“Yes, well, you’re an idiot.”
Noah giggled and Natalie smiled at him.
I rolled my eyes.
“Haven’t you learned yet that when an Earth woman says one thing, she means another?” Roark asked.
“Hey!” Natalie scolded. “That’s not true.” When Roark gave her a look I didn’t understand, she added. “That’s not true, all the time.”
“You’re telling me she wanted to be my mate all along and never told me?”
I ran my hand over my head again, tugged at my hair. She had been mine, in my bed, beneath me. She’d called out my name in pleasure, begged for me, for my cock. But never once had she said she wanted to be my mate. She’d wanted me and yet… she belonged to another.
“You never told her you wanted her to be yours,” Natalie countered.
I hadn’t. Not once. I’d even told her the last time, in the swing while my cock was deep in her, that someday she’d find a mate who would adorn her as she should be. I hadn’t said it was me. Fark, at that time, I hadn’t realized I wanted it to be me.
But I did now.
“I came back this time to tell her.”
“She asked you before you left on this mission to the south. She asked you if you were ready to take a mate.” Natalie scoffed. “You even talked about how beautiful she would look when some other male, her future mate, adorned her.”
Gods be damned. I had. The conversation played back in my mind. She’d closed her eyes, and I’d been too distracted by her body to truly pay attention to her needs. I’d misread her. Failed as her male.
“Do you females discuss every intimate moment? That conversation was private.”
“Yes, we talk with our best friends. I love her. She’s like my sister. And you broke her heart.”
“That was not my intention—”
Natalie interrupted me; apparently she wasn’t done driving the dagger into my heart. “You’ve been back in the city for two days and this is the first time you went looking for her.”
“How do you know that?” I was shocked and a bit unnerved by her knowledge of my whereabouts.
“Because that fighter has been in her quarters since just after she transported. You’d have been here sooner if you knocked on her door before now.”
That was true.
“I resigned,” I said plainly.
Roark nodded, went to sit cross legged on the floor beside his son who sat in the chair at the child’s table. They were eye to eye and Roark grabbed a bite of whatever was on the plate and popped it into his mouth. “He did,” he offered when it looked as if Natalie didn’t believe me. “Resigned. Told me upon his return that he would accept no more missions, that he was going to settle down and take a mate.”
Natalie gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Roark shrugged. “What’s done was done, mate. You did not consult me when Miranda made the choice to become an Interstellar Bride. I had no knowledge of her decision until she had already transported to Battleship Zakar. What is done cannot be undone.” He looked at me, sincere regret in his gaze. “I understand your pain, brother, but she’s gone.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Natalie asked. Her voice had softened noticeably, but there was no forgiveness in her gaze, only pity.
“Because I wanted my final mission to be complete. I didn’t want to have to leave her again, not for a single day, and I had to leave Trion to debrief with the I.C. I haven’t gone to look for her because I wasn’t here.”
“I’m sorry, Brax. She’s mated,” she said. “It’s a done deal. Once she agreed to the match, there was no going back.”
“Like hell,” I said. I went to the door, waved my hand over the pad to open it.
“Wait!” she shouted as the door slid open. “Where are you going?”
“To the battleship in Sector 17. She’s mine. I shall claim her and bring her home.”