Her eyes flashed with shadowed fire. “All that would be true, and I could take it, except you ordered me back to the house like I was a delinquent child. Maybe I could accept your orders if you treated me like you treat your other men.”

“You’re not my other men!” he roared furiously. “I’m not in love with any of them!”

She froze, then whispered, “What?”

“I said I’m not in love with any of them!” he snapped. All but flinging her wrist away from him, he pivoted away to pace. “Everything about you drives me insane. We have been arguing and sniping at each other from the moment we met. But then I started to like you. You’re courageous, funny and generous, and more beautiful than any woman has any right to be, and when we first made love…” He stopped pacing to run his hands through his hair as he tried to gather his thoughts.

“Made love?” she murmured.

“Made love,” he repeated fiercely, turning to glare at her as if she might try to take the experience away from him. “When we first made love, I felt something I had never felt before. Instincts that I didn’t even know I had. I’m part Wyr, and I felt the drive to mate with you. So I left because that’s not what we said we were going to do that night. It was supposed to be an interlude of pleasure, nothing more. But then I couldn’t keep my damn hands off you. I still can’t.”

In the golden slant of light shining from the oil lantern, he could see the shock in her face. Her lips parted as if she would say something, but he couldn’t bear to hear it.

“Don’t worry,” he said bitterly. “I’ve thought it through. I’m not Wyr enough for the mating urge to kill me. You’re under no obligation to be concerned about it.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “So you’re not forced by the Wyr mating instinct to do something you’re not willing to do. You sound as if you don’t welcome it at all.”

“Everything I first said to you is still true.” Unable to look at her any longer and fight the pounding urge to take her back in his arms, he turned his back. “I’m in the middle of fighting a war, and I still don’t have anything to offer a lover—no safety, no home, not even the promise of my time and attention.”

Her breathing sounded harsh in the still of the courtyard. “Well, I guess we know where we stand now. You know what’s funny? I fell in love with you too, you jackass. Your commitment, your bravery, even your imperious attitude. It hurt when you walked out so quickly after we barely finished making love, but I went with it. You asked me to trust you when you said you had good reasons for walking away, and I went with that too. In fact, I’ve gone with all of it—the danger, the uncertainty, the fighting, and just so you know, your finer sensibilities for why you shouldn’t take a lover are outdated and delusional, because we’re probably not getting out of this house again alive. But you know what I can’t go with?”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “What?”

“I can’t go with how unwelcome all this is to you. How unwelcome I am to you. I can accept everything about you, even your worst, most imperious, biggest asshole moments. But you can’t accept me and who I am. You can’t accept the fact of me in your life, for however long or short that life ends up being. You can’t accept the fact that I might accept everything about your life, how restrictive it is and how dangerous—that I have the power and the ability to make that choice rationally and accept the consequences, whatever they may be.” Pausing, she dug the heels of her hands into her eyes before continuing raggedly, “So you may say you’re in love with me, but you’re not in love with me the same way that I am in love with you. We’re using the same words, but we are not having the same experience, and I’m… I’m not going with this any longer.”

As she said the last words, a footstep sounded in the hall behind her. Before Nikolas had consciously thought about it, he had drawn his sword and leaped to her side.

Gawain stepped out of the hall, into the light. The other man took in the scene at a quick glance—their tension, Nikolas’s drawn sword. He cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know there’s a hot supper when you’re ready.”

Sophie wiped her face as she turned to Gawain. “That sounds good.”

“We’re not done talking yet,” Nikolas said harshly.

She didn’t look in Nikolas’s direction. “Yes, we are,” she said. “We’re done.”

Bending to gather up her blanket, she stepped into the hall. After a brief hesitation, Gawain followed, leaving Nikolas standing alone in an overgrown courtyard filled with ghosts.

Chapter Eighteen

As Sophie followed Gawain back to the great hall, exhaustion set in, darker and heavier than ever. Not only did her whole body ache, but this time the exhaustion was emotional, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to access a second (third? fourth?) wind.

Back in the great hall, light, warmth, and a certain amount of order greeted her, along with the appetizing smell of hot food. Either they had constructed torches, or they had brought some with them, for lit torches filled sconces at strategic intervals.

They had shifted the Mini and the Harley so that they lined the outside wall, under the windows. Supplies were coordinated and stacked along the inner walls. There were a lot of supplies, so it made the remaining space that much smaller, but there was still enough room to create a small sitting area in front of the fire with the settee and chair and a dining area with the kitchen table that was extended with a few crates added to one end. Sleeping pallets lined the stacked supplies along the sides.