Chapter 19 #2
“You’re welcome to come with us.” Her eyes stay on the screen. “Lucas, there’s something else Darius wants to discuss with you. We were going to call you about it later this morning.”
Lucas nods. “What is it?”
Darius gives a quick shake of his head. “I’ll tell you in person,” he says. “It’s not for a screen.”
Lucas’s jaw tightens. “Then I suppose we will be hosting you.”
“It would seem so.”
Violet finally looks at her mate. “Let’s go pack our bags.”
Darius exhales through his nose. There will be an argument about this later, behind a closed door, and he is going to lose. He knows it.
“Ten days,” he says firmly. “We’ll be there in ten days. I have to wrap up some things here first.”
Lillian’s eyes hold mine through the camera until the screen goes dark. My hands settle in my lap.
Lucas’s office is suddenly very quiet. Outside, the sun has climbed higher while we were talking. The estate is bustling—footsteps in the hall, a door closing somewhere downstairs.
A witch.
The word turns over in my head. A witch in Silvercrest territory. One powerful enough to unbind a curse built over a hundred years ago. The odds are bad. They are bad in the way of long-shot sales, the kind I have learned to detect on my first read of a pitch deck.
The odds are bad, but they’re not zero.
My feet find the floor. I stand and turn to face Lucas. “I’m not giving up.”
He tilts his head at me.
“I have no plans of dying because your ancestor was a raging, murdering asshole.”
He blinks, and the corner of his mouth moves. “You don’t swear very often.”
“I don’t have a generational curse on me very often,” I snap.
My steps carry me toward the door, and he asks carefully, “Where are you going?”
“To my room.”
He hesitates. My hand is already on the knob when he speaks again. “Sienna. We are bonded mates.”
I freeze. “And?”
“Everyone in this house is going to know it by lunchtime,” he goes on. “The mark is visible. Anyone within twenty feet will feel our bond.”
My hand drops as I spin around. “So?” The word comes out sounding defensive.
He lifts a brow. “So”—his tone is patient—“you shouldn’t go back to the guest wing. You should stay in my suite.”
My stomach does an uncomfortable flip. The word “stay” lands there with too much weight.
His expression falls. Whatever just moved across my face, his own is bracing for a hit.
“Things have changed between us,” he says quietly. “Haven’t they?”
I rub my arm, which is something I do when I don’t know what to do with my hands. “I don’t know how to feel right now, Lucas.”
He doesn’t move.
“I’m not happy. With any of it. With the curse. With the mark. With the way it happened. With…this.” The gesture my hand makes between us is limp. “I can’t simply pretend that I am.”
The bond carries his hurt across the room to me before his face shows it. A sharp, cold pulse of pain hits me low in the chest and almost makes me reach for him instinctively.
“That’s alright.” His face stays smooth, and his voice is even. “I won’t push you. But you will have to move into my rooms, Sienna. Sleeping in the guest wing with my mark on you would have the household gossiping, and I am not going to have anyone look at you sideways. Not ever.”
There is an argument in my mouth, but I cannot find it. He is right.
“I won’t cross a line.” The promise comes without him looking away from me.
I sigh. “Fine.”
He pushes back from the desk and crosses the room to me.
There is no touch. He opens the door and lets me through it first. We walk back to his suite, where the bed is still unmade and the air still smells like both of us.
Lucas presses a button on the intercom panel by the door, and a young woman’s voice answers a second later, bright with energy.
“Yes, Alpha?”
“Have a wardrobe brought up for Miss Carter. Full set. Top tier. I want it within the hour.”
“Of course, Alpha.”
The intercom clicks off.
My arms cross at my chest as I stand in the middle of the room. “I have clothes, Lucas. I don’t need new ones.”
He faces me and smiles softly. “I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because I have to show your position in this pack.” He walks over to me and gently tilts my head back with his finger under my chin.
“Establishing you as luna right now is very important. You are my mate, the love of my life.” My heart flutters at his matter-of-fact tone.
“They need to know that, so nobody can point a finger at you.”
I don’t know how to feel. A few days ago, maybe I would have been thrilled.
But a small part of me is struggling. It wants to hit him, to rage at him, to make him hurt for how he hurt me.
But another part of me blames myself. It knows none of this is his fault.
So, where does my anger go? Where do my feelings go?
An hour later, the wardrobe arrives.
Two trunks and a hanging rack. Staff members lay it all out across the chaise and the bed.
Silk. Cashmere. A dress in a deep green that I would have drooled over in the window of a boutique and walked past because of the price tag.
Three pairs of shoes whose soles I do not even need to flip over to know how exclusive the brands are.
A coat with a lining that costs more than any car I’ve ever bought.
There are also practical work clothes made of high-quality material, so soft to the touch that I want to sink into them.
The staff leave. My eyes move over all the clothes.
“Lucas, really? Is this really necessary?”
He is leaning against the closed door with his hands in his pockets. “Yes.”
“Lucas—”
“Less than a week ago, I was still engaged to Lydia.” His voice is quiet.
“Now, you are my mate. Your position in this pack at the moment is precarious. There will be people who think you trapped me. There will be people who think Lydia was wronged. There will be people who think you slept your way into the luna’s seat. ”
I flinch.
“Anyone with that thought, I will close their mouth before it opens.” He pushes off the door and crosses the room. “The first thing they think when they look at you should be exactly what you are to me. Precious.”
He stops in front of me. His hand lifts and takes my chin between thumb and forefinger.
“Sienna.” His thumb moves once. “Do you have any idea how much I held back, when all I wanted to do was bury you in luxuries? Drown you in jewelry? You wore a dress to that dinner with the Vasquez delegation two weeks ago, and I had to sit on my hands for the entire meal because the sapphire I would have picked out for that neckline was burning a hole in my desk drawer.”
My breath catches.
“Let me have this. Just this. The hell I put you through, I get to make up for. And the pack will learn to respect you the moment they see how important you are to me.”
His eyes are too close to mine.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Do what you want.”
The corners of his mouth lift, and his fingers release my chin. He turns around, and I think he is going to leave, but mid-stride, he picks up the green dress from the chaise and holds it up to my body. He nods, like he has confirmed something.
“Green,” he murmurs.
“Lucas.”
“Mm?”
“Stop.”
“If you insist.” The dress drops back to the chaise, and Lucas’s steps carry him out the door.
Once he is gone, my body sinks to the edge of the bed.
My hand drifts up to my collarbone. I know the black mark is still there, quiet under my fingertips.
A witch.
Somewhere in this territory, in a small human town none of us has ever heard of, behind some unremarkable door, there might be one woman who can pull this curse off my collarbone and out of my blood. She has to be found. In a region that runs hundreds of miles.
A needle. In a haystack. We cannot afford to waste any time.
My eyes close, and I take a deep breath.
I am not giving up.