The possibility had never even crossed my mind, and yet here he was, throwing it at me like a weapon forged from his own pain.
My mind reeled. The journal mentioned love, devotion, even belonging to each other. But marriage? This was the first mention of it.
"Marriage? Wolfe," I breathed, my voice barely audible over the relentless pounding of my heart.
For a moment, panic flickered across his features, as if he'd revealed far more than he'd intended. His jaw tightened, and he looked like he was warring with himself, caught between retreating behind his walls and pressing forward into dangerous territory.
Then his expression hardened with resolve, and he stepped closer, closing the distance between us until the heat radiating from his skin caressed mine.
He stared back at me, unblinking. "Yes, marriage." The rough whisper of his voice sent shivers down my spine.
“I…” The bravado drained from me, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Marriage,” he repeated, his voice rough with something he no longer bothered to hide. “I chose you knowing exactly what it would cost me.”
His eyes darkened, molten in the moonlight.
The air between us thickened.
Wolfe took a slow step toward me, then another, each movement deliberate, each movement predatory. Like the devil circling prey, patient and certain of the outcome.
And the look in his eyes… it was raw and feral, hungry and possessive.
Heat flared in my belly, low and treacherous. I had to fight to keep myself upright.
“I did not bind my soul to you because I hoped you’d stay,” he murmured. “I did it because I decided youwould. Even if you never loved me again.”
The air stilled inside my lungs, trapped between fear and something far more dangerous.
I held my ground at first, mesmerized by the intensity burning in his gaze. But then he drew closer, so close the heat of him burned my skin.
A slow smile curved his lips. A real smile this time, revealing long, sharp canines that gleamed like ivory daggers in the moonlight. Then his expression shifted.
A flash of darkness, dark as pitch, rippled across his features, and for just an instant, his face became something else entirely: angular planes turned skeletal, blue eyes becoming hollow voids that swallowed the light.
The Deathwalker.
The monster.
The shadows around him came alive, writhing and coiling as they reached out to caress his form.
Gods, he was terrifyingly beautiful in the way that deadly things often were, but my survival instinct finally kicked in, and I took a step back.
“You’re afraid of me,” he rasped, smile widening.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes, mage. But you still look at me like you want me to break you.”
Break me?
My pulse hammered in places I didn’t want to think about, and I hated how the dark promise made my body respond.
Was that it?
The trigger that made me fall for him?
That I liked his darkness, and I wanted him to break me?
