“You’re suggesting a fake relationship. The daughter of the Delacourt pride, sullying herself with her bodyguard.” He relished the sharpness of her indrawn breath. “The proud lioness and the nobody.”
“You haven’t let anyone see who you are. Nobody has recognized you.”
“If anyone has seen anything in my eyes, they’ll think I’m some sort of minor lizard species.” He nuzzled her neck, his teeth as sharp as his words. “Perhaps you should let it slip that we are mates.”
“She’s already guessed,” Francine hissed.
He stilled, only for a breath. “That would give them enough to gossip about that they don’t notice why you’re really here. The woman who was almost heir to the Delacourt fortune, fallen so far that fate chained her to a lizard shifter with no pedigree or power.”
She stiffened and tore herself away from him. “I would have you if you were a lizard,” she hissed, outrage twisting her features. “I would have you if you were an ant. A worm. If you werenothing.” She grabbed his face, eyes blazing. “You aremine.”
He believed her. And that belief was almost enough to ruin everything.
Her legs hit the bed. He lowered her to the cloudy blankets, the linens the color of golden grasslands.
He kissed her. One last time.
Then he lifted his head and met her furious, hazy gaze. Reflected in her golden irises, his own eyes were cold and stark.
The fire in her eyes died as though it had never been lit. “You’re refusing me?”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m—”
“Drunk and terrified.”
She scowled but didn’t try to argue. He unhooked her arms from around his neck and pressed her wrists into the mattress, then straightened.
“Bastard,” she hissed, but the fire was gone out of her voice.
“You spoke to Eloise. What did she tell you?”
She lay flat on her back, staring up at him. The fire was gone from her eyes, too. “Some old shifter fairy tale,” she said. “It’s obviously nonsense. I shouldn’t have let it scare me.” She constructed her sentences like a wall going up a brick at a time.
Julian’s blood ran cold.
“An old fairy tale?”
There was only one fairy tale connected to the ice that would terrify a shifter this badly.
The Soul-Eater. That was this conspiracy’s real target.
And now Francine knew.
“The Devourer of Souls.” Francine sounded derisive, but her voice shook. And that was all the confirmation he needed.
“She trusted you enough to tell you?” he asked. That was what was important here: that Francine would be safe.
“Oh, she trusts me with her life. No, wait. She trusts me withmylife. I’ll stay at her side as she frees this horror from the depths of time, and in return, she won’t let her new boyfriend strip my lioness from me.”
The lioness who was already so close to broken, it had taken her long, painful hours to heal from his claw scratches.
He frowned. “Her new boyfriend?”
“This … shifter god. She thinks he’s her fated mate.”
While he was trying to make that make sense, she rolled onto her front. “That’s why she was worried about me stealing her hunt. He’s her prey. I need to keep myself occupied with mine.” She stared up at him, but there was no burn of desire mingled with the fear in her eyes now. “It would be more convincing if—”
