deep within, and he didn’t know what
words to use to fix what was going on between them…if there were even any words
to begin with.
“I’m not a dreamy-eyed girl, Dante. I might have been when I
first met you, or at least a dreamy-eyed woman, but I’m not one now. You stayed
away and left me in pain for years .
What am I supposed to say to that?”
“I had to, Nadie.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
He looked at Jace, who had the same achingly painful
expression on his face that Dante knew he had on his own face.
“It’s my fault, Nadie,” Jace said, his voice that low growl
that Dante had missed for all those years they’d been forced apart. Before
Nadie could speak, Jace held out his hands. “You see, you’re not just supposed
to be with Dante, but me too.”
She backed away, shaking her head. “Oh no. No. What are the
two of you talking about? I’ve been alone all my life and now the two of you
are standing before me and telling me this? No.”
“Think about Jamie, Ambrose, and Balin. Within the
paranormals, triads are commonplace. It’s how we’re wired,” Dante explained.
“Sometimes we just want, no, need ,
two different people to feel whole.”
“And we’re not just a triad, or at least not just a
possibility of one,” Jace said, his gaze never leaving Nadie’s face, and Dante
was glad for it. “The three of us are mates. Three parts of a whole. I know you
can feel that spark because I sure as hell did when I saw you in your car
tonight. Now, we need to sit down and hash out the particulars as to why Dante
had to keep things from you, and then we get on to the part that is actually
important. Us.”
Dante held back a grin at Jace’s words. The man had a point.
No matter what happened, the future they could have together was a hell of a lot more important than his own hurt feelings.
Fuck, he’d been waiting for ten thousand years for them. He couldn’t screw it
up now.
At least not any more than he already had.
Nadie let out a sigh that ended on a sob. Tears formed in
her eyes, and Dante let go of whatever was holding him back and pulled her into
his arms. “I’m sorry, my sprite. I’m so, so sorry.”
She clutched at him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and
he tightened his hold. He felt Jace’s hand on his back, and from the way the
bear was standing, he had a feeling Jace’s other hand was on Nadie’s back.
Dante’s dragon took the attention as though it was his due.
Fucking dragon.
He needed to get everything out in the open, and then they
could start from there. Keeping secrets and hiding behind hurts was only making
this harder.
“I met Jace over eighty years ago, Nadie, and I knew from
the moment I met him that he was one of my mates. But while we were blessed to
find each other, we both knew that there was another one out there for us.
While others could have dealt with that and continued on with just each other,
both of our animals are far too predatory for that. They needed, no, we needed the three to complete the
bond. It wouldn’t have been the same otherwise.”
He met Jace’s eyes and cursed at himself. He wasn’t saying
this right.
Jace gave a small smile. “I know what you meant, Dante. It’s
not that we weren’t good enough for each other and that we couldn’t love each
other and be enough, but we needed our third to make ourselves whole. It was
agony not to be near and yet even worse when we were near, knowing we were
missing something.”
Nadie pulled away, her gaze shifting between them. “So you
stayed away from each other all this time.”
Dante swallowed hard then nodded. “Yes. We had to.”
“And with my role as a Mediator, I had to leave for long
periods of time anyway, and I couldn’t contact him. We were both on the lookout
for you though.”
“I’ve been here for a while now though,” she said, hurt
still in her tone. “If you’ve known all this time, why didn’t you say
anything?”
“That’s why I