Chapter 76

• When I took Catherine to visit the neighboring kingdom, I hadn’t yet decided whether to remove the bond. I told myself the trip was to observe how King Andrea and his mate had adjusted, to see if their situation might offer any insight into my own. But it became clear almost immediately that Andrea hadn’t truly moved on. The three of them—Andrea, his mate, and the human woman he had bonded with—were caught in an inescapable web of unspoken words, old wounds, and unresolved feelings. It was a love triangle that left all of them outwardly miserable.
• That was something I could never do to Catherine. I could never ask her to sit back as a mistress while I took another as my official mate. Not that she would ever agree to such a fate in the first place. Despite how many times I told her that she would be my only queen, that I would never put her in a position like that human girl, she didn’t believe me. She insisted that I would force her into the same kind of life, that I would one day push her aside for a more suitable mate in the eyes of my people.
• I couldn’t blame her for her skepticism. My reluctance to claim her as my mate wasn’t helping. If anything, it only made her more suspicious, made her believe I was simply waiting for the right moment to discard her. But she didn’t understand the reality of my world. If I claimed her too soon—before my people were ready to accept her—there would be rebellion. A human queen? They would see it as an insult to centuries of tradition. They would demand her removal, and I knew all too well what that would entail.