Desire for him? How?
I was her mate.
Garrick grabbed me by the arm before I could move, clearing his throat and doing his best to ignore the burn as fire ignitedunder my skin. “I don’t mean to interrupt, your, uh, reunion, but sir, we need you to release Ronan from the contract.”
Victor unhooked his teeth from Sage and she crumbled into him, her eyes glazed over and the color gone from her cheeks. She had given it all to the vampire, who was looking better by the second.
“The deal is fulfilled, your soul I return,” he rasped, licking drops of her blood from his lips.
The light from the contract in his elven assistant’s hands faded, and a plume of smoke left the paper and returned to me.
I gasped, and before I could say a word, Garrick was tossing the medicine on the couch and dragging me out the door. “We’ll expect the reward transferred by the end of the night!”
With the door closed and locked, he shoved me back into the elevator and grabbed me by one of my horns, growling in my face. “Get it to-fucking-gether!”
I couldn’t breathe, I could barely string any words into a coherent sentence, and just mumbled to myself.
“What was that?”
“…mate…”
“Yeah, I guess she was his mate. Maybe you were right about her not being a thief, but we still needed to fulfill the contract.” He let go of me and took a step back, leaning against the wall. “Weird that she would run away, though. I thought mates couldn’t stand to be apart.”
“No,” I whispered, feeling like my soul was still ripped in two, that one half still remained in that apartment. “She’smymate.”
His face contorted in confusion. “What the hell do you mean? People can’t have two mates.”
I looked up, trying to put the pieces together. “I’ve been obsessed with her scent ever since I made this deal, Garrick. It… it all makes sense now. Victor met her at a party five years ago, kidnapped her, erased her past, killed everyone close to her,and kept her locked up all this time so no one would know his weakness. But…”
The elevator stopped.
“But she’smymate. She knows, I saw it in her face…”
Garrick tried to coax me out once the doors opened, but I was frozen in place, the gravity of what I’d done keeping me in place.
I’d delivered my gods-blessed mate into the hands of a monster.
He helped me out front, taking the keys and driving my car away from the building. I barely registered what we were doing or where I was, and when my mind finally clocked back in, I was standing at a bar and had the thin stem of a martini glass in my fingers. Garrick nudged me, encouraging me to drink. “Appletini, right?”
I nodded blankly, but didn’t move.
I’ve just delivered my gods-blessed mate into the hands of a monster.
Garrick sighed and threw back a shot of whiskey, asking for another. “Actually, you know what? Just leave the whole bottle for me, thanks.”
He then led us to a table in the back. “Ronan,” he started. “I understand you’re feeling guilty about Sage. It’s… it’s not right that Victor used the system to get her back. I certainly didn’t get into this business to return victims to their abusers, but what else could we do? The deal was made, your life was on the line, and she went willingly.”
He took another shot and then poured himself a third glass. “And she’s his mate.”
“No!” I bellowed, pounding my fist on the table and snapping out of my stupor. “She can’t be his, she’smine!”
“Shut. It,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “We’re still in Noctis, you know?”
I grabbed my horns in frustration and growled. What had I done?
I’ve just delivered my gods-blessed mate into the hands of a monster.
And I hadn’t fought for her at all.
