Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Sienna
I wake alone.
The other side of the bed is empty, but the sheets are warm. I turn my head on the pillow.
Lucas is in the armchair by the window in pajama pants and nothing else. He is bent forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of his mouth, his head bowed. He doesn’t look up when I stir.
It all comes back to me in one rush. The kiss. The bed. His teeth at my throat. The mark sealing into my skin. My voice crying out his name.
My body still aches from him. He didn’t let me have a break. He was possessive in a way I had not seen him before, dominant in a way that should not have been a surprise but was. Heat climbs the back of my neck as I think about it.
I lie here for a long time with my eyes on the ceiling, trying to come to terms with my new reality. The bond hums between us, low and steady and present. I can feel it like a second heartbeat. My wolf is awake, curled inside my ribs and sighing contentedly.
I hate her for it.
Slowly, I pull myself into a sitting position, dragging the sheet with me and wrapping it around myself, holding it at my chest. I don’t bother looking for my clothes; I am not about to bend over to hunt for them in front of him.
I tuck my legs under me on the edge of the mattress and pull the sheet tighter.
Lucas has lifted his head and is watching me now. His face is stripped of every alpha mask I have ever seen on it. He looks like a man who has not slept, who has spent hours in that chair with heavy thoughts weighing him down. I bet he regrets what happened.
My heart twists at the thought.
But I refuse to care. I refuse to let myself care.
“We need to talk.” My voice is hoarse, and I feel ashamed of myself for it.
He just looks at me.
My chin lifts higher. “Why did you mark me?”
He doesn’t answer.
I make myself look him in the eye. “Do you understand what that means?”
“I—”
I cut him off abruptly. “No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand what you took.” My voice is rising, and I cannot stop it. “Yesterday, you told me you were sending me back to Moonvale. You have done so much trying to stay away from me, and now, you mark me? What is wrong with you?”
He is silent.
The tears are coming. I feel them building. I clench my jaw, forcing them back. “Did you do it because you didn’t want me to be with Ethan?”
His back jerks him upright, shock on his face. “No!”
“Then why?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I didn’t want this.” My free hand moves on its own, slicing the air between us. “Why do you keep ruining everything? I had finally given up on you, and you went and did this. Am I supposed to be grateful that you finally accepted me?”
He won’t speak.
“I hate you.” The words come out ragged.
“I have never despised anybody more. You humiliated me at every turn, you threw another woman in my face, and the minute you found out I was capable of moving on from you, you took the most important decision I would ever make, and you made it for me, in your bed, without asking me!”
He stays silent.
“Say something.”
He doesn’t.
“Say something, damn you!”
I have leaned forward on the bed without realizing it. The sheet at my chest slips. I don’t register it for a beat. Then, the cool air on my skin tells me, and I look down. I make a frustrated sound and try to cover myself with the hand that isn’t already fisted in the fabric.
Lucas gets up out of the chair and crosses the small space between us in two strides.
He goes to his knees in front of me. His hands are very gentle as he takes the sheet from my fingers.
Without taking his gaze off my face, he pulls it back up over my chest. He holds it there for a moment to be sure it won’t slide again, and then he tucks it under my hand so I can hold it myself.
He doesn’t linger. He doesn’t look down. He keeps his eyes on mine. The whole gesture takes less than five seconds, and then he starts to head back to his chair.
My free hand shoots out and catches his wrist. I don’t know why. My body does it before my brain can stop it. The sheet is still gathered in my other fist.
He freezes. He looks down at my hand and then back at my face.
My chest is still heaving from anger. My wolf is rumbling at the touch of his skin under my fingers. Two contrasting emotions.
The tears spill over. I cannot keep them in any longer.
“Now what?” My voice sounds weak. “You don’t want me. I don’t want you.”
He flinches. It’s small, but I see it.
“What am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to go?”
He doesn’t return to his chair. He turns fully toward me, lowering himself to his knees so we’re more at eye level. His expression is now vulnerable in a way I have never before been allowed to see.
“I didn’t mean to mark you.”
Oh, that hurts. The tears keep coming. I turn my face away.
His finger touches my chin. He turns me back to him and holds me there.
“Emotions ran high. Our wolves were in control of us.” His voice is rough.
“But Sienna, before you say anything that will break my heart even more, know this: nobody could be happier than me to be your fated mate. Nobody could be more honored to stand by your side. You are an incredible, stunning, intelligent creature. How could I not want you? Do you know how easy it is to love you?”
My eyes go wide.
“I love you, Sienna. Which is why I wanted to spare you even more than mark you.”
My lips tremble. His words frighten me. “Spare me from what?” I ask cautiously.
“The curse of my bloodline.” The look on his face is now one of terror.
“What curse?”
He sighs heavily. When he speaks, his tone is deadly serious.
“Did you know that, for several generations now, none of the men in my family, the alphas of my line, have had their fated mates survive?”
I shake my head slowly.
“It’s true.” His thumb moves once against my jaw. “They all died within a year of being marked. A gruesome, painful death. That is the curse. The men of my bloodline can either walk away from their other half or get a few months with them before they wither away.”
I suck in a breath.
“That is what I was trying to spare you from.”
I shake my head. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” He pauses before adding, “Lydia knows the truth.”
My hand jerks back from his wrist. “What?”
“That’s why she offered to mate with me. She knew I wanted to protect you.”
My chest heaves. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“If I could have spoken about it, I would have told you.”
“Lucas, why—”
“The curse is a spiderweb.” His voice is even heavier now.
“I cannot mention it to anyone not of my bloodline. No means of communication works. If I try to speak, the words don’t come out.
If I try to write about it, my hand is frozen.
I have tested every method. There is no loophole.
I can only speak of it to you now because I have already marked you. ”
“How did Lydia know, then?”
“My father told her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me how he managed it. Maybe because his fated mate had already died. Or maybe the curse had weakened enough because he was on his deathbed. He told her because he wanted somebody outside my bloodline to know, so I would not be alone when this happened.”
“Lydia could have told me.”
“No one can speak of the curse, Sienna. Lydia could talk to me about it, but if she had been within hearing distance of you, the curse would not have allowed her to.”
I stare at him, unable to process this. I can’t make any of it fit together in my head. Pressing my free hand against my mouth, I look away. “I need a minute.”
He nods.
I stand up, pulling the sheet off the bed with me. My legs are unsteady for a completely different reason than they were last night. I take one step, and the room pitches. Lucas is on his feet at once, his hand reaching for my elbow, but I jerk away from him.
“No. Stay away from me. Please.”
His face goes hollow, and I feel it through the bond before I see it. His pain. His guilt. And underneath both, worst of all, his love for me. It is killing me to walk away from him.
I go into the bathroom and close the door. I drop the sheet and stumble into the shower. I turn it on and step under the spray before the water has warmed up. I sink down to the cold tile until my knees are pulled up to my chest. The water beats on the back of my neck, and I don’t move.
I don’t know how to feel.
The anger is still in me. It has not gone anywhere.
But it is muffled now, drowning under the shock of what he just told me.
Lucas didn’t reject me. He never rejected me.
Every cruel thing he has done since the day I walked into him in Darius and Violet’s hallway was him trying to keep me alive.
He let me hate him because the alternative was to watch me die because of him.
I want to be angry with him. I want to keep being angry with him. But underneath the anger is the awful logic of it. He tried. He tried with everything he had. It was my own stubbornness, my own pride, my own refusal to let him go that pushed us both into his bed last night.
I don’t know how long I stay on the floor of the shower, but my skin is pruning when I get to my feet. The water has gone from cold to hot to tepid. I shut it off and step out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The mating mark is on the right side of my throat. Dark. Already healed at the edges. A perfect crescent. I touch it with two fingers, and the bond hums brighter. I swallow hard.
This is not how I wanted his mark. Not feeling so confused and conflicted. Not with my eyes red and my body sore.
I drop my hand.
I turn to face the mirror straight on, and that’s when I see it: a small, black mark on my collarbone. Faint. Like ink someone tried to wipe off my skin, but from underneath. My heart drops.
Is this it? Is this the curse? My body starts to tremble, whether from the cold or the curse or the fear of it, I do not know.
One of Lucas’s shirts is hanging on the back of the door. I pull it on because I cannot bear the thought of yesterday’s clothes. The cotton smells of him.
I’m still shaking when I exit the bathroom. Lucas is leaning forward with his hands on the windowsill. He turns when the door opens, and his eyes find me. The shirt. My wet hair. The way I am holding myself.
I sit on the edge of the bed again, my voice small again. “I’m ready to talk.”
He picks up a towel from the chair and brings it to me. He doesn’t ask; he just stands in front of me and starts drying my hair, slowly and carefully.
“I want to talk,” I repeat.
“I know,” he says quietly. “Give me a minute. This isn’t easy for me, either.”
So, we stay like that. Me sitting on the bed in his shirt.
Him standing in front of me with the towel in his hands.
The morning light is climbing the wall. His fingers work through the ends of my hair, then the nape of my neck, then the tangled crown.
I do not pull away from him. I should, but I sit there and let him.
The bond is humming between us. My wolf is settled and silent.
Finally, he sets the towel down and returns to the armchair. He lowers himself into it and braces his elbows on his knees.
“I don’t know much,” he says. “What I do know, my father told me in pieces.”
I wait.
“My great-great-grandfather was in love with a witch. She was expecting a child with him.”
I watch him as he talks.
“He found his fated mate and left the witch for her. And then, to protect his secret from leaking out, he killed the witch.”
I press one hand over my mouth. Lucas doesn’t meet my gaze.
“According to what I was told, as she was dying, she cursed him. And every firstborn son of his line. The fated mates we are given. The marks we put on them.”
He stops. He looks down at his hands.
“My father lost his fated mate to the curse. He told me it took a year. The death was slow. Agonizing.”
I touch my collarbone.
He sees me do it and pales. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
I nod, my heart quivering in my chest.
“As I already explained, the only reason I can tell you any of this now is because the curse has been activated in you. Because I marked you,” Lucas says carefully. “I’m sorry, Sienna. I should have tried harder. I should have refused to let you come here. I should have—”
“This is not all on you,” I force myself to say because it’s the truth. “It’s also on me. I didn’t know when to stop. I was angry with you. I still am. At least, I want to be. My head is a mess right now.”
“I understand. I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and it hurts all the more because his guilt is suffocating me through our bond.
I cannot sit still. I get to my feet and pace to the window and back, pressing my fist against my mouth the whole time. He just watches me.
I am scared. I am so very scared. I can feel the inky mark on my collarbone now like it’s a pebble in my shoe.
I have a year, at most. We have a year.
“There has to be some way to break this curse.”
He shakes his head slowly. “My father tried, at some point. He found nothing. My great-grandfather, the son of the original man who was cursed, destroyed all the records to hide his father’s shameful secret. There is no way, Sienna. We wouldn’t know where to start.”
I look at him. The bond is humming between us. My wolf is on her feet inside me. My chest is tight. My eyes are still wet. There is a curse crawling across my collarbone and a man on the other side of this room I have not decided whether I love or hate or both, and I have a year to work it all out.
“Well…” My voice is steadier than I expect. “I do.”
His brow furrows.
I give him a wry smile. “I have a call to make.”