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"Trying to get your attention, asshole! Why are you ignoring me all of a sudden?"

He stands, and I see his leg is scraped and bleeding. I wince. I wish I had a first aid kit on me, or something to clean his wounds. God, I'm a fucking asshole.

"We have a lot of distance to cover," he says evenly.

He turns to leave, but I grab his arm.

"What did the elemental show you?" I demand.

I can see him trying to disguise the surprise that flashed across his face. "I don't know what you mean. We need to move." He tries to pull away, but I hold firm.

"Dammit, Airos. Don't make me subdue you."

"Subdue me?" he says with a laugh. The bastard doesn't think I can. "I'm not going to fight a pregnant omega. Let me go?—"

I don't give him a chance to finish. I trap his arm and sweep his legs out from under him. He collapses onto his stomach, and I pin him down by straddling his waist. He tries to wrestle me off, but I still have his wrist trapped. All I need to do is twist it.

"Ow, ow, ow," he groans. "Okay, okay. Stop."

"I'll let you go when you talk to me. What did the elemental show you?"

He lies there with his face pressed against the sand, breathing heavily.

"What I saw is not important right now," he says.

"Actually, I think it's pretty damn important. Everything comes down to how in tune we are with each other. So if there's something you need to say, then you better say it right now."

He's silent for a moment. "I made a vow, a long time ago, to never take a mate. To pay for lives I've taken."

My heart flips.

As a fellow warrior, I won't judge a man for the actions he's taken in combat. I can only go by what my intuition tells me about his character, and whether he is the type of person to use his skills for a righteous purpose. Airos is a good person. I'm positive of this. That's not the part of his statement that has my chest feeling like a fist is squeezing around it. I didn't know about this vow. But I shouldn't be so startled by it.

"But the person I saw in that vision had completely abandoned this commitment," he says, the emotion rising in his voice. "He had a mate. And a family. He was happy. It was like he'd forgotten what he'd done." He looks at me almost accusingly. "Icannotforget."

"If that's what you're worried about, I think it's bullshit. I saw something really similar. There's no way it's real."

His eyes turn soft for a moment. "That's what I hope. But I'm not sure."

"It doesn't matter, Airos. You don't have a mate. You don't need to take a mate. Your vow is as solid as it ever was."

I don't understand. Why, of all things, is this making him waver? What does this have to do with me?

And then the possibility hits me. It’s what has been living in the back of my mind, and every time I think about it, I have to call my heart a liar because of how it reacts to the idea that Airos might actually want me. It’s the one thing that I’ve been telling myself I don’t want, even though my pulse quickens every damn time the thought crosses my mind. I hate that reaction. I hate how my body responds before my brain can shut it down. God dammit. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I want.

And now I'm afraid of what he might say next. I don't want to hear him say it aloud. I don't know what I might do if he does.

My heart is racing so fast it feels like I'm on drugs. I'm a fucking idiot. I shouldn't have brought this up.

"We needn't discuss this further," says Airos, mercifully.

"Yeah, absolutely," I say, relieved.

Something lingers in the silence between us. A nervous tension. Nothing has been resolved. If anything, it's worse. Now, both ofus are pulling away from each other. I don't want to hear him say he wants me. I don't want to find out what that feels like.

We run on through the desert, moving fast over the changing landscape. We don't stop or slow, even as the sunlight tears across the rippling sand, carrying with it the heat of a desert morning. The miles fly quickly beneath our feet, and we cover the distance in just a fraction of what it took us before.

We're getting close. It's in the terrain and the familiar geography, but also a feeling buzzing through the air that cuts through to my bones like a damp chill. Something has happened, something bad.