Chapter 20
Nyxeris
Arare moment alone finds me sitting on the bench at a bay window in one of the ground-floor alcoves, a history book in hand. Not my usual leisure read, but something important to me now that I know nearly everything I’ve been taught since I was born is a lie.
Today, I’m reading about pack formations.
It’s more for Arlowe than me, to be honest. I’m trying to find information on what happens when a member of a pack dies. And it isn’t easy.
A familiar energy warms my skin, and I look up to find Laurant just outside the alcove, his evergreen eyes vacant, like he doesn’t recognize me.
That’s when I realize his hair is all disheveled, his face smattered with unshaven growth, glasses slightly askew, and the top buttons of his shirt are undone.
If I hadn’t felt his shellshocked energy, I’d say he looks like he’d just been fucked.
But his aura is not in a post-coitus glow. It’s dark and sinking, a lot like Lowe’s has been lately.
I frown despite myself, and in the silence, turn my gaze back to my book when his voice, gruff and scratchy, drifts to my ears. “Please… may we speak?”
When I look back at him, those glassy eyes are focused on me at last, filled with pain like I’ve never seen from him. My brows pinch, but I nod and rise from my seat.
Wordlessly, I follow him to the stairs and slowly upward. I’m prepared to move to the landing on the fourth floor and head for his office, but he keeps going up one more flight to the fifth, where he shuffles to the hallway, leading me to an ornate wooden door I’ve never visited before.
When he opens it, the scent of bluebells carried on an ocean breeze wafts from the room on the whoosh of air, and I know before stepping inside that this is Laurant’s bedroom.
He holds the door open for me to enter his space.
Stone floor and walls, like my room, but this one larger with an ornate rug at the center, partly beneath the large bed against one wall.
There’s a sitting area close to the entry, a large fireplace opposite it, and another closed door opposite the fireplace.
No decoration save a map hanging above the fireplace mantle.
I have no idea if it’s even his, or if it came with the room.
“Please,” he says, gesturing to one of the plush chairs in the sitting area.
I take his cue and sit, placing my borrowed history book on the small table beside the chair. As I do, he begins to pace in front of the unlit fireplace, his steps hesitant each time he turns on a heel to go the other way.
After a couple of minutes that feel like hours, he sighs, jams his fingers through his hair, but keeps pacing.
“Laurant—”
“Andrew,” he whispers, stops to look at me at last. “Call me Andrew, please.”
With a slight gape, I nod at him, but my brain isn’t entirely registering his request.
After over a decade, now he wants me to call him by his given name?
“Andrew.” I try it on for size. A little awkward, but not terribly.
In the face of his apparent panic, a strange calm washes over me, almost forced. A voice whispers in the back of my mind words that I can’t quite catch, but I feel their meaning well enough.
“Why don’t you take a breath and try to relax so we can talk?”
Laurant—Andrew—freezes in place for a moment before turning to me.
He takes three long strides forward before falling to his knees on the area rug in front of me, his whole body limp, back and shoulders hunched forward.
His entire body moves with a huge breath, then his head begins to shake from side to side.
When he looks at me again, his dark green eyes are swimming with unshed tears.
“Nyxeris,” he rasps. “You are all I dream of. All I think of.” His voice cracks, his shoulders shudder, and my body warms. “I fought it so long when our lives were in danger that I don’t even know how to act now.
What to think. Everything I’ve ever wanted is within reach, and I’m paralyzed. I’m so fucking afraid.”
That alien calm laps at my desire to shout demands at him, whittling it away to the core of my true sorrow over his abandonment. “Afraid of what?”
He blinks, and one tear slips from his eyelid, slides down his face to settle on his sharp jaw. “Of making mistakes. Of hurting you. Ruining everything.”
“You won’t.” My voice is stronger and more assured than my heart feels.
“How can you know that?”
I slide forward on the chair and sit on the edge a bit closer to him. “Because you’re Andrew Laurant,” I tell him. “You’ve held the students here together through some of the most terrifying times.”
He huffs, head shaking again. “That was duty. Not love.”
My heart skips in my chest, stuttering along with my breath. “You… love me?”
His brows drawn, the skin around his eyes tight, he looks so pained I can barely draw breath. “Of course, I do, Nyxeris,” he breathes. “I love you with every atom of my being.” His voice wavers. “I’m so sorry I haven’t made that clear.”
The calmness cracks along an invisible seam. Disbelief, pain, worry, all flood my senses, topped by relief, and I let out a wail, squeeze my eyes shut and slap my hand over my mouth.
Is this what it feels like to release over a decade of pent-up anguish?
There’s a shuffling sound, and I peer through one eye to find Andrew crawling to me on his hands and knees, slow and without any aggression or dominance. When he reaches me, he gently places his hands on my knees as I sniffle loudly.
Those hands slide up my thighs, around my lower back, until I’m wrapped in his embrace with no choice but to hold onto him as he buries his face between my breasts, inhaling deeply.
My tears slowly stop flowing, and I just feel him.
Andrew.
My Alpha.
When his face rubs against my sternum with a shuddering sigh, I jolt on a moan that turns to a soft whine in the end.
My hand automatically slaps across my mouth again at the sound, eyes wide and focused on the top of his head before he rears back, pupils so blown those evergreen eyes are almost entirely black.
It’s when his nostrils flare that I realize there’s wetness between my thighs, enough slick pooling in my panties to make me uncomfortable, if not for the utter desire on Andrew’s face, his hitched breath.
And then, beyond anything I thought might happen when I entered his bedroom, Andrew Laurant begins to purr for me.