Calling what happened next ‘a little stalkerish’ is putting it kindly. Following his scent home, watching him drum some pop-song rhythm on his steering wheel at a red light… it was theonly thing that kept me from doing what every instinct screamed to do; claim him then and there.
“You know what?” I said, my voice tight. “I take back everything I ever told Jude about you. You’re creepy. And you’re insane. Who walks away from their mate? Are you carved out of fucking stone?”
Xavier didn’t so much as blink. “I thought you came here to threaten me over the boy. Now you want me to have him?”
“Right now? No. But he won’t be a boy forever. Are you really going to doom him to watching everyone else have what fate already picked out for him?”
“Plenty of people find love without fate’s intervention.”
“And you’d be fine with that? With Ivan falling for someone else—building a life, a family—while you sit here staring at screensavers?”
For the first time, something flickered. Just a faint tightening along his jaw. He didn’t like that idea. Not one bit.
“You’re not fading,” he said after a long moment, deflecting neatly back to Jude and the echoing bond I could still feel like a phantom limb. He said it like a diagnosis. Like a life sentence.
“What the hell does that mean? We were bound.” It hadn’t been years with the opportunity to strengthen the bond with thousands of memories and moments together, no, but it was sealed. Soul-deep. “I cut the bond to release him.”
“Mate bonds are unpredictable.”
What did that mean? “Did someone fix it?” I paced faster. “Was it Erlik? Does that mean he can still use Jude? How do I stop this?”
Xavier pressed back into his chair, the old leather groaning as he turned his gaze toward the window, toward the bruised, pulsing sky of the Veil. “You know I cannot give you answers, Angel, even if I had them. Though I doubt even a creature as old as the shadow lord has the power to fix cut threads.”
“And you know I hate the all-powerful god routine. Spare me the cryptic act.”
A slow, almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I am hardly all-powerful. But you are one of mine. And I protect what is mine.”
“What if I don’t want your protection?” I took a step closer, my voice dropping to a growl. “Are you keeping me from him? Just because you’re determined to be miserable for all eternity doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be.”
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
“And I’m tired of this bullshit.”
His gaze cut back to me, sharp and cool. He could strike me dead where I stood. It would probably be less of a headache for him. Instead, he merely watched me, as if weighing my defiance against some unspoken calculation.
I stared at him. “Not all of us are as cold as you.” I dragged my hands down my face, fighting the urge to scream. “And this thing inside me—this new shape that isn’t my leopard. What is it?” Because that hadn’t vanished either.
“The fate you are so desperate to follow.”
My hands curled into fists. Cryptic bastard. “Is this the Fae calling in their debt? Is the Dark Court coming for me?”
“You are mine,” Xavier said, each word sharp as a blade. “Any claim on you goes through me first.”
I froze. The air in the room seemed to still.
“Wait… are you saying you took the contract? The one between the Fae and me?”
“You never should have made it in the first place.”
“I was a kid.” Desperate to escape a war and watching my friends die around me every day.
“The Fae always offer honeyed promises. And like most mortals, you prefer lies to truths.”
“I wanted the war to end.”
“And it did,” he agreed. “Mortal lives saved, only to be snuffed in another way.”
“I am mortal,” I reminded him. Human, Jude had reminded me many times. No matter what beast flowed in my blood.
