Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Lucas
The fingers of my right hand still remember.
I stare at the desk in front of me, but I’m not seeing wood. I’m seeing Sienna. Back arched. Mouth open. My name emerging from her lips on a broken exhale. The slick heat of her around my fingers. The sound she made when she came apart, the one I caught in my own mouth and swallowed.
You put your hand inside her. You made her come. And then you told her to leave.
The coffee in my cup is cold. It has been cold for an hour.
It remains untouched since I poured it. I’ve been sitting here since dawn with the early light climbing the wall, my pen balanced between two fingers, doing nothing.
Outside, the estate is waking up. Boots on gravel.
A low exchange between two men changing shift.
A door closing somewhere on the ground floor.
I should not have touched her.
I knew the second my mouth found hers that I would not stop at a kiss. I knew it in Darius’s hallway the night I first caught her scent. I have known every time we’ve been in the same room.
I did it anyway.
Sienna rarely reveals how vulnerable she is, so when I caught her in my arms, and she told me not to think, not to stop, my willpower weakened. The thin thread of self-control I’d been stretching across the gap between us snapped right here in this office like it was nothing.
Now, the gap is gone. My wolf has her taste. My hand has the memory of her. Somewhere in this house, she is asleep, undoubtedly hurt by my actions, when hours ago she was coming apart under my fingers, begging me not to stop.
This is how it happens, my father’s voice mutters in my head. This is how you kill her.
I get up from the desk and pace to the window. The immaculate, green grounds stretch to the tree line. At the foot of the oak where she has taken to reading, I see nothing. She is not there. She has not left her room since she walked out of this office yesterday with my grip marking her wrist.
Good. That is what I want. That is what I need.
I go back to the desk and open the first report.
My security team combed the area where I found Sienna.
They tracked her scent around, but there was no other scent in the area.
And yet, they found a disturbed patch of moss, as if someone had been standing there for quite a while, the imprints of bare feet still noticeable.
The report talks about them dismissively; those footprints may not necessarily be recent.
I remember the look on Sienna’s face, a kind of fear I’ve never seen in her before. Female shifters are not always trained to be warriors. If there was someone out there, the smartest thing for her to do would have been to run. Which she did.
I make a note to myself to add extra patrols within the forest. Lately, there has been a resurgence of rogue shifters. And the ones who attacked our convoy a couple of weeks ago were stronger than usual.
I make another note to reach out to other packs in the area to find out if they have experienced abnormal rogues like those.
It’s easy to throw myself into my work, but Sienna’s scent whispers through my open window at some point, and I find myself distracted all over again.
The day passes in a blur. Meetings I barely remember sitting through.
Signing papers without reading them. Three pack council members find reasons to speak with me, and each of them leaves looking confused.
I can feel my face growing harder by the hour, the edges of me setting like concrete.
A staff member pauses at the door before coming in with what I assume is the afternoon report.
He thinks about what he is about to walk into. He reconsiders.
Good. Reconsider me. I am reconsidering myself.
Sometime after six, as the sun starts sliding down the wall, there is a knock on the door. I close my eyes. I’m really not in the mood to talk to anyone. However, the person on the other side is persistent. I figure they’ll go away if I remain silent.
To my irritation, the doorknob turns. It’s Lydia who steps in.
“You know, you could have answered the door,” she says, studying me. “You missed dinner.”
“I’m working,” I mutter.
“Lucas.”
I don’t look up. “Ask the kitchen to send something up. Can you leave now? Whatever it is you want to talk about, it can be dealt with later.”
I hear her cross back to the door and then the soft, metallic click of the lock.
My head pops up. “What are you doing?”
She ignores my question and comes over to sit in the chair across from my desk. She folds her hands in her lap, her expression the picture of patience.
“Lydia.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time, Lucas. I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.” Her voice is quiet. “You’re the alpha. Why are you hiding in your office like this? You have everyone on edge.”
I stare at her.
She reaches across the desk and takes the bourbon bottle out of my hand. She puts the cap on and carries it across the room, where she places it back in the cabinet. The cabinet door is shut with a small, decisive click.
“Bring it back.” My voice comes out harder than I want. “I was drinking.”
“No.” She doesn’t even raise her voice.
“I am the alpha of this pack! You don’t come into my office and act willful—”
She turns away from the cabinet and looks at me. Her face has softened into an expression I know well. I have seen it across twenty years of bad nights.
“You’re not my alpha right now, Lucas. You’re my friend, and I’m worried about you.
” She comes back and sits down. “Lucas, we grew up together. We played together. I scraped my knees on the same stones you scraped yours on.” Her voice stays low.
“I have been beside you for every milestone of your life. Do not talk to me about being Alpha Steele. Tell me what’s eating you. ”
I sigh, looking away. “It’s nothing.”
“Is it Sienna?”
My head jerks back toward her.
“I’m going to ask you one question.” Her lips are pressed into a thin line. “I want the truth, Lucas. Please.”
I wait.
“Is Sienna your fated mate?”
I don’t need to answer the question. Whatever Lydia sees in my face is answer enough for her. She lets out a small breath that sounds like a shaky gasp.
My head drops into my hands. “Is it that obvious?”
“To everyone else, no.” She pauses, and there is a hint of sadness in her voice. “To me, yes. I suspected something was off. The way you’ve been behaving around her caught my attention.”
I laugh. The sound scrapes on its way out. “You don’t understand. I can’t be with—”
“I do understand,” she cuts in softly. “I know about the curse. Your father told me. On his deathbed. He asked me to look out for you if the time ever came.”
My head snaps up.
Lydia is watching me with her hands folded again, a weak smile on her face. “He told me about the curse, Lucas. He wanted someone to be there in case you ended up choosing to be with your fated mate and she died. He wanted someone to protect you.”
“So, you’ve known this whole time?” I murmur.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she sighs. “There was never any need to before. But now…”
“I can’t be with her, Lydia. No matter how much I want to be. I know Father took his fated mate, but look what happened. She died, and then he took my mother as his mate. I don’t want to do that to Sienna. There’s no good reason to.”
I walk over to the window and gaze outside, my heart in turmoil. “I keep hurting her. She wants to understand why I won’t be with her, and I can’t even tell her. Nobody can speak of this curse to anyone but my bloodline. Whoever cast it made sure to leave no loophole.”
Lydia comes to stand beside me. For a few minutes, she says nothing. Then, she admits, “I always believed you and I would end up together. That’s what your father intended when he brought me into the pack. He reared us side by side. He trained me to be the luna.”
I keep looking out the window.
A small laugh escapes her. “I don’t blame you, though. Who can resist their fated mate, after all?”
I close my eyes. The guilt is crawling up the back of my neck like a creature with legs.
She touches my arm lightly. “Lucas, you cannot keep her close to you. Not with the bond this loud. Not with you like this. You will end up marking her.”
I brace one hand on the window frame. Outside, the estate is going dark. Somewhere in this building, Sienna is breathing, alive, and hating me.
“She’s the liaison.” My voice is rough. “She has to be here.”
“Then find another way around it. Find a way she can stay here without you being overwhelmed with this desire to possess her.”
I sneer. “Are you suggesting I find another woman to give my mark to? Because that is the only way the fated mate bond will disappear. Where exactly am I supposed to find such a woman?”
When Lydia says nothing, I turn my head to look at her.
“What?”
She sighs. It is a small sigh, carrying no judgment. “Either you are being deliberately obtuse, Lucas, or you do not want to hear what I am telling you.”
I fall silent.
I look at the woman I have known for twenty years.
Every birthday. Every scraped knee. Every bad night after my father’s funeral, when I could not sleep, when she sat on the edge of my bed and said nothing for an hour until I could breathe.
I know her better than I know my own reflection.
I know what she is offering. I know what the offer means.
“I don’t want to use you like that.”
I can see the exhaustion under the careful arrangement of her face.
“Lucas. I have loved you my whole life. I have never asked you to love me back. I did not expect it then. I do not expect it now.” Her voice does not waver.
I hate her for the steadiness of it. “But I want you to be happy. And your happiness is contingent upon her living. This is the one thing I can do that keeps everyone alive.”
“Lyd—”
“Give me one good reason this doesn’t work.”