Page 68 of Mate of a Monster

My silence is answer enough.

Creed releases me abruptly and I shove him back in spite, smirking when he stumbles a half step before catching himself.

“Beast.” This time, I speak inside my head and watch as Creed’s eyes narrow.

“Trust, Hellpet. Your powers are still wild and angry, but they’re protecting you until you learn how to protect yourself. You’re fated to a man of royal blood, that means you’re strong enough to rival one. To let him in, the thing that lives inside you must believe he’s of no threat.”

“But I don’t trust him.”

He goes silent before a warmth rushes down my spine, and I wish I could lean into the touch. “Are you sure, little mate? He offered to help you once. I believe he’s ready to keep his word.”

My jaw clenches as Creed continues to study me with unwavering focus.

“You don’t have to show me.” He surprises me with his words. “I didn’t ask you in here to dig around in your mind.”

“But you want to.”

“I only want to find the concrete truth.”

“How will you do that if you don’t have all the facts?”

“Do you have all the facts, Haide?” He pushes. “Or are you walking without them, same as me?”

“Your brother belongs to me,” I throw it out. “I didn’t ask for him, I didn’t trick him, and I don’t even want to want him. I just do and he just is.” My chin lifts, bracing for the fight that always follows.

All I get is a very guilty, “I know.”

“How?” It doesn’t matter how, honestly, but it might help with that nasty little five letter word the Nightkin brought up.

If I thought I was bad at trusting before, gods help us now.

“Because I can feel the pull to you,” he admits.

“What pull?”

“Haide, what do you know about the bonding process? Specifically, bonding with a Royal?”

“Everything that can be found in that.” I point at the codex. “Why do you have it?”

“Because I had to know for sure.”

“Know what?”

“If you were killing our people to make us look bad and turn our realm against us. Legend hasn’t been right since he brought you back. He went to that island and came back different with you at his side. I felt it immediately: a void where there wasn’t one before. Knight didn’t have that same void when his bond first formed with London, so that told me something was wrong. At the time, the only logical conclusion was that you were the problem.”

“And now?”

Creed holds my gaze, his shoulders falling a little. “The codex is a living archive with warded ink. Every crossing of a threshold, every portal tear or shift through sanctioned lines leaves an imprint in it. It’s called a magical signature and it tracks the echo of power as it moves.”

“So, what you’re saying is all the students at Rathe walk around with a tracker in their bags and they don’t even know it.”

“That is exactly what I am saying. That’s why it’s a requirement to keep it on their person at all times. They’re young, dumb, and have a lot to learn about who they are and what they are capable of. It’s necessary.”

I cross my arms. “And what good was that thing to you when it comes to me?”

“I was able to look through your time on campus and line up when and where you were during the murders, something I should have done from the beginning. You were at every site, but seconds or more after the death clock.”

I wince. “Yeah, before you celebrate that, I should tell you the murders were one hundred percent because of me. It was…him.”