His lips twitch slightly, but he doesn’t fully smile like he normally would, and that worries me.
Taking a deep breath, he says, “You know when I told you that sirens don’t have mates?”
A knot forms in my stomach, and I nod, “Yeah.”
“I lied,” he says and winces.
I tense, “You have a mate.”
“No, yes,” he says, and seeing my expression, stops. “Shit, I’m fucking this up so fucking badly.”
“Van, I’m really close to freaking out, and or crying, so if you could explain, that would be great,” I tell him honestly, trying not to do the aforementioned freaking out.
“Sirens do have mates, the bond is similar to kitsunes and shifters, rather than the way that incubi have bonded, and you’re mine. My mate,” he says in a rush of words that takes me a moment to sort through.
My eyes widen, and my heart beats double time. That’s not what I expected him to say.
He clearly mistakes my expression for something else, because he rushes on, speaking really quickly, and the only way that I can understand him is because it’s what I do when I’m panicking or nervous, or excited, or angry. Okay, I pretty much just do it all the time.
“I’ve known since just before I went to the academy, only a couple of days before. I had this whole elaborate thing planned to tell you when I came back at the weekend, but by then . . .” he trails off.
“I’d gone,” I finish for him.
He nods, “I should have just told you immediately, maybe you would have stayed then.”
I shrug, “I honestly can’t answer how I would have reacted back then. I wasn’t in a good place.”
He nods.
“I should have told you the truth when we were in the woods on the pack grounds,” Van adds quietly as he stares across the water.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask.
There was once a time when we were younger, when I would have exploded at him for lying to me, but I know that there has to be a reason why he didn’t tell me.
I’m not saying I’m definitely not going to explode at him, I still might if he’s got a stupid reason, but I’m going to listen first.
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, bending his leg and wrapping his arms around it as he rests his head on them and refocuses on the water.
“Because there was a part of me that thought it would all be too much for you. You had just found out that River was your mate, and if I told you that I have known that you’ve been my mate for over a decade, then you’d run.”
My heart hits the floor.
Shit.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Van,” I say.
His head snaps in my direction, and he asks incredulously, “You’re sorry?”
I smile slightly at his surprise and nod, “Yeah. If I hadn’t fucked off when I did, all of this could have been different, and you wouldn’t have thought that you telling something so fucking amazing would make me run.”
“Amazing?” he asks, hope lights his expression, making my heart hurt a little.
Turning to him more, I say, “Duh, it’s what I’ve wanted since we were kids. I finally get to say that you are mine, no one else’s, no one can take you from me. Mine.”
“Damn right they can’t. For the record, they can’t take any of us away from you. We’re all so fucking gone for you, Neith. You own us.”
Chapter Sixteen
