“Can you imagine sleeping through your entire existence?” Jordana murmured as Carys came to stand beside her, looking at Cornacchini’s sculpture. “Have you ever felt as though your life were taking place around you, outside of you? That everything was moving faster than you could catch it—as if you were asleep and anchored to the ground like Endymion?”
“No,” Carys replied, zero hesitation. “If I want something, I reach for it. I don’t let anything stop me.”
Her careful tone drew Jordana’s gaze to her. “Never?”
“Never.”
Jordana gave a mild nod. “It’s different for you, Carys. You’re Breed. You didn’t grow up in the Darkhavens, or with a father who’s been drumming into your head since you were a child that he expected you to be blood-bonded to a suitable mate by the time you were twenty-five.”
“True,” Carys said around a laugh. “If my father had his way, he’d have chained me to the mansion banister until I was twice that age. Life is meant to be lived, Jordana. And we only get one shot at it, whether we’re Breedmate, Breed, or basic Homo sapiens.”
Jordana smiled at her friend, loving how sure Carys always seemed about what she wanted and where she was heading. “I wish I had your bravery. You’ve never been afraid to leap, no matter how deep or dark the crevasse beneath you.”
Carys shrugged, grinning. “It’s only deep and dark if you pause first to look down. Besides, you’ve got your own kind of bravery, Jordana. I mean, look what you’re doing here with the exhibit.”
Jordana took in the collection she was so proud of, all the pieces she had lovingly, painstakingly, curated one by one. It was her joy, and she threw herself into her work wholeheartedly.
While she’d made a rewarding, promising career for herself, sometimes she wondered if her father and Elliott would both be happier if she’d spent her time in philanthropic or social pursuits like most of the other young Breedmates of the area Darkhavens.
But she’d been a disappointment to them there too. She wasn’t like most other Breedmates, no matter how much she or anyone else wished she were. Hell, she wasn’t even sure what her unique ESP ability might be, a gift most women like her came into by puberty or earlier.
Jordana pulled her thoughts back to the exhibit and Carys’s bolstering praise.
“This is all your vision, your work,” her friend pointed out. “No one handed this project to you—you wanted it, so you went after it and you made it happen.”
“That’s different,” Jordana demurred. Her gaze drifted back to the sculpture under the glass. “What if you don’t know what you want? What if you wake up one day and realize that you never had a clue what you wanted? That someone had always been telling you what you needed or what was expected, and now all you want to do is close your eyes again and pretend you’re still sleeping?”
Carys’s bright blue gaze softened. “You want me to tell you what I think, honestly?”
“Yes.” Jordana nodded. “Tell me, please.”
“I think you know what you don’t want. And I think that’s what you’re afraid to admit to anyone, even to yourself.”
Jordana blew out a slow sigh as she glanced away. “That’s what Nathan said to me too. Well, not in so many words. He was far less polite about it.”
“Nathan,” Carys said. “So you did see him at the mansion this morning.”
Hearing the obvious lack of surprise in her friend’s voice, Jordana shot a frown at her. “You knew?”
Carys smiled, devilish. “I thought you might have. You came back with the packing tape looking kind of flushed and out of breath. I didn’t think it was because you’d been running around in circles down in the command center. Even though my directions to the supply room might’ve gotten you a bit turned around …”
Jordana’s eyes widened. “You did give me bad instructions! I knew it. I ended up so lost, I might never have found my way back.”
Carys grinned. “Civilians don’t go unnoticed on the warriors’ turf for long. I knew someone would help you find your way.”
“I can’t believe you deliberately sent me down there like that,” Jordana said, appalled but not angry. “You couldn’t possibly have been hoping I’d run into him?”
“I saw the way you looked at Nathan last night at the patrons’ reception. And I saw the way he looked at you. I found it … interesting. So I decided to take a little chance.” She arched a brow at Jordana. “I took a leap, thinking maybe you might need help taking one too.”
“With him?” Jordana scoffed. “Please. He’s the rudest man I’ve ever met. He has no social skills whatsoever. He’s coarse and cold and menacing.”
“And yet you kissed him a few nights ago.”
She hardly needed the reminder. Jordana felt her forehead crease harder with her deepening scowl. She’d never been particularly comfortable in her own skin, had felt practically all her life that she was different somehow. That she was merely pretending so hard to be normal—to be the good daughter, the exemplary woman, the pleasant Breedmate—goals that seemed always just out of her reach.
No matter how hard she strived to be what everyone around her expected, inside she felt she was only going through the motions. Acting, not living.
Pretending to be something she wasn’t and maybe never could be.