Ashes (The Slayer Chronicles Book 3)

by Val St. Crowe

  I rubbed my temples. “I don’t need you guys making sacrifices because you’re afraid of hurting me.”

  “That’s what you do in a relationship,” said Logan.

  I sighed. He was right. “But it hurts you both to see me with the other one,” I said. “I know it does.”

  Jocelyn cleared her throat. “Uh… I get what the guys are saying completely, because I was first open to polyamory because I saw how happy it made Eden, and because I was so in love with her that I couldn’t take that away from her. So, I agreed to it, at first, for that reason. But then, after a while, what helped me to deal with the pain of watching her with someone else was that I started to date as well, and I started to find a lot of joy in that. So, I wonder if maybe with you guys, if… I mean, how open are things with you guys?”

  “Um…” Naelen shook his head. “Look, Clarke said we could sleep with other women, but she said, uh, that she would prefer if we kept it casual. And, to me, I’m just not… I don’t know, having that kind of sex is empty to me now.”

  I turned to him. “What? Seriously?”

  He blushed. “I know. I never thought I’d say something like that either.”

  “A lot of polys feel that way,” said Eden. “That’s very common. Because sex really is about a relationship, not about the physical.” She turned to me. “Clarke, if you know that you love both of these guys, and that your love for Logan doesn’t diminish your love for Naelen, isn’t there some way you could allow them to pursue relationships with other women?”

  My throat closed over. Naelen with another girlfriend? I felt ill. “I…”

  “If it made them happy,” said Eden. “You want them to be happy, don’t you?”

  “I… I guess so,” I said. And I guessed that what had happened with Sonya hadn’t really upset me that much, when all was said and done. “I don’t know, maybe…”

  Naelen gave me a sharp look. “Are you serious?”

  “I guess it’s only fair. If I have a relationship with Logan, and I deny you the same thing… but I guess—unless I’m allowed to have relationships with unlimited men—you should both try to limit yourself to one other girlfriend.” Even saying the words felt wrong, although I thought that Logan having another girlfriend might be really awesome. I’d always wanted him to be able to have someone else to focus his intensity on. Sometimes, I felt a little smothered by the way he adored me. Another girl could be really good for him.

  “That seems very reasonable to me,” said Eden, grinning at me. “You’re growing, Clarke. It’s going to be hard at first, but I think you’ll find this will only bring you all closer together.”

  I didn’t feel like I was growing. I felt like she’d somehow backed me into a corner, made me say something I didn’t really mean. Sure, it was logical for the guys to be allowed to have girlfriends, but it was emotionally heartrending. But now that it was out there, I didn’t know how to take it back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  We could have stayed with the Hudsons that night, but it was only a short plane ride back to Sea City, and we all wanted to be home. There was some conversation on the plane about whose night it was. None of us could quite remember.

  Naelen said that it was fine with him if I wanted to stay with Logan that night, so Logan and I went back to my place.

  Sometime in January, my lease had been up on my crappy apartment. I had a lot more cash flow since starting to work for Naelen, so I’d rented something a little bit nicer—a semi-oceanfront condo up in the northern part of the city. Not quite as far north as dragon country, of course, but it was quite nice.

  Logan had only been there a few times. Before being captured by Cunningham, he had typically stayed over at Naelen’s, and I had gone home to get away from the two of them. I’d been so convinced that they hated me back then. Now, I knew that nothing could be further from the truth.

  Logan and I couldn’t really rest or relax. There was too much that we needed to get settled, what with Cunningham and the Order and the objects. Also, it was late, and we sank into bed almost immediately.

  I was tired and confused by the conversation we’d had at the Hudsons’. If I was truly honest, I felt as if Eden had kind of forced my hand into that little concession at the end. She’d made me feel as if I was a bad person if I didn’t allow the guys to have girlfriends.

  And the truth was, all I could think about, as I lay in bed next to Logan, was that Naelen was out on the town somewhere, looking for a woman to start dating. I hated that idea. Was this the way the guys felt all the time, knowing I was with the other one? This feverish, half-nauseated feeling that made it impossible for me to think?

  I considered making love to Logan to distract myself, but I couldn’t do anything besides picture Naelen in some other woman’s house, ordering her around the way he ordered me around, insisting that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her, his hands on her hips, his hands inside her clothes, his mouth inside her clothes.

  Augh.

  Besides, Logan had a stomach wound. It was healing and all, but he could use the time off. Still, I knew that he wasn’t asleep. I wondered if he’d turn to stone once he thought I was asleep. I tried to fake it, make my breath even in the darkness.

  “Clarke?” said Logan in the darkness.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Do you really think it was stress?”

  Oh, hell. He had to bring that up, didn’t he? “I don’t know, Logan. Maybe it’s like Naelen says. We can’t know, so maybe we shouldn’t think about it.”

  “Probably,” said Logan. “It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you guys, because I don’t know anything, and I didn’t want to hurt you, either of you.”

  He was quiet for a minute, and then he sat up. He curled away from me, and I couldn’t see anything but his wings. “What if you were pregnant, and what if Cunningham hadn’t ended it? What would you have done?”

  “We were locked up in that room,” I said. “I wouldn’t have had choices.”

  “If you did have choices, what would you have chosen?” He still wasn’t looking at me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, sighing. “I can’t imagine ever getting rid of a baby willingly. That’s not me, not that I think it’s wrong or anything, I just…”

  He peered around his wings. “Okay.”

  “But…” I sat up too, letting out all my breath in a huff. “If I can be really honest, I guess I’m relieved I didn’t have to make that choice, because it would be very hard to have a baby right now. I’m not ready.”

  “No?” he said. “Not at all?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all. Even if my love life wasn’t incredibly confusing, I don’t know how I would settle down and care for something small. I like killing monsters and helping people and moving around. You understand that, right?”

  He got up off the bed and wandered over to my window. He pulled up the blinds and peered into the darkness.

  “Logan?” I said. “Come on, you can never stay in one place for any amount of time.”

  “I think I could for the right reasons.”

  “A baby is the right reason?”

  He turned around, put his back to the window, folded his arms over his chest. “Ever since you told me about it, I’ve been feeling… different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated, as if he was trying to put together a whole lot of complicated thoughts. “I don’t think Eden’s idea of us having girlfriends makes anything better at all. I think it makes it more complicated. That’s not three people in this relationship, it’s five.”

  I had to smile. “Really? Because I’m not sure that I… really want you two to be…” Of course, hadn’t I thought it would be good for Logan to have someone else?

  “I don’t know if I could do it, anyway,” he said. “I don’t know if I could love two women at once. Not the same amount. I th
ink I’d have a favorite.”

  My hands clenched around the covers. Where was he going with this? “If you’re asking which one of you is my favorite, the answer is that I don’t have one.”

  “Right,” he said, laughing softly. “You love us both the same.”

  “Equally,” I said. “Not the same.” Of course, I was having a horrible thought. One barely formed, one that I kept fighting. That… all along, maybe I could choose, after all, but it had taken this insane jealousy of Naelen having a girlfriend for me to understand which of them it was that I really wanted.

  “Fine, equally,” he said. “But differently.”

  Now, things were so messed up between all of us that I couldn’t simply break up with Logan. I couldn’t crush him that way, because he was devoted to me. Undyingly devoted. Always.

  “If I met another woman that I wanted to start a relationship with,” said Logan, “I think I would want out of this relationship.”

  “What?” I said, utterly stunned. “You’d want to leave me?”

  “That surprises you, hmm?” His tone was wry. “Can’t imagine anyone wanting anyone else but you?”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” Thinking of Naelen with another woman was driving me insane right now, as a matter of fact. “It’s only that you’ve always been so… unwavering towards me.” I picked at the bed sheets. “But you did sleep with that other woman, didn’t you?”

  “Casually,” he said.

  I furrowed my brow. “Right.”

  “And you weren’t very angry about that,” he said. He turned back to the window. “I sometimes wonder if I wanted you to be angry when I did it. If Naelen had done it, you would have been devastated.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. Nothing came out.

  “If you knew for sure that the baby was Naelen’s, would that make a difference in whether you’d want to keep it?”

  “No!” I jumped out of bed, went to him, put my arms around his waist, my cheek against his bare shoulder. “Logan, I don’t love you less than him.”

  “Not less,” he said quietly. “But differently. You love me differently.”

  “There wasn’t a baby anyway,” I said in a low voice, and I wanted that to be true with every fiber of my being.

  “But if there was,” he said.

  “And besides, Naelen doesn’t even want a kid, so it would be stupid to try to keep it… with him…” I looked out the window, clinging to Logan. Outside, I could see the beach and the moonlight on the waves.

  He wound his arm around me, so that now I was pressed against his chest. He was warm and firm. He kissed the top of my head. His voice was barely audible. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  My heart stopped beating for a moment. “Logan.” I tightened my hold on him.

  He grunted.

  I’d squeezed him too tightly, and he was wounded. I released him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, and he smiled down at me, but it was a different smile than the one he usually gave me. It was affectionate, but there wasn’t any fire in it. It was the smile of a big brother, not a lover.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. “Oh my God. You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  His smile wavered a little.

  “You always do this, Logan.” I clenched my hands into fists. “You always leave me.”

  “Because you want me to,” he said. “I think if you’re honest with yourself, when I go, some part of you is relieved.”

  I shook my head, but I didn’t say anything, because… because… Well, damn it, Logan was intense.

  “I think I’ve always been a little more into you than you were into me.” He laughed softly. “Maybe instead of trying to prove just how loyal I am to you, hoping you’ll come around, I should go out there and try to find someone who could be into me from the beginning.”

  “No,” I whispered. “No, no, no, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I can’t do this anymore, though,” he said. “I can’t. I thought I could, because while we were locked in that room, I watched him with you, over and over and over again, and I thought watching something like that would break me, but it didn’t. I wasn’t broken, and I still wanted you, and you seemed to still want me, so I thought that I could do it. I could be all right with the fact that you were in love with him, because I told myself that you loved me, and I believe you do. In your way, you do. But…” He went over and sat down on the bed. “It’s not enough. I want more than this. I want a family. I want a wife, and I want children, and I didn’t know how badly I did, until you said that maybe I did have a child, and maybe it died.”

  The words cut through me like a whip hurtling through the air. “Don’t say that,” I whispered. “Don’t put it like that. Even if I was pregnant, I couldn’t have been more than two weeks along. That’s not a child. It’s a—”

  “It’s a child,” he said, and he was furious. “Don’t say it’s not. Cunningham stole that from you. From me. He killed something.”

  “We don’t know that!” And I was furious too. “Don’t make it like it’s murder when maybe my period was just late.”

  “Whatever we’re doing here, Clarke, it’s a freak show,” he said.

  “It’s not,” I said. “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “No, I see it clearly now,” he said. “Before the baby—”

  “There wasn’t a baby!”

  “Before, I thought about you, only you. I was so desperate for your love that I would do anything, debase myself to any level for it. But you’re not the only woman in the world, Clarke.”

  “I know that,” I said, and now he was hurting my feelings. “I never asked you to debase yourself.”

  “You never loved me,” he said. “Not the way you love him.”

  “What I feel for each of you is different, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Cut the bullshit, Clarke.” He stood up. He crossed the distance between us and took me by the shoulders. “It’s him. It’s always been him. You were done with me before he showed up, and you and I both know that. I couldn’t handle watching you move on, and I guilted you into this somehow.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s a cocky bastard,” I said. “He’s a jerk. Half of the time, I want to kill him, so it hasn’t always been him.”

  “Well, I don’t know when it started,” he said. “Maybe after he broke your heart in that hotel in Colorado. But the way you look at him after he kisses you… I’ve searched your eyes for that kind of adoration when we break away, and it’s never there. And I’m not playing this game anymore. I know it’s the truth, so even if you don’t want to admit it—”

  “Logan, please.” I cupped my hands around his face.

  “Just say it, Clarke,” he rasped. “It’s him.”

  I choked. But I nodded. “It’s him.”

  His whole body sagged. He stepped away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed.

  He shook his head.

  Another horrible realization was dawning on me. All this time, I couldn’t admit to myself that I wanted to choose Naelen, because he was so bossy and ridiculous and intent on getting me into bed. Because he was exactly the sort of man I claimed I hated, and I was embarrassed that I was so charmed by him. I resisted him because I thought that I should, not because I didn’t want him. I’d always wanted him—from the moment he’d invaded my personal space in my old apartment.

  Logan squared his shoulders, taking a deep breath. He gave me a wobbly smile. “No, it’s good. It’s good, because we’re both being honest. And don’t beat yourself up, because you did try to tell me. All those times when I showed up in Sea City after we broke up, you told me it was over, and I never listened. I just kept chasing you. So… it’s not all your fault. Back then, I wasn’t listening. Now, I am.”

  I reached for him again, but he backed away. I didn’t know what to do wit
h my hands. “Logan… we all work together.”

  “Well, you’ve got the monocle now,” he said. “You can take Cunningham on. Hell, you can take the Order on, too. You can take apart all their magic. And Naelen’s come a long way. He’s a well-seasoned fighter, and I know he can protect you. Plus, he breathes freaking fire. So, when I leave, I think you’ll be all right.”

  I wanted to tell him not to leave. I wanted to beg him to stay. But I didn’t. Maybe he needed to go. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. It won’t matter. I’ll throw myself into work, like I always do. It’ll be fine.” He reached out and took one of my hands. His voice was soft. “I’ll need to be away from you for a while, do you get that? Because this—all of this—it’s done things to me. And I don’t know if I can watch you and Naelen having your perfect existence together.”

  Would Naelen and I have a perfect existence? Was there a happy ending for us underneath all this heartache? Maybe so, now that I could accept myself. Now I knew why I was so attracted to Naelen—it was his mixture of polish and animal magnetism. The way he was proper and coiffed, but underneath he was all passion and fierceness. I hadn’t been able to accept that about myself. I hadn’t been able to accept the sexual side of myself. Well. If there was anything that sleeping with two men had done to me, it was to destroy my shyness. I struggled to find my voice. “When?”

  “Basically now, I think.”

  I started to cry. “So soon? Do you have to?”

  He nodded. “I think I do.”

  “But your stomach wound hasn’t even healed up.”

  He crossed to me, wiping at my tears. “Don’t cry, Clarke. This will end up okay.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like it will.”

  He pulled me into his arms. “I’ll see you again, Clarke. Give us some time, and we can be friends someday. Good friends.”

  I peered up at him through my tears. “I’ll always be there for you, Logan. No matter what’s happened, if you need me—”

  “Yes,” he said. “Me too.”