Chapter Thirty

Faith carefully smoothed open thevellum page on the top of her desk, lightly brushing her fingers over the raised gold lettering as she read the invitation. Idyll O'Shaughnessy and Garwald Istok, the distinguished part-owner of Garwald's Pub who'd stolen Aunt Idyll's heart within three days of her arrival in ??ran?, were throwing a bonding celebration.

Faith smiled weakly. She was happy for her aunt, sincerely. Idyll was giddy as a schoolgirl, madly in love, and mated after spending her whole life unmarried because of being a Dragon. It was just…Faith shut her eyes, feeling an ugly coil of jealousy. Everyone who wanted a man around here seemed to have one.

Except for her.

She wouldn't have thought it possible to grow even more unhappy and lonely than she'd been before, but here she was, reaching new lows of miserable. And stuck. Leaving this backward town had gone from highly unlikely to extremely improbable now that both her twin sister and her adoptive mother lived down here. Not only that, but there was nothing left for her to do topside anymore. After eight more months of nurturing along her MCL with no improvement, she'd finally had to accept that her knee was permanently disabled. It was over. No more professional ballet.

"Acceptance" was one thing, though. "Moving on" was another. She just couldn't seem to find anything to fill the hole that'd been bored out of her soul by the loss of dance. What made matters worse was that all around her people were living, making lasting friendships, fashioning new careers, dating, falling in love. Getting mated.

Except for her.

She'd held out for Nyko for months, never dreaming the wait for him would be so interminable. In eight months that big lummox of a Varcolac had never made even one move in her direction. She'd finally given up about a month ago and gone on a date with the owner of the community diner, D?nu? Marga, who talked about himself the whole time and wasn't at all like an oversized teddy bear, and then Oszkar Vasilichi, ??ran?'s head gemologist, who couldn't stop bragging about how much money he made for the community and had neglected to gaze at her as if she smelled like someone he'd get along with very well.

She'd given up after that. For good.

She'd tried to find meaning in other areas of her life by helping teach at Kacie's new dance school. But being at the barre reminded her of all her losses and failures, and she ended up just trudging through the motions. It was especially painful when Lysha, Deandra, and Kristara skipped in for the kindergarten class, dressed in adorable pink ballet gear. As the little ones rushed into the studio, Faith would rush out, choking back tears. Now that her name was forever off the ballet marquee, her maternal urges were on loudspeaker. She wanted babies, lots of them, and right away. But the only man she wanted as genetic contributor to her offspring—as mate, provider, and all-around hero—she couldn't have. Why was the cosmos also so determined to destroy her life on that score?

A tear spilled from her eyes and landed on Idyll's vellum invitation. Faith quickly sat back and—

She nearly fell off her chair when an ear-splitting siren started wailing.