After Lola runs back towards the house, I rejoin Aeron and wait for him to finish the game and come fight with me. He refuses to meet my gaze, his mood is as dark as I have ever seen it.
I hadn’t meant for things to get so out of control with her in the water. It had taken every bit of willpower I’d had to not part the lips of her sexy little pussy with the head of my hungry cock. Just the touch of her bare, silken slit had been enough to drive me crazy. It had been a good job I’d realized she was a virgin when I had, or I’d have been too far gone to stop.
The second I had felt her hymen, reality had come crashing back, and I had remembered my place in the order of things.
It was me who had seen Lola first, and fallen hard. For a brief moment I had thought maybe she was for me, and maybe this was one precious thing I could finally have for myself.
I had been wrong of course, because from the second she and Aeron had laid eyes on each other, there had been no room for me.
He and I had spent most of our lives in this world and, having grown up in this paradise, we had only ever been mildly curious about the human world. Then one spring four years ago Aeron had suddenly become desperate to see more than our own world.
Though we were grown young men, it had taken months to persuade Uncle Geoffre to let us go. As the bearer of the bloodstone, Aeron had never been free to travel without the permission of our alpha.
If Uncle Geoffre had known that we would fall for a human girl over there, I doubt he would have let us go.
Those few months in the human world had been heaven for Aeron and torture for me. Watching the two of them fall in love had given me a taste of the agonies Aeron had been cursed to endure.
But it was only a matter of time until it came true that fate would allow Aeron to have good things only so it could hurt him with them in the end.
I should have known better. But I had spent my life trying to pay Aeron back for what my family had taken from him, and so no matter how much it hurt me, I’d allowed myself to hope that he and Lola were meant to be.
Before Lola, despite the burden of bearing the bloodstone, Aeron had always been full of laughter. After Lola there has been a haunted darkness in his gaze, as if the curse has finally found something with which to truly torment him.
And now she is here, on our island.
We know better now, he and I. Even so, I can tell that he still wants her as badly as I do. And I know that, as always, I will help him.
My love for Aeron, the bloodstone bearer, is second only to my love for his uncle, my alpha and foster father. The man who saved me. This time I must do my job and protect Aeron at all costs.
I sit on the beach brooding, watching the game without really seeing it. It isn’t long before Aeron pulls out mid-game. He leaves the beach, still scowling. He doesn’t stop to speak to me. I know that he is heading towards the lagoon.
I head back to the house. It doesn’t take me long to find Lola’s room. When she opens the door and sees me, her eyes go wide. She bites her lip nervously, and it takes all my willpower to not back her into her room and towards her bed.
“I want to show you something,” I tell her.
She agrees to come readily. As we walk side by side, I find myself reaching for her hand. I bunch mine into a fist and stuff it in my pocket.
I take her to the exhibition that Uncle Geoffre had arranged for the guests. At this time of day, when the sun is shining brightly outside, we are the only two people here. I am glad. I don’t need people looking at me with suspicious eyes, wondering whether I am my father’s son.
I let Lola take her time looking at the photographs and artefacts on display. She pauses in front of an aerial shot of the island. It looks almost like an eye, with the deep blue lagoon at the center and the white sands of the crescent-shaped island surrounding it. The darker shadows of the reef fringing the top of the circular lagoon give the impression of eyelashes.
At the center of the lagoon is a small, bright glow coming from the depths of the water. She squints at it, trying to make out if it is a trick of the light.
“It’s real,” I tell her. “It comes from a keystone deep beneath the lagoon.”
“A what?”
“There are five keystones. Three known, two lost. It said that in the beginning, our worlds were one world, but they were sundered to bring peace after a great war.”
“What?” She looks startled, and a little doubtful.
No doubt she had done some research about Otherworld when dating Aeron. But this history of the worlds is not something she would have found on their internet.
“We don’t share our histories with your people, for obvious reasons.”
She looks uncomfortable. “Otherkind likes to keep its power to itself.”
“That’s how your media likes to portray it,” I say. “From our perspective, the less humankind knows, the less harm it can do.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Your people don’t live long enough to think of the longer term consequences. The old world was sundered for a reason.”
She looks like she’s about to hotly protest. I interrupt quickly. “I didn’t bring you here to argue. I just want to explain something that you need to understand.”
“Go on,” she says.
“The full purpose of the keystones has been lost to history, but we believe they hold the sundering magic in place. Without them… Well, we don’t know what would happen without them.”
She frowns. “You mean, without them the worlds would collapse back together?”
“Or be destroyed.”
She shivers. Her eyes return to the picture of the lagoon with more interest.
“This particular keystone was entrusted to the strongest pack among the werewolves. It has been in the care of the Balthazar pack for centuries.”
“Aeron’s family,” she murmurs, frowning as she begins to grasp the magnitude of what I am telling her.
“Yes.”
“He said I wasn’t right for him,” she says in a small voice. “Is this why? Because he’s too important?”
“Yes,” I tell her bluntly, knowing how harsh it sounds. But I am unwilling to go into any more detail, because that would mean sharing secrets that are not mine to share.
“Is it because I’m human?” she says bitterly.
“It’s because you’re not the right one for him,” I tell her firmly. “You can never be Aeron’s mate, the one he will spend his life with. Do you understand?”
“But I love him. I still love him, even if…” She swallows hard.
“Don’t mistake lust for love,” I tell her harshly.
“It isn’t lust!”
“Really? What would you call what happened between us in the water?”
Her cheeks flush deep pink. She looks away from me, as if too embarrassed to meet my gaze.
“I came here to win him back,” she says, her voice trembling.
“You came here to fuck him.”
“No!”
I grab her by her waist and pull her close until she is pressed up against me.
She doesn’t resist.
Her pupils widen and she gazes up at me with her lips slightly parted. Her breathing deepens. Damn her for making me want to kiss her. To prove my point, I slide my hand down to play with her buttocks.
Still, she doesn’t resist.
I slip my hand even lower. She moans, and a shiver runs through her body.
“Call it whatever you like, but you want this,” I tell her quietly. “He wants it too. He needs to get you out of his system so that he can move on. You should too.”
“I don’t want to move on,” she murmurs, still gazing up at me, her lips begging to be kissed.
Just that is enough to make me hard for her, but I know that I cannot have her.
I press my arousal against her until she gasps. “You want this from me?” I demand.
“Yes,” she whispers.
“And from him?”
“Yes.”
“And you understand that that is all you will get? Just sex. Not love?”
“But why?” she pleads softly. “No one can love him more than I do. I know he was mad at me for kissing you, but… ”
My heart stops. For a second I think she’s going to say that she loved me too.
“It’s hypocritical!” she cries out. “I know for a fact that otherkind find it normal to want more than one person.”
I push her away from me.
“Are you denying it?” she demands.
“No. But you can’t have that with us.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant. I came here for him. I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Her words are like a knife in my heart.
“Aeron can never love you,” I say harshly. “You might think that you love him, but you’ll only end up hurting him.”
“I would never!”
“That’s what you think now, but you don’t know who you’ll be in the future. Desire corrupts. It makes us betray the ones we love the most.”
I seize her hand and take her to the one picture here that I cannot bear to look at.
She glowers at me.
“Look at it,” I insist.
In the photo a toddler is gazing delightedly into a cradle, fascinated with the new life he sees within. The toddler’s father is crouched behind him, holding him up because he is not yet steady on his feet. Nearby, the young new parents are beaming with unrestrained joy.
I put my finger on the cradle. “That’s Aeron.”
She stares at the cradle, and her face softens. “Look at his little hand coming out of the cradle! Are there any showing his face? I want to see!”
I shake my head. There are no baby pictures of him left for me to show her.
“That’s me,” I tell her, pointing at the toddler.
Lola coos. “You’re so cute!”
“We are the only ones in that picture who are still alive.”
That wipes the smile from her face.
“My father,” I say, pointing at him, “killed everyone else.”
She stares at me in shock, her face pale and disbelieving.
“They were best friends,” I say, pointing at Aeron’s father, who looks so like Aeron. “My father killed his best friend.”
“Oh, Tyler,” she says, reaching for me.
“No.” I push her hands away. “I don’t need sympathy. Everyone who knew them says they were like brothers. They loved each other. So when you say you would never hurt Aeron, you don’t have a clue.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking like she is about to cry.
“So now that you know what’s at stake, you still want him?”
“Always,” she whispers.
“And you understand it can only be physical. Nothing more?”
Her lips tremble. She closes her eyes briefly, and then she takes a deep breath. When she opens them again, there is a steely resolve in them that I have not seen before.
“Yes. I understand.”
