I touch my collarbone.
He sees me do it and pales. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
I nod, my heart quivering in my chest.
“As I already explained, the only reason I can tell you any of this now is because the curse has been activated in you. Because I marked you,” Lucas says carefully. “I’m sorry, Sienna. I should have tried harder. I should have refused to let you come here. I should have—”
“This is not all on you,” I force myself to say because it’s the truth. “It’s also on me. I didn’t know when to stop. I was angry with you. I still am. At least, I want to be. My head is a mess right now.”
“I understand. I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and it hurts all the more because his guilt is suffocating me through our bond.
I cannot sit still. I get to my feet and pace to the window and back, pressing my fist against my mouth the whole time. He just watches me.
I am scared. I am so very scared. I can feel the inky mark on my collarbone now like it’s a pebble in my shoe.
I have a year, at most. We have a year.
“There has to be some way to break this curse.”
He shakes his head slowly. “My father tried, at some point. He found nothing. My great-grandfather, the son of the original man who was cursed, destroyed all the records to hide his father’s shameful secret. There is no way, Sienna. We wouldn’t know where to start.”
I look at him. The bond is humming between us. My wolf is on her feet inside me. My chest is tight. My eyes are still wet. There is a curse crawling across my collarbone and a man on the other side of this room I have not decided whether I love or hate or both, and I have a year to work it all out.
“Well…” My voice is steadier than I expect. “I do.”
His brow furrows.
I give him a wry smile. “I have a call to make.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sienna
I am barely keeping it together.
We are in Lucas’s office. I’m on the leather couch, still wearing his shirt, while he is behind his desk. The morning sun is up well over the trees outside, slanting hard across the floor between us. The screen on the wall blinks awake and shows us Alpha Darius’s study at Moonvale.
Whatever he and Violet were doing on a quiet Sunday, they have been pulled into this call with no warning. Darius is dressed, wearing black trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves already rolled to the elbow. He holds a coffee in one hand. He looks like a man who has been awake for hours and is ready for another meeting.
Violet, on the other hand, is in flannel pajamas with a shawl pulled around her shoulders and her hair in a sleep-tangled knot. There is a pillow crease running along her cheekbone that she probably has not noticed yet. The mug in her hand is the size of a soup bowl.
“Sienna.” Her voice is gravelly. “It’s Sunday. What’s wrong? Why are you—”
She stops. She squints at the camera and rubs an eye with the heel of her hand.
“What are you wearing?”
I open my mouth.
“Is that—” She leans toward the camera. The shawl slips off one shoulder. “Sienna, is that Lucas’s shirt?”
The bond pulls taut. Lucas, across the room, hears the question but does not look up from the desk. His knuckles have gone white on the armrests of his chair.
“Yes.” I let out a deep breath. “He marked me.”
Violet’s mug freezes halfway to her mouth. Darius goes very still.
“Sienna—”
