Sapphyra
“I know what this looks like.” I started, speaking softly to a poor, confused Guy. “But it’s not what you think.”
“Really?” He taps his chin and squints at Erek. “Because it certainly looks like you’re letting my mentor put his hands all over you.”
A sharp pain in my chest started. “It’s only temporary.” I offered him a weak smile while Erek rubbed my shoulders, weakening the pain to a dull ache.
“Temporary? So you cheating on me is temporary…great.” He threw up his hands. “Glad to know that I shouldn’t expect my heart to be broken on a permanent basis!”
“Boy, shut your pie-hole and listen.” Erek rumbled, slapping the ground near Guy's feet with his large silver tail. “I’m only here to help stave off the poison. Trust me,” Erek snorted rudely in my ear,”I want nothing to do with this little menage-a-trois ya’ll got going on.”
I know I don’t actually want another guy in my life but that one hurt more than it should have.
But Guy still wasn't getting it.
“How exactly are you supposed to help with that? I’m the one with the potion in progress! What, did you suddenly get healing powers out there in the desert?!”
Erek smirked but kept quiet.
“Guy…you can’t see this?” I motion from Erek to me. “It should feel pretty familiar.” I bit my bottom lip, watching the wheels turn in Guy’s head.
His eyes widened, skin paling. I could swear he started sweating.
“There’s no way.” Guy dragged his hand down his face slowly. “With him? Really?!”
“Unfortunately.” Erek mumbles. “I don’t like it anymore than either of you do.”
“How? I mean…wait, it doesn't make any sense.” Guy stepped forward, placing a small vial of orange liquid on a table directly next to us.
“What doesn’t make sense babe?” I asked softly, eyelids growing heavy.
He stops and blushes, glancing towards me. “That’s the first time you’ve called me…anyway.” Guy clears his throat and stares daggers at Erek.
“You’ve been around since before Cyran was ruined. Why would you just be her mate now?”
Up until then, my hand had been covering Ereks but I let it drop as the cold realization hit me.
“Erek…you were in Cyran?” I whispered, trying to keep my heartbeat steady.
“Dammit Guy…” Erek sighed. “Yeah. I was there.”
“Were you in the city when Wyatt locked me away?” I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling as I fled his touch. Every time we made contact it did the opposite of what he intended. He was sending me into a spiral.
“Sapph…Sapph that has nothing to do with—” Erek started, no doubt trying to explain. I cut him off, done with his bullshit.
“It has everything to do with it, Erek! You knew. You knew where I was and what was going on, and you decided to go fuck off and live your life instead of helping.”
I was practically screaming, loud enough to shake the walls of Beacon. I was fuming.
Something softened in his eyes, and he let out a small sigh.
“You’re right,” Erek admitted. “I could have helped you. Probably could have helped save the city too. But I had more important things to do than play errand boy for some goddess who sits on her ass all day and makes decisions she has no business making.”
His eyes hardened into steel, proving to me just how little he actually cared.
“If that’s how you feel, then why the fuck are you here?” I asked, sneering.
“I’m here because I can’t avoid you anymore. It was easier when you were locked up in your little tower, but now the tower is destroyed, you’re pregnant by idiots, and you’re going to die.”
“Seems like you’d want me dead if I cause you that much trouble.” I stood up and turned my back on him.
“I don’t want you dead!” His voice rose. “I just want to live my own life.”
“Nobody’s stopping you from living your own life!” I clapped back, pressing a fist to my mouth to catch the blood that spilled out with my cough.
“Shit. Just let me—”
I pushed away from him.
“Don’t touch me. You don’t want me alive. You just don’t want my death on your conscience.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line.
“But let me ask you this. If it hadn’t been for Wyatt, that husband I have, who yes, is an idiot—but I’m the only one who gets to call him that, by the way—if it hadn’t been for him, I would have been dead. Thanks to your stupid brother and his friends and the god-awful mating rituals your people apparently have.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. I could tell it affected him, but he wouldn’t waver beneath my gaze.
“I know that,” Erek said, voice softer now. Almost apologetic. “I only knew after the fact, but I knew.”
“It doesn’t matter that you knew after the fact, Erek. You were supposed to be there to stop all of that. You were supposed to take care of me, and I was supposed to take care of you. And maybe then…”
I stopped, covering my mouth, not from the blood this time, but from the heavy ache in my chest and throat.
“Maybe then I wouldn’t have had years of nightmares after what they did to me. I wasn’t even there that long, and yet in such a short time, everything inside me was broken. And you don’t even care!”
He still wasn’t fighting for me. Erek’s silence was driving me insane.
“It was your own brother—”
“Yeah, it was my brother!” His voice cracked through the room. “And that’s partly why I didn’t come find you. I might hate the goddess and her meddling, but if I had known he was going to go as far as he did, I would have stopped it.”
“You’re lying.”
I peered into his soul.
“I’m not. If I had known, I would have stopped it.”
Shit, he might be telling the truth.
“And then what? What would you have done after that? Just left me all alone?”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
He just stared at me in silence, like I was the last person on earth he wanted to be in a room with.
I sat back down on the bed and laid down, pulling the cover over me. A yawn broke out of me as exhaustion finally took its toll. Then I looked over at Guy.
“Guy, don’t let him touch me.”
And with that, I let the darkness take me.
But before I fully went under, I heard Erek’s voice.
“You ain’t gotta worry about that, sweetheart. I’m gonna get some air.”
The last thing I heard was the sound of the door slamming.
Then I felt a weight on my bed.
Too light to be Guy’s.
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