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"For the gala. In thirteen days." I turn slightly on my stool, pulling one knee up against my chest. "We’re walking into House Sanguine as a betrothed couple. We have matching magic brands on our wrists. But if Julian St. George or some four-hundred-year-old blood courtier starts asking questions, we can't exactly say we met because I threw up on an elder vampire after crawling out of a storm drain."

Lachlan lowers his spoon, his hazel eyes darkening as he looks at me. "The Eternal Society doesn't pry into private bedchambers, lass. They care about bloodlines and contracts."

"People pry, Lachlan. High society basically gets off on prying, it’s like, human tradition. Human nature even. If there’s one thing I know from studying seventeenth-century courts, it’s that aristocrats survive on gossip." I tap my finger against the rim of my glass. "We don't know a single real thing about each other. If someone asks me what your favorite food is, I’m going to say honeycomb and blind rage. If someone asks you where I grew up, you’re going to say 'America.'"

A faint, reluctant smile tugs at the corner of his beard. "I know you like coffee with too much cream and sugar."

"That's a start," I say. "Now give me the rest. Where were you born?"

Lachlan looks down at his bowl for a long moment, the banter dropping away, replaced by the deep, still gravity that seems to live behind his ribs.

"In the Great Glen," he says softly. His Scottish burr thickens, slowing down, carrying the cadence of someone speaking about a world that no longer exists. "Near Loch Ness, before the mortals built their roads and tourist hotels. In the winter of 1482. My father was the chieftain of the MacTavish sept, and my mother was a daughter of the northern druids."

I blink, doing the mental arithmetic in my head. "You're five hundred and forty-two years old."

"Aye."

"You don't look a day over three hundred." I smirk at him, my heart beating slightly faster. I’m living in a fucked-up fairytale. Goldilocks could never.

Lachlan snorts, shaking his head, but his eyes stay soft. "We lived in timber halls. We hunted red deer in the snow, and when the spring came, the clan moved up to the shielings in the high hills to graze the cattle. The magic then was tied to the soil, to the seasonal turning. Shifters weren't kept men then. We weren't house wardens." He shakes his head again, running a hand through the scruff on his jaw.

"What happened?" I ask, leaning in, genuinely captivated.

"The Treaty of Shadows happened," he says, the warmth leaving his voice. "The Great Houses were tearing Europe apart with their blood feuds and magic wars. The mortal kings were hunting anything with fangs or claws. Clan MacTavish was offered a choice. Swear our swords to House Midnight as wardens or be ground into ash between Sanguine and the Church." He looks at me, his jaw tightening. "My father took the oath. Our blood was bound to the hearthstone. When the Midnight line died two hundred years ago, my purpose died with it."

The weight of his words hits me like a brick. This man, the loneliness of centuries, guarding an abandoned house with nothing but ghosts and memories of failure. It’s… staggering.

"Did you have brothers?" I ask softly. "Sisters?"

"A sister," he says, his gaze drifting to the dark corner of the kitchen where Kirk is batting an onion skin across the floorboards. "Catriona. She had the bear in her, too. Wilder than me. She died at Culloden, fighting alongside the mortals because she couldn't bear to watch the Highlands burn from the shadows. Had a few cousins. The last fell with the last heir."

He takes a slow drink, his throat working as he swallows.

"Now you," he rumbles, turning the focus back on me, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that makes my breath stutter. "Tell me where the stray scholar came from."

I look down at my chipped thumbnail. Talking about my past has never been easy; usually, it just makes people uncomfortable or pitying, and I despise both. But sitting here across from him in the quiet kitchen, the words don't feel like a confession, or a plea for sympathy, or any of the other bullshit that’s always accompanied my own history. They just feel like facts.

"I don't know who my parents were," I say quietly. "I was left in a plastic laundry basket on the steps of St. Vincent’s parish in South Philly when I was about two weeks old. No note, no name. Just a blue hospital blanket and a plastic bracelet that said Vivienne."

Lachlan’s hand on the counter goes completely still.

"The foster care system in Pennsylvania is... underfunded," I continue, trying to keep my voice matter of fact. "I moved seven times before I turned sixteen. You learn to read the room fast. You learn which foster parents get angry when the floorboards creak, and you learn how to pack everything you own into a trash bag in under five minutes."

"Vivienne," Lachlan says, my name a rough rumble on the air between us.

"It wasn't all terrible," I say quickly, waving a dismissive hand. "Hell, it could have been so much worse. I was lucky. Really. The fifth house had a screened-in porch and an entire set of encyclopedias from 1984. That’s where I learned that the past is the only thing that stays put. If you study history, the people are already dead. They can't lie to you. They can't promise to come back for you and then change their minds."

I take a breath, staring at the wax seal on the wine bottle. My throat’s closing up, but I swallow past it, suddenly needing to tell him it, to get it all out. Excise the wound.

"When I got into college on scholarship, I thought I had beat the system. And then I met Cole." I let out a quiet laugh, unable to meet Lachlan’s eyes. I don’t want the pity I’ll see there. "Cole was safe. He had a family that had family dinners on Sundays. He had a trust fund and a father who bought him Brooks Brothers suits. He told me I was brilliant, and for a long time, I thought that meant he loved me. I didn't realize until it was too late that he just liked having an editor he didn't have to pay."

"He was a parasite," Lachlan growls, the wood under his palm creaking, his knuckles white.

"He made me small," I admit, the truth tasting bitter on my tongue. "Every time I had a headache, every time I got passionate about my work, he told me I was hysterical. He told me I was difficult to love." Another rough laugh, devoid of humor. “He wasn’t wrong.”

"He was wrong," Lachlan says instantly.

The words cut through the air.