“It doesn’t seem very strong.”
“Perhaps—” He still did not meet her eyes. Ridiculous. They were still wound around one another, skin to as much skin as either of them could touch. What was he trying to hide from her? “Perhaps because we’re not letting it be any stronger.”
Her shoulders tensed. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated, and her anxieties poured into the silence. “We put each other aside for too long,” he suggested haltingly.
“No! That isn’t how it works. Fate has given us to one another. A few days’ difference shouldn’t change it.” Forget rough-edged; her voice was all bloodied claws. As though it wanted to drag fate itself from the heavens or wherever the fuck it existed and slash at it until it gave an answer good enough for her. “It should—we should—”
She stood, suddenly. Breaking the physical connection between their bodies.
The thread still glimmered between them.
“What’s wrong with it?” she snapped.
He raised his head, and she saw the echo of dark smoke in his gaze. “I almost got you killed.”
“I almost gotyoukilled,” she retorted.
“I am certain we will have the opportunity to break the tie.” He let out a heavy breath. “Whatever happens next—”
“You’re my mate. I would stand in front of any number of deaths for you.”
Lightning flashed behind his eyes. “You will let me stand between you and the danger, next time.”
“And deny you the opportunity to tend my wounds again?” She arched one eyebrow, feeling as though the ground was turning to liquid beneath her feet. And she only knew one safe place to be when she was this uncertain. One reliable, miserable mask. “We already decided being poisoned is my job. You get to care for me.”
“Is that all?”
She tipped her head back, her heart thudding in her chest. This felt like playing with knives, again. Could she joke without sneering? Play to get closer to him, not to push him away? “You ought to feed me, too.”
Teeth glinted in a smile. “I intend to.”
“And—” Her heart thudded. Maybe this was going to work. “And introduce me to your family.”
Which was not what she wanted right now—what she wanted involved a lot more of the two of them alone together—but she was so close to the end of her mission. So close to achieving something, anything, to make up for everything she used to be.
All the emotion went out of Julian’s eyes.
“My family,” he said slowly. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. “There’s something I haven’t told you, Francine.”
30
Julian
“I don’t understand.”
They were back in the guest suite. Francine was wrapped in a robe, her hair hanging in wet strings that made her eyes look even larger each time she looked at him.
“They’re dead,” she repeated. His own cold words, in her shaking voice. “I don’t—how could—”
“Harper had them killed within months of bringing me into his circle.” He sounded so cold and detached. He wet his lips. Couldn’t he do better than that? “He—he murdered them.”
Scales rippled beneath his skin, and he clenched his fists. It was safer to be detached. Safer to hide inside the cold persona he’d built while he was under Harper’s control.
Even here, in his own home, it was safer not to be himself. If he even knew who that was anymore.
His mate was not the only one who had lost herself in existing for others’ expectations.
