Page 84
He grunts, moving his arm from his face to glare down at the tome resting on his abs. "What is this?"
"Page one hundred and forty-two," I say, crossing my arms over my makeshift toga. "Read it and weep, fuzzball."
Lachlan narrows his eyes at the text, his brows drawing into a thick, thunderous line. He doesn't touch the book. "I know what the book says, Vivienne."
"Really? Because on that morning at the sink, you looked me dead in my eye, spat on my cut-up thumb, and told me your saliva healed me because of some archaic 'Oath of the Sword' nonsense."
He doesn't blink. He just stares at me, jaw tightening.
"And then," I continue, ticking fingers off in the air, "you took me to a high-end Italian restaurant that you supposedly haven't visited in decades, specifically because I told you I was hungry. And then you let me haul you into a high-stakes, breathless make-out session on Julian St. George’s humid-ass veranda because I asked you to play along."
"I was doing my duty," he rumbles, though his accent is getting thicker, a sure sign he’s defensive.
"Bullshit," I say, leaning forward until my face is six inches from his. "Page one hundred and forty-two explicitly states that a shifter cannot deny their fated mate anything they ask. It also states that only a fated mate's touch can knit flesh without leaving scar tissue."
The silence between us stretches thin, taut enough to snap.
Lachlan doesn't look away. The amber tint around his irises flares, hot and restless, before settling back into a stormy, guarded gray. The grumpy, impenetrable bodyguard mask drops back over his features like an iron visor.
"You're making leaps, lass," he says quietly.
"I have a graduate degree in historiography, Lachlan. My entire adult life has been dedicated to synthesizing fragmented primary sources to uncover hidden truths. You aren't a leap. You're a neon billboard." I tap the book on his stomach with one fingernail. "You knew what I was to you the second I sat on that stone chair in the Council chamber, didn't you?"
A muscle in his jaw leaps. He stares at the ceiling for three heavy seconds, his chest rising and falling beneath the book.
"Aye," he finally whispers.
The single word hits me right in the sternum. It shouldn't feel like a physical blow—I already read the damn text, I already put the pieces together—but hearing him confirm it out loud knocks the wind clean out of me.
"Why did you lie to me?" My voice loses its snappy edge, coming out smaller, thinner than I want it to. "You made me feel like an inconvenience. Like some stray raccoon you got stuck babysitting because of an ancient contract."
Lachlan sits up so fast the book slides off his stomach, tumbling into the rumpled sheets. The duvet falls to his waist, putting the vast, scarred expanse of his torso on full display—broad pectorals, a thick dusting of dark hair tapering down to his navel, and the jagged white line of an old broadsword scar running diagonally across his ribs.
He grabs my upper arms, not roughly, but with an intensity that pins me to the spot.
"You are not an inconvenience, Vivienne," he says, each word dragged over broken glass. "You are my mate. The only woman made for my soul in five hundred and forty-two years of walking this God-forsaken earth."
"Then why—"
"Because you're marked for the grave!" he roars, the sound so sudden and raw that Kirk scrambles back toward the fireplace.
Lachlan’s hands tremble where they grip my arms. His eyes burn into mine, stripped entirely of pride, leaving behind a bottomless, terrifying well of agony.
"Every single one of them," Lachlan rasps, his throat working violently. "Every heir of Midnight I have sworn to protect over five centuries. Lord Alistair. Lady Rowan. The twins. I stood where I stood with you. I guarded their doors. I bled for them. And every single one of them either had their brains cooked by the unmaking magic, or they were butchered by the Council during their precious Ascension Trials."
His fingers tighten against my skin, desperate, pleading.
"I thought if I kept my distance—if I didn't claim you, if I didn't let the bond sink its claws into us—that maybe I could bear it when they killed you. I thought I could be your shield without giving you my heart to drag into the dirt." A dark, bitter laugh tears out of his chest. "I was an arrogant fool. The bear knew better. The beast knew the second your blood touched mine on that dagger that there was no surviving you. If you die, Vivienne, I die with you. Not out of duty. Out of ruin."
I stare at him, my mouth slightly open, my brain spinning out of control.
The arrogant, grumpy Highland warlord who spent two days lecturing me about etiquette and rolling his eyes at my pop-culture references isn't indifferent.
He’s terrified.
He hasn't been trying to push me away because he disliked me; he’s been white-knuckling his own sanity because he fell for a woman he thought was already on death row.
A strange, dizzying mixture of fury and overwhelming tenderness floods my chest.
