Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter SixtySage

Chapter Sixty

Sage

A fter we woke, Dean insisted that we go get at least a few sets of clothes for me. And even though I didn’t want to have to use his money, and wasn’t exceptionally keen on going in his oversized black pants and shirt, I agreed.

Dean picked up the scroll that laid on the ground right in front of the door, and read it as we walked to the boutique, the same one I’d met Evaline in.

“It’s a summons,” he said quietly as we turned down the street for the store. “Rasa wants to meet with us, and all the others, for a late lunch in the war room.”

My stride slowed as nausea turned my stomach.

“Do you think it’s to meet about me?” I asked and cursed the way my voice wavered with the worry.

His eyes softened and he shook his head, hand grazing mine for a moment.

“No, I think it’s to discuss everything, including whatever Vasier is planning. I’m sure they want your input.” He pursed his lips before he continued. “Kovarrin will probably say something, but we knew he would eventually.”

I straightened and clenched my jaw, but I knew Dean was right. It was only a matter of time before I was confronted by the First.

“If we hurry we can still go get you some new clothes beforehand,” he said, and tugged my hand gently so that I fell in stride beside him again.

The rest of the walk to the shop was quick, and Dean stayed loyally by my side as I scanned the racks, looking for clothes that I liked and that cost the least.

“Sage,” Dean said quietly beside me. “You better not be avoiding clothes you think are too expensive.”

I swallowed and shook my head. “No, why would you think that?” I tried to laugh it off.

He tilted his head, a small smile growing on his face. “Because we are currently starting our fifth lap of the entire store.”

Instead of responding, I went down another rack.

“If you don’t start grabbing stuff, I will,” he warned from beside me.

I huffed and at the next rack picked three pairs of black pants, two made of leather and another of a lighter material.

He took them from me before I could even loop them over my arm, then nodded for me to continue.

I grabbed three linen blouses all in different shades of green, and turned to him.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

He shook his head. “Three outfits are not enough.”

“Yes, it is, for now at least. I’ll just wash them regularly and when I have money, I’ll come buy more.”

Dean sighed and turned on his heel to a different rack and I hurried after him.

“What are you doing?”

He plucked a silk shirt off a rack. “I told you I’d pick things out if you wouldn’t.”

“Dean, you really don’t have to.”

He picked up another pair of pants.

“Are you ignoring me?” I asked following behind him and trying to peer over his shoulder to see what he was selecting.

“As much as you ignored me when I told you to pick more items,” he said casually as he picked up a few more things, then turned to the adjoining room that was for intimates.

My cheeks flamed hotter than ever before, but he walked straight past all of the actual intimates and to the pajamas. He selected a few sets and moved to leave the room, but turned to me before he fully exited.

“Pick out your other needs,” he said quietly, and the red of his neck matched my face as he walked from the room.

I did as he said, horrified of him coming back in here to pick out intimates himself.

It was mid-day by the time we got back to the loft and I couldn’t wait to get out of these oversized clothes and into something that actually fit. Anything to distract myself from the meeting that would begin soon.

Dean carried all of the bags upstairs to the bedroom, then helped me strip the bed and add new, clean linens.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said, then left me to change.

I threw on a pair of black pants and the silk jade green shirt he’d picked out for me, then jogged down the stairs.

It was halfway down them that I realized he would leave soon, and all the way down the steps when I realized that I didn’t want him to.

Once he was gone, I’d be alone.

“Dean?” I called when I didn’t see him in the kitchen or office, felt that same swell of dread that I usually did when I was alone, but then turned to see him walking out of the greenhouse, eyes moving over the shirt he’d picked out for me.

At first, I assumed he’d been checking for any ravens, but I saw a few leaves of the potted plants wavering back and forth from where he’d clearly jostled them, and my brows furrowed as I walked past him and into the greenhouse.

All of the plants, all around the room, were healthy. When Lauden and I lived here, I’d been the only one who took care of them, and I’d been gone for weeks. When I came here for Evaline’s blood drop-offs I didn’t bother with them, they hadn’t been high on my priority list.

They should’ve been dead, or wilting. They should’ve lost leaves and petals. But all around me, the plants were thriving.

My fingers brushed along the leaves of one pot before I felt the soil of another. They were healthy, their soil was wet. I didn’t even need to use my magic to know that they were doing well, but I could feel it, too.

I turned to Dean who now stood in the doorway of the greenhouse, looking at me.

“You tended to these while I was gone?” I asked, brow cocking in surprise.

He gave a small shrug, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t want you to come home to a wilting greenhouse. I didn’t want it to be one more thing that might upset you,” he said quietly.

My heart leaped against my chest as I slowly nodded, looking back at the tables, at the shelves. At all the plants I’d spent so many months tending, that he’d maintained for me.

“How did you know I’d come back?” I whispered, turning back to find him standing closer.

He met my eyes and didn’t bother to flick away the curls that had fallen in his own. “I didn’t,” he swallowed. “I just hoped.”

Tears swelled in my eyes, and I cursed them. I was so sick of crying.

I knew these weren’t sad tears, they were happy—if not a bit mystified—but still I was so tired of them all the same.

The thought fled as Dean took a step toward me, plucking a hand from his pocket and extending it to me until it rested on my elbow.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand why you’re so kind to me,” I sniffled, then covered my face with my hands. Embarrassed to be crying in front of him for the thousandth time as I wiped the tears away.

“Does there need to be a reason?” he asked, fingers steadying over my wrists and pulling them gently away from my face.

“Yes,” I said, looking up at him through my lashes, eyes clear.

That got a chuckle out of him.

“Will ‘because I want to’ suffice?”

I dropped my hands, and even though he pulled his touch away as I did, he let his fingers slide all the way down my arms first.

“No, it won’t,” I said quietly. “Because your reason is that we’re mates, and that’s not a true reason.”

His brows furrowed at that, but he still only listened.

“Because that means that if we weren’t, you wouldn’t care. And then it just seems situational, an outcome of our circumstance.”

I shook my head, voice low and hoarse as I looked up at him, lifted my chin, and steadied my gaze on his.

“And that’s not real.”

He was quiet for a moment, but his eyes did not stray from mine. And standing here, with his gaze heavy on me, I realized for the first time where we were.

In the greenhouse, only paces away from where we’d kissed.

In the greenhouse, the tiny greenhouse that wasn’t more than one pace wide and two long.

In the greenhouse, where he stood in front of me, caging me into the corner of the table that wound around the perimeter of the room.

And once I realized that, it became a little hard to breathe.

Dean didn’t make it any easier as he seemed to process my words, as he took a step forward so that I had to take a step back. Until the edge of the table met my lower back, and he stood so close that I couldn’t tell if we touched, or if the tension winding between us was so tangible that it only felt that way.

“If you want a reason, I can give you a thousand,” Dean said, his voice slow and steady and strong. “Because you’re kind, even if you don’t always want people to think you are. Because you care for others so hard, you’re willing to die for them.”

I swallowed as I looked up at him, as I listened to his words.

“Because you’re smart and sweet and beautiful.”

My chest burst at his words, but I didn’t show it. I was so afraid to, after Lauden. After giving my heart away for so long, only to discover it’d never meant anything at all.

Dean continued, neither his gaze nor his words faltering.

“Because you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. The strongest.”

I shook my head, opened my mouth to argue.

“No,” Dean cut me off before I could speak. “Don’t try to deny it.”

Dean’s hands moved forward, and I almost jumped when I felt them wrap around mine.

“You pulled yourself out of compulsion. You pulled yourself out of all the other manipulations you’ve lived through. The hold Vasier had on you, in more ways than one.” His brows furrowed, and he shook his head. “You have a magic no one else in the world has. You left everything you ever knew behind, because you knew leaving was the right thing to do.”

One of his hands drifted up, and I held my breath as it closed over my cheek.

“I’m not kind to you because you’re my mate,” he whispered, tilting his head down toward me. “It’s because I care about you.”

There was a silence that settled over us as he finished, as his thumb swept over my cheekbone.

And instead of tears, there was only my whisper.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that I don’t know how to be cared for.”

Dean’s eyes flashed with something as he swallowed.

“You will.”

He pulled me to his chest, and I let myself relax into him.

But beneath the moment of calm, there was a deep, nagging worry.

That I didn’t know how to be cared for, and that I didn’t know how to care.

I thought of Vasier and his cruelty. I thought of Lauden and his apathy.

I thought of my mother, whether she was alive, and had abandoned me, or dead, and had protected me.

I hoped it was the former. I hoped she had left me behind. Because I don’t think I could handle another tragedy on my conscience. I was the cause of Maddox’s change, of Evaline’s imprisonment and torture. I couldn’t be the cause of my mother’s death, too.