Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“You are not broken, Halun,” I sternly state. “Your heart is broken, I know. Your soul feels fractured, I’m sure. But you, you are not broken. You are grasping at the pieces of yourself, trying to hold it together, but those pieces are there. They’re just waiting for you to stop denying what you’re feeling so they can begin to start coming back together again.”
“I don’t have time for putting pieces I don’t even feel are there back together right now,” he says through clenched teeth. “I am the Prince of the Hallans, and my people need me right now. I am the eldest child, and my siblings need me right now, even though my sister is on the very planet that took my mother from me and refuses to come home where I can keep her safe. I am my father’s oldest son, and he needs me to be everything he cannot right now. I don’t have time to figure out if I’m truly as broken as I feel, or to figure out what I feel, at all, when I need to focus on so many other things right now.”
He tries to reach for the bag behind me, but I move in his way, preventing him from doing that.
“And in the meantime, what?” I ask. “You just keep giving every single part of yourself away until there’s nothing left? You keep denying your own heart break until your heart turns to a rock inside of you? You don’t speak unless you have to. You move like each and every twitch of your muscles pains you, and your eyes are like looking into the depths of a wounded soul. It has to stop.”
“I. Don’t. Know. How.” His voice is so hollow and low.
He grabs the bag and turns to walk away from me, making my hands slip from his face.
“Halun,” I call out. He doesn’t stop. “Zawla.”
He goes still. I don’t walk over to him again, instead speaking to his back from where I am.
“You told me everything is my choice. Well, I choose for my mate to come back to me now. I choose for my mate to speak to me, to tell me about even an ounce of what’s going on inside him, for him to call me Zawla again, tell me I’m his again.”
“What do you want me to say, Luna?” he asks, but it comes out hoarse. “That I miss her so much that I don’t even think I remember to breathe when I think of her? That remembering her feels like someone pressing on an open wound, making it hurt again, making more blood pour from it each time? That I didn’t even get to say goodbye? That it’s my fault she’s dead at all, and that guilt is eating me from the inside out?”
“Your fault?” I puzzle. “How can you think that, Halun?”
He whips around, all the fury inside of him evident in his movements. All the grief inside of him evident in the tears falling from his eyes.
“She would not have been there if it were not for me, for my actions causing the rift that made her presence there necessary. She was killed at a meeting I should have been at, but I couldn’t go back to Earth because I’d stolen you from it. If she had never gone, she would still be here now. Meeting my mate, spending time with her granddaughter, making sure her mate had no reason to shed tears.”
I rush over to him and the moment I wrap my arms around him, he begins to crumble. Not even for a moment do I think about letting him go. I follow him down to the ground as he collapses to his knees.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I cry, helpless to hold back my own tears now at seeing my mate this way. “You did not kill her. And you know if you were there, you would have protected her with everything you are and have, with your life, if you needed to.” He shakes his head, but I continue. “It was her fate. You know of fate much more than I do, and your mother knew more than both of us. It was her fate, and she could not escape or change it any more than you or me. Fate led us to one another, and fate led your mother to Earth. You cannot blame yourself for that.”
I back up now to bring my hands to his face once more. His eyes don’t meet mine again, but this time, I better understand why.
“I did not get the pleasure of meeting your mother, but I know she would not want you blaming yourself. I know she would want you to still enjoy your life, to live each day the way she raised you to. I know she would want your heart to love instead of mourn.”