The darn scroll test, Leya! He isn’t angling for a hookup.
To hide her unease at how this entire situation was affecting her, Leya hastily lowered to her knees, as did he. She held her palm over the ancient parchment, and her blood dripped in several blobs, marring the aged paper. The globules trembled and then remained still.
“This shouldn’t happen,” Aerén growled. “Why isn’t it absorbing her blood as it did with the others? I know she is one of them!”
“Sometimes we sense psychic humans who mimic what we search for,” Lucan said as he came closer.
Aerén jerked to his feet and stalked the length of the living room. “No! Something’s wrong here.”
“I doubt that. We have to accept our mistakes, Aerén.”
“Mistake?” He cut the other man a flat stare. “I know what I felt whenItasted her blood!”
Leya rose, her hands fisted. Her disappointment was not something she expected.
Not wanting to disturb them, and with their frustration evident, she wiped the small cut on her jeans. But she had to know. “So, I guess I’m not the one you search for, then?”
Those molten silver eyes came back to her, and his mouth tightened. Aerén crossed to her. “Are you okay—your wound?”
“It’s fine.”
His expression like stone, he ushered her to the door without another word to Lucan.
So, that was ano.
“Bye,” she called out, glancing back.
Lucan watched her in contemplative silence, then nodded.
Man, these people sure were weird.
Deeper disappointment took hold. For a moment, she’d hoped it was true, being this Chosen. She wanted to matter, be special, not someone everyone looked to when they needed things done.
But she wasn’t anything extraordinary, just mundane Leyathi Park.
* * *
A tic working his jaw, Aerén stood near the glass door of Leya’s office, staring outside at the truck parked there, a sense of utter failure consuming him.
She wasn’t a Chosen.
How the hell could he have been so wrong?
The mystical scroll, when touched, typically started a mating heat, as they’d found out, and Aerén had smelled her faint arousal, yet the parchment hadn’t absorbed her blood as it should have.
“At least we made it back the same night,” Leya said from behind him.
He could clearly see her reflection on the glass of the door as she picked up her hoodie from the desk and set it on her bag. “Only three hours have passed.”
When he didn’t respond, she asked softly, “Are you okay?”
Did she really care? Allshewanted from the moment they met was to get rid of him.
Reeling in his rancor, he faced her. “Well, you finally get your wish. This is goodbye. Thank you for letting us test your blood. Come, let me see you back to your apartment before I leave. After the other night, you know what’s out there.”
Her eyes twinkled with humor. “Right.”
Aye, she would classify him as dangerous, and the stars knew he was. “I meant demons.”
