Page 18 of The Dark Elf's Secret Baby

I grit my teeth, panting as I try to take the pain that is hitting me wave after wave. I’ve never felt anything like this and my magic intensifies.

It seems to make Amara double down on her decision, like she thinks I’m a threat or something. “She didn’t tell you?”

I clutch at my hair. “No, she didn’t tell me. Where is she?” I’m nearly screaming, I think. I can’t hear over the pounding in my ears and I’m not sure if that weird high-pitched sound is coming from inside my mind or not.

“If she wanted you to know, she would have told you,” Amara says with finality, and then she turns, going back inside. She pauses with her hand on the doorknob and looks back over her shoulder at me. “You shouldn’t come back here again.” And then she disappears inside.

My knees tremble, and I fear I’m going to hit the ground. But I can hear a group of dark elf guards coming up the road, and I don’t have the capacity to explain anything to them. Instead, I swipe the pastry from the ground and duck behind her house, leaning against makeshift fences set up here – more to keep humans in than give them privacy.

How many times had I held her up against these planks? Now, my arms feel empty and aching without her in them.

And what’s worse?

She didn’t tell me she was leaving. She knew and she didn’t tell me.

Here I was, coming to tell her just how much I want to be with her, and she cut me out of her life. My magic flares again as the pain laces through me and I nearly burn a hole in the fence. I’ve never felt anything like this, and I don’t know how to handle it.

But as more humans trickle home from the mines, I know that here isn’t the place. I stuff my feelings down as best as I can and trudge back to my quarters, trying hard to swallow my emotions. I don’t know what kind of havoc I’ll wreak when I get there, but I know that I am going to have to let this out one way or another.

This heartbreak, this devastation, is threatening to consume me and I just might let it. Because it seems the Warrior is coming for me after all as my magic claws at my skin again.

I meant it when I said this life wasn’t worth living without my Layla. And now that I don’t have her…

Why should I bother to go on at all?

12

Kerym

Two years later

“Six months,” Salnath spews, pacing in my office as he throws his hands in the air. “You’ve been a Lieutenant for six months, brother, and yet you insist on presiding over that puny little Camp Sunset.”

“Horizon,” I answer, adjusting the things on my desk neatly as I wait for Salnath to finish. He’s been on me to transfer out of Camp Horizon since my second month stationed there, and I haven’t. He was thrilled when I made Lieutenant as the offices are on Oshta so I could move back home, but he expected me to move up through the ranks like him.

I know that there are greater things out there. I know that I have even been picked for them and have subsequently turned them down. And for a Lieutenant General, my decisions seem to be ill-informed at best and careless at worst. But I don’t care. I’m not making logical decisions.

I’ve been waiting for her to come back for two years.

“Whatever,” he snarks. “It is high time you get out of that place. That camp is where elves go to die.”

“No, it isn’t,” I say lightly, softly.

I’m not really bothering with this argument. I know in my heart that I will only ever leave Camp Horizon if I find Layla. Camp Horizon is all I have left of her and all the memories we made can’t part with it, not until I know that I’m only going to be adding to those memories.

And right now, I’m still searching for her transfer papers. Unfortunately for me, the Lieutenant that preceded me was a mess and kept very poor records, clearly expecting no one to notice a missing human.

“Their careers,” Salnath sneers.

“Perhaps.”

He stops, narrowing his gaze on me. Always the older brother, always the perfect child. Salnath has succeeded at everything I never could. He’s a high-ranking and well-respected miou who has a wonderful mate and is expecting a child.

And I lost the only person I love and am punishing myself for it.

A knock on the door halts my brother’s rant, and the door pops open. “Lieutenant–” The dark elf freezes when he sees my brother, bowing his head immediately. “My apologies, Lieutenant General. I hope I was not interrupting.”

Just like at home, my brother has more respect than I do. Even at my own base. I’m so used to it, it almost doesn’t bother me anymore. Almost.