Orion_An Ancient Roman Reverse Harem Romance by Nhys Glover

Author:Nhys Glover [Glover, Nhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belisama Press
Published: 2018-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

ORION

I couldn’t sleep. How could she expect me to sleep after dropping those boulders on top of me? She wasn’t going to marry, and she’d been trying to get me to love her for years? How was either possible? And why had she decided those things? Hadn’t it been enough for her to have the love and adoration of three members of our pack, did she feel she had to have mine as well?

Even though she did. Even though she always had.

But loving Accalia was a mistake. A mistake that grew more painfully obvious the longer I spent time alone with her.

She wasn’t going to marry.

Why did hearing her say that fill me with a mixture of elation and dread. I couldn’t have her, yet I didn’t want her to find happiness with someone else? How fucked up was that? How selfish was that?

But the mean, small part of me didn’t want her to find love elsewhere. I knew I never would. If I had to spend my misbegotten life alone then so should she?

Gods, I despised myself for thinking like that. A good man wouldn’t ever be so petty. A good man would want only the best for the woman he loved.

But the best wasn’t some entitled patrician who’d treat her like a prize. Or worse, as a means to an end. I knew her father’s legacy was a draw-card. Many men would love to own such a prestigious stable of fighters.

Would men like that ever see Accalia’s worth? See her strength, agile mind, kindness and self-sacrifice as the gifts they were? Or would they try to model her into the kind of woman that society expected.

Maybe it was too late for that. Maybe she could never be what was expected of her. Maybe that was why she’d decided against marriage. It wasn’t anything to do with us. It had nothing to do with being in love with us.

I wouldn’t let it!

I turned over onto my other side, feeling the hardness of the wood floor beneath me. I’d slept on worse as recently as last night, though at least sand had a bit of give. But it wasn’t the floor that kept me awake.

And so the endless hours passed, the lamps ran low and were finally extinguished, and I continued to listen to the soft breaths of the woman in the bed beside me. We were so close. If I wanted to, I could reached up and stroke her soft hair. It would be dry now. I imagined I could smell it from where I lay.

The flowers in the unguent. That was what I could smell.

But I’d always thought Accalia’s scent was unique to her and unmistakable. Though I could count the times on one hand when I had been close enough to her to breathe that scent in, I had fooled myself into believing I could pick her out from others in a dark room just from her sweet scent.

My fingers were sliding over her hair before I realised what I was doing.

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