t thought of it in those terms – of course he didn’t. But she’s right. What he came here hoping for – for some way of having Daphne in his life while he maintains his relationship with Midnight…

Essentially, she’d be his mistress, wouldn’t she? Even if he loved Daphne dearly, while he still had his mate fully in his life, a part of the family? There’s no way in which, to the rest of the world, Daphne wouldn’t be his girl on the side.

“So yeah, Jesse,” Daphne says, cold and working hard to keep the tremble out of her voice. “I think you should go. And never speak to me again. I can’t…I can’t believe you came here tonight, after everything, and…asked me for that.”

Jesse sighs but makes no move to get up, slipping his hands down from his face and taking a few long, deep breaths, trying to get his mind in order. When he opens his eyes he looks over and up to see Daphne staring at him, furious.

“Can you…can you please give me like, one inch of space on this?” he asks, shaking his head, feeling utterly pathetic and at the end of a very dark road.

“No,” she says, cold, narrowing her eyes.

“Daphne,” he groans, sitting up and turning towards her on the bed, holding his hands out towards her, pleading. “I – I understand. And if I were any other jackass Alpha in any other situation, I would let you call me a jackass, and a pig, and a horrible, terrible misogynist. But could you please, please open your heart and remember that I am not a terrible person?”

He presses a hand to his heart, shaking his head at her, begging.

“I’m still me, and I’m in a really hard, terrible situation – and all I’m trying to do is see the girl I’m in love with after a long time apart, and tell her that I love her, and just…try to find a way through.”

Daphne stares at him for a moment, her mouth trembling, her chin held high. But then she breaks, and exhales all her breath at once in a gushing sob, and hangs her head, her shoulders shaking.

“Don’t ask too much of me, Jess,” she whispers. “Because…I’ll give it. I just…need to protect myself in all of this, protect my heart, as much as I can. And if you have a mate? There is…no room for me in your life. It’s not fair to her and it’s not fair to me.”

“Okay,” Jesse whispers, steeling himself to the promise. “I won’t ask too much. But is it…can I tell you what happened? How I feel?”

Daphne takes a deep breath and raises her head and then nods once.

And Jesse begins.

The story takes a long time to get through, and Jesse is very, very careful with his words – which is difficult, considering that he hasn’t slept in nearly a day at this point. But he tells her everything, leaving nothing out. About Midnight, and how strange she is, and how funny too, and their time in Darkness and the Underworld. Their journey to find Ariel, and then the trip home.

By the time Jesse is finished he’s stretched out over Daphne’s bed, his booted feet hanging over the edge, and she’s curled up amongst her pillows with the kitten in her lap. They’re not touching, not even a hint of it – but the air in the room is…calmer. Easier.

“So, what do you think?” Jesse asks, sighing and looking over at his girl, letting his eyes soak in as much of the sight of her as they can.

“I think she sounds really cool,” Daphne murmurs, dry and bitter.

Jesse laughs a little. “She is. She…does not think the same of you.”

Daphne whips her head up, smirking at Jesse. “What does she think of me?”

“She thinks you’re a whore,” he answers, equally dry.

And as he knew she would, Daphne tilts her head back and laughs – long and peeling. He smiles a little, watching her, relishing that. Daphne – she’s not easily offended, and she has enough self-confidence not to let herself be hurt by such a deeply untrue judgment.

“Oh, god,” Daphne says, still laughing and wiping a little beneath her eye. “Maybe…let’s not introduce this one to my mother.”

“No problem,” he sighs.

Daphne smiles over at him, soft. “You’ve had some serious adventures, your Grace.”

“You’re avoiding the question, seamstress,” he murmurs, his mouth turning up at the corners.

She raises an eyebrow in challenge.

“What do you think?” he asks, wanting to know her true opinion on the whole situation – all of it.

“I think,” she says with a little sigh, looking down at the kitten, understanding it all. “That…we had a good run, Jess. But I can’t keep loving you if you have a mate, bond accepted or no.”

“Are you in love with me now?” he asks, quietly.

She raises her eyes to his. “Please don’t make me answer that.”

He swallows rough around the lump in his throat. “But, given time –“

She shakes her head. “Jesse, given time, your strange traumatized little mate is going to become accustomed to the world. And she’s going to want you, and you’re going to want her. Even though you’re not in love with her now, given time? You will be. And then where will I be?”

“Midnight is…never going to be normal in this world,” Jesse murmurs, covering his eyes with one hand.

“Do you think she’s pretty?” Daphne asks, her voice deceptively calm.

He moves his hands from his eyes to look at her. “What?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me, Sinclair,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him, making him smile.

He laughs a little but then sighs. “Yes, Midnight is pretty, Daphne.”

“The Goddess picked her for you, Jess,” Daphne whispers, leaning forward towards him with a smile, acting her heart out, pretending to be happy and peaceful and beatific about it all, while inside her wolf howls in agony to be letting him go. “She’s your mate. It’s going to happen someday – you’ll love each other. I don’t…want to be drug along for weeks or months or years just to be left at the end. Leave me now, in peace and…we’ll have had a good run.”

Jesse’s heart breaks a thousand times as he stares at her, unable to believe it. Unable to accept it. He sits up, leaning close, looking steadily into her eyes. “You know that there’s more to us than that, Daphne – than just a good run. That we have a connection that is deeper and that neither of us fully understand.”

“You have a mate, Jesse,” Daphne whispers, reaching out and cupping his cheek in her palm. “I can never, ever live up to that.”

He closes his eyes and leans into her hand. “But I want you.”

She rushes her thumb once over his cheek and slides her hand down and away, her fingertips brushing the stubble that starts on his jaw. “You won’t forever.”

He opens his eyes, staring at her, thinking that she’s wrong about that.

But also that…that there’s no logic in the world that would support his conviction that Daphne is the girl he wants. Mates are it – end game. No other girl should be able to live up to it.

And Midnight…she deserves more than that. More than this even, him visiting another girl, telling her that he loves her, that he wants her more.

Guilt sweeps through Jesse on both ends – for how he’s treating Daphne and Midnight alike.

God, fuck, did he claim to be a good guy earlier tonight?

What a bald-faced lie. Selfish. He’s being selfish, on both accounts.

“You should go,” Daphne whispers, her voice trembling. When he lifts his head again he sees her working hard to put on a brave face. “Home to your girl, Jesse.”

He clenches his jaw but he stands. His hand moves forward for a moment, wanting to pull her up and into a hug but…he pulls it back, knowing it’s asking too much.

“I’ll see you soon?” he asks, his heart aching. “Back at school, for the rest of the spring term?”

“Sure,” Daphne says, giving him a smile. “Um, tell Ariel I said hi, please. And Rafe and Ben and…” she wrinkles her nose a bit and his wolf howls, falling hard to the ground of his soul. “Luca, I guess, if you see him.”

Jesse smiles at her and nods, slipping his hands into his pockets. And then he turns, without a word, and walks out of the room, closing the door behind him.

In the darkness, Daphne reaches out a hand and strokes it over the little shadow kitten’s head again and again. He purrs, pressing his face against her palm.

“I guess this is goodbye, Mittens,” she whispers, tears streaking down her face, waiting for him to disappear.

But he doesn’t.

And Daphne cries harder, laying herself down on the bed, gathering the precious little shard of Jesse’s soul to her chest, stroking her fingers over the kitten’s fur until she again falls asleep.