“Where did she touch me?” he repeated, punctuating every word as he held out his arms. “I was distracted. Show me exactly where.”
Her eyes turned to slits. “This isn’t a fucking joke, Rennick.”
“I’m not laughing, love.”
Annoyance pulled at her mouth. “Your right arm.”
“Where on my right arm?”
She stared for a moment and touched his upper arm lightly. “Here.”
Leaning down, he removed a dagger from his boot, held it against his skin, and sliced downward, flicking his wrist outward to remove a thin layer of skin.
Amelia screamed, and ran forward, babbling incoherently as she grabbed a dress from the floor to press against his arm. “Are you insane!” Her face paled when she looked from his bloody arm to the bloody spot on the floor.
Green replaced the pale pallor of her skin, and she dry heaved.
His arm burned, but not enough to regret his actions. Taking the dress from her hands, he ripped it into strips, wrapped his arm tightly to stop the bleeding, and assisted Amelia to the sitting room while she continued to heave and mumble about his mental state.
After depositing her into a chair, he walked to the door and pulled on the bell cord to summon someone while worrying over the sweat gathering on his mate’s brow.
He grabbed a wet cloth from the bathroom and held it against Amelia’s forehead, but she pushed his hand away and stood on shaky legs. “You mutilated yourself!”
The blood-soaked cloth tied around his arm made the wound look worse than it was. “It was only the skin.”
She bent over and put her hands on her knees, gagging again.
When she’d finally regained control of herself, she straightened. “Why in the seven rings of hell would you do that?”
Rennick stepped into her space and wrapped his hand around her nape. “There is no longer any part of my body she has touched.” He kissed her forehead and felt her fury and jealousy dissolve.
“You were wearing long sleeves,” she croaked. “She didn’t touch your skin.”
He shrugged. “I’ll burn the shirt, too.”
“Why is that attractive?” she muttered quietly, eliciting a wide smile from him.
“I will kill her and serve you her head on a silver platter.”
She blanched. “You cannot threaten to kill everyone who upsets one of us!”
“I was being facetious.”Not really.“Ora will no longer be allowed in our palace.” He needed to rid their relationship of the other woman. “Tomorrow, we’ll tell her together. I wish you’d told me sooner.”
Her eyes lit up. “I get to be there?”
He laughed, loving his mate’s possessive streak. “You can be the one to tell her.” Caressing her jaw, he forced her eyes to his, relishing in the happiness radiating from her. “If you’d like to stake your claim, I’ll bend you over my desk and fuck you while you tell her.”
His cock hardened at the pretty blush blooming across her skin as she pulled from his grasp and flitted from trunk to trunk.
The contents of the last trunk rattled as she dug around. “Ah ha!” Straightening, she held out a stack of papers to him. “I wanted to stake my claim on whomever wrote those letters long ago, and if I’d been able to deliver these to you, you’d never question that.”
Rennick loathed to leave, but Amelia, with a still green face, insisted he visit the infirmary without her. A maid showed up toanswer his earlier summons, and he sent for the warriors-in-training to clean the area of the dressing room floor covered in blood.
Seeing his mate almost pass out reminded him that not everyone was comfortable around blood, and he didn’t want any of the in-house staff to faint. The trainees were accustomed to blood and wounds alike, so removing a bloody rug wouldn’t faze them in the least.
Amelia wanted to see her friend Fawn while he tended to his arm, and once the girl showed up, he kissed his mate goodbye and left.
An hour and a fresh bandage later, Rennick headed to his study, removing the folded stack of papers from his back pocket.
