“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“I wish we had—”
They started speaking at the same time, tripping over each other’s words.
Rui willed herself to be human so she could wrap herself in Wolfe’s strength and warmth one last time, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t transform.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she rumbled, holding her foreclaws together like a supplicant, barely resisting the urge to shift from one hind foot to the other.
“I was afraid you hated dragons. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
“I did hate dragons,” Wolfe admitted, making her flinch.
He sighed.
“But I could never hate you, Rui. No matter the circumstance, I would never hate you.”
It wasn’t exactly the proclamation of undyingloveshe was hoping for, but Rui didn’t need pretty words to know where she stood with him. Every instinct told her exactly how Wolfe felt about her. She was the luckiest dragon in the world to have found such a treasure.
And the unluckiest to lose him now.
“I can’t stay here,” she whispered. “I would if I could. But there are dire consequences if any of us stay in a time and place not meant for us. We are needed back home.”
“Because you are protectors,” he recalled from her earlier words.
“Yes, because of that. And also because of the Universal Balance. What happened must happen. What is meant to be will be.”
He nodded and didn’t speak further, his chest rising and falling in deep breaths.
She couldn’t speak either, a lump in her throat, acid in her nostrils.
And for the first time in the whole of her existence, tears gathered in her dragon eyes.
She’d never cried before. Not in either form. She didn’t even know she could. She also never before felt these emotions that she was feeling now—
Longing. Sorrow. Desire. Desperation.
And so much love.
Endless, eternal, possessive love.
Off to the side, Arthur and Lancelot were rousing. Tristan and Sorin were speaking in low tones with them.
They no longer seemed to be the mindless soldiers under Guinevere’s control. Even out of the corner of her eye, Rui could tell they stood and carried themselves differently. Arthur, in particular, seemed to be asking a lot of questions.
“I am needed here,” Wolfe said, looking toward his half-brother, if Guinevere was to be believed.
“There will be rebuilding. We must rectify whatever damage Guinevere caused.”
He looked back at Rui.
“Besides, that portal is not for me to step through, is it,” he said this as a statement, not as a question.
Rui shook her head.
Truthfully, she didn’t know. But her gut told her, no, he couldn’t come with her.
“Do you have the Eye?”