Page 160
“No!” His voice drops, and the anger gives way to something worse. “I won’t drink it. I won’t owe him anything. And I won’t watch you become whatever he’s turning you into. Since when have you ever been desperate enough to run to the monsters who hold the collars of humanity.”
I stare at him through the bars, and the distance between us has never felt wider than it does at this moment.
Tears burn my eyes as I tuck the vial back into my night gown. My fingers tremble as I fold the fabric over it, and I don’t trust myself to speak because the words sitting in my throat are tangled with frustration and the terrible understanding that he is right about some things and wrong about others.
“I’ll try to come back tomorrow,” I say.
I turn and walk away from his cell.
“Ali, wait . . . just . . . fuck, please,” I pause at the door. Arlo stares at me for a moment, then his mouth opens and closes like he doesn’t know how to fix what’s broken between us, like he doesn’t know how to take back his words. “Don’t put yourself at risk for me. Don’t get caught.”
I nod before quickly leaving.
The corner comes fast, and as I round it, my chest collides with none other than Eagan, and the impact sends me stumbling backward, my hand flying to the wall for balance. He stands in the corridor with his arms at his sides and his glare on me. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to. His eyes say everything.
He turns and walks, so I silently follow. We are almost back to Kylian’s bedroom when I move ahead of Eagan, anxious to put a solid door between me and my brooding bodyguard before he finds his voice.
Eagan doesn’t attempt to catch up to me, but when the bedroom door comes into view, I stop dead in my tracks.
Kylian.
His arms are crossed, and the look on his face nearly brings me to my knees.
CHAPTER 51
• King Kylian •
HER EYES FIND me from the end of the corridor, and her expression strips every remaining doubt from my mind.
She’s not surprised or confused, she’s guilty. The sight of her sets my nerves alight because people don’t look at you with fear unless they have done something wrong.
“Go inside, Alessia.” My voice comes out calm despite the rage coursing through me.
She opens her mouth, but the argument doesn’t come.
She hesitates, looking between me and Eagan, then without a word, she slips past me into the room. When the latch clicks into place, I turn my full attention to the man standing three feet from me.
Eagan meets my gaze without flinching, standing with his hands at his sides, posture straight, and his face is a practiced mask of neutrality. His unnerving calm in the face of what I am feeling pushes the cold fury past a threshold I have been holding for two nights.
My hand closes around the front of his collar, and I drive him backward into the stone wall with enough force the air leaves his lungs. My forearm presses against his throat as I pin him there.
“Twice.” The word leaves my mouth, carrying the weight of an implication he understands fully. “Twice she has left my bed in the middle of the night. Twice I have awoken to an agonizing pain in the bond. And twice I have found her with you. Tell me why I shouldn’t tear your throat out.”
Eagan doesn’t struggle. Doesn’t raise his hands. Doesn’t break eye contact, even as the pressure against his throat makes the tendons in his neck stand rigid.
“It is not what you think,” he says, every word clear despite my forearm compressing his airway. “You know me, Kylian. You have known me for centuries. I have bled for you. I have killed for you. You dare accuse me of betraying you?” His jaw tightens, and something moves behind his eyes that I recognize as hurt, deep and genuine. “I would never take what is yours. You should know me better than that.”
Guilt slams into me because he’s right. This man has never betrayed me. Not once. Not in over three centuries. I trust him with my life because he’s saved it more times than I could count.
The jealousy I aimed at him was wrong, and the shame that follows the realization burns hotter than the fury because I just slammed the most loyal man in my life against a wall and accused him of a betrayal he would die before committing.
Still the fury doesn’t leave, it simply redirects. If Eagan is not the reason she sneaks from our bed, then why do I keep catching them together?
My hands drop to my side as I step back.
“Then tell me what the fuck is going on,” I snarl.
Eagan straightens against the wall. He rolls his shoulders once, adjusting the collar I crushed, and his gaze holds mine for a long moment before he looks away. The reluctance in that single gesture tells me I won’t like what he’s keeping from me.
