I pulled back. Turned and reached for the stove and killed the heat.
Fucking hell.
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. Both hands gripped the edge of the stove, and I stood there, breathing through my nose, staring at the ruined pot while my pulse hammered and my blood refused to cool.
The interruption was some form of mercy. Another second and I wouldn’t have stopped at her mouth. My hands would have been under that sweater, her back against the counter, her legs locked around my waist, and we were nowhere near ready for that. She wasn’t ready.
The trust she’d just given me was new, still warm, still fragile at the edges.
Still, it didn’t make this any less frustrating.
Behind me, Mira exhaled, the sound was unsteady.
I gripped the edge of the stove and counted to five. I was good at restraint. But she was dismantling me faster than I could rebuild.
When I turned back, she was still on the counter. The flush had faded from her cheeks, replaced by a paleness that made my stomach drop.
“You mean to tell me there are others?” Her voice came out smaller. “Others who are out to get me?”
There it was. The fear. The reason I hadn’t wanted to tell her, hadn’t wanted to add another name to the list of things that haunted her sleep.
She’d spent two years being hunted by one man. The idea that the number had multiplied was the kind of information that broke people who’d already been broken too many times.
I crossed back to her and took both her hands in mine. Her fingers were cold, trembling, and I wrapped them in my palms, bringing her knuckles to my mouth.
I kissed them. My lips pressed against each knuckle, a promise written in contact instead of words. Her pulse fluttered beneath my grip, rapid and unsteady, and I felt it echo through my own blood.
“We’ll protect you.” My mouth moved against her skin. “I swear it.”
She stared at me. The fear was still there, sitting behind her eyes, but there was trust blooming.
It wasn’t the fragile, conditional trust she’d given us at the beginning.
This was real.
“I know,” she said.
Her fingers curled around mine. Not pulling away but holding on. She stepped closer, and the distance between us dissolved until her forehead rested against my chest.
The contact buckled through me. My hand released hers and found the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and she exhaled against my shirt with a shudder that I felt in my spine.
I held her and let myself have this. The warmth of her body against mine, the steadiness of her breathing as it slowed. The scent of her flooding my lungs until my wolf quieted and my chest ached with a fullness I hadn’t felt in centuries.
She was opening up again. Choosingus.
Choosing to lean into me with the full weight of her trust, and the realization settled into my bones.
15
— • —
Lucian
I fucking hated it when Solomon was right.
He was right about most things. But being right about my avoidance of Mira was a particular brand of correctness that made my jaw ache from clenching.
I wasn’t afraid of facing her.
