That Prince Is A Girl: The Vicious King’s Slave Mate Novel

Chapter 551: She pressed his head to her midriff, her arms encircling him lovingly. As his body trembled in her hold, she stroked his hair soothingly, petting him.

"It's okay to release it all. Do not give guilt the power it craves. Guilt peels away the salve on a wound, leaving it raw… scarred… never to heal."

The wind swept through the meadow, tugging at their clothes, whispering through the grass.

"Everything around me dies," he muttered, his tears soaking into her dress. "Everyone meant to belong to me dies." "You should run, Emeriel. Run far, far away from me." Yet he held her tighter. "I should not have stopped you from leaving today."

"Please stop saying such ridiculous things. I am done running." She threaded her fingers through his hair. "And you, Your Grace, cannot run from me. Because this time, I will chase you to the ends of the earth if I have to."

His arms around her tightened, pulling her impossibly closer. The raw emotions radiating from him were like waves crashing against the shore. He shook his head. "If I hadn't rejected you the way I did… if I hadn't sent you away, none of this would have happened."

"You made the right decision. Look at me." Emeriel cupped his cheek, coaxing his tear-streaked face upward. His red, tormented eyes met hers.

"I never thought I'd say this, but you did the right thing sending me away, and I'm so sorry it took so long for me to realize that."

He started to shake his head, but she held on, her thumb tracing circles against his skin. "You needed to find yourself. I needed to find myself. I was a slave, and you had been feral for centuries. You hadn't even had time to grieve, to truly process your loss, and all of a sudden, I was thrown at you. Someone you did not choose. Someone from the very species that took your family, who has the potential to replace what you lost. How could anyone expect you to act differently? You. Did. The.

Right. Thing."

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His lips trembled, and he didn't meet her eyes, but she knew his whole attention was with her.

"We should have communicated better," she reasoned, brushing her hand against his jaw. "It would have helped greatly. Neither of us was ready for the severed bond or the pain it brought. But that separation was necessary. It forced us to grow. To understand what we truly wanted. We needed that time apart, Daemon. We needed to find ourselves so we could choose each other."

Slowly, his head returned to rest against her middle, and Emeriel resumed stroking his hair.

The pain that had clung to her heart for years began to ebb, replaced by a sense of release she hadn't known she needed.

In consoling him, she found herself comforted too. The guilt and blame she had carried for so long-the self-recrimination and the what-ifs-started to dissolve like smoke in the wind. Emeriel felt so much lighter. Freer. The burden she carried lifted. Time slipped away unnoticed. She lost track of how long they stayed like this.

Around them, the night moved on. The stars, the moon, and the wind bore witness to this vulnerable time. This heartbreaking moment where she stood and watched her male break apart before her, piece by slow, agonizing piece.

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