The soft confession made me pause.
“This green,” she said, handing me a larger shard. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think? And I’ve never seen its likeness. It’s unique. A peculiar blend of indigo blue and soft gold, maybe a dab of maroon.”
My eyes observed the green, which to me looked like any other shade of green. But realization was dawning. “You want to keep the vase.”
Her cheeks flooded again. She rushed to say, “Not to steal it! It would remain in the keep. Besides…even if it’s a little broken, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful again.”
Alittlebroken?
I laughed, a loud, booming laugh that felt like it was pulled from my core. When it tapered off, I heard her hard swallow.
“Then how would you like me to sort them?” I asked, gesturing to the pile I’d just swept with the shard she’d given me.
“I’ll do it,” she insisted.
“Don’t trust me?”
She moved forward to sweep back some of the pile toward herself, as if that was answer enough. I realized this exchange wasenjoyable. It was?—
I froze.
My skin wasn’t buzzing. That restless energy wascalmed. Like those blissful moments after sex when my mind was quiet though alert and my body felt like my own again.Thosewere the moments I chased, and I felt it right then. In this room. With this human keeper.
Maybe her perfume has drugged my mind into a stupor,came the ridiculous thought.
If that was the case, I would smother myself in it for the rest of my life. Who needed to breathe when I would rather feel like I wasn’t coming out of my own skin day and night?
I heard her sharp hiss as she was collecting the shards up. Her hand jerked back quickly out of reflex, and then she peered down at it.
“You cut yourself?” I asked, though my blood began to rush, making my words seem muted even to my own ears.
A thin red line of dark blood appeared over the surface of her palm.
The scent of it hit me before therealizationdid.
Her blood smelled like everything I’d imagined it might. Like it was the very thing I’d been searching for my entire life. The overwhelmingrightnessof it was sublime. The scent tingled over my tongue, and I nearly groaned even as dread and dismay began to rise.
Raazos’s blood,I thought, my fangs elongating quickly enough that I cut my own damn lip, venom already dripping.
“Fuck,” I cursed, feeling the warmth of my blood bloom.
Suddenly I knew why the buzzing in me had calmed. Because ofher.
The Kylorr discovered their blood mates—theirkyranas—in different ways. Some were more sensitive to their mate’s callingthan others. Azur, my eldest brother, hadn’t realized that Gemma, his wife, was hiskyranauntil he’d tasted her blood for the first time. Kythel had had his suspicions about Millie when he’d first met her in a blood-giver establishment based purely off her scent…though he hadn’t known for certain until the first feeding.
But me?
This human woman—a keeper in my employ—wasmine. My blood mate. Mykyrana.
I only needed a whiff of her blood to know that with the utmost certainty.
And I wished I had never stepped foot in this room because of it.
CHAPTER 4
ERINA
“Are you all right?” I asked Kaldur, staring at him with quizzical concern even thoughIwas the one bleeding everywhere.
