Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
EDIE
I’ve loosened one of the bars that the handcuffs are attached to. How did Luka even get free?
And he did it without my noticing. I’ve been wailing away on the cuffs, fueled by angst and worry and terror and rage, and it makes a lot of noise.
I’m ragey that he chained me here.
Ragey that he said he loved me and then left to go be all alpha and honorable and shit, marching to his death. I hate him for it—I really do. I love him and hate him.
And he loves me.
And I could lose him just when we found each other. He could be dead right now, but I’m trying not to think of it. I’m channeling my anger into getting free.
I’ll figure out where he’s meeting Orton. I’ll somehow get in there and then... I don’t know what.
I feel like I might be loosening one of the bars when I hear the main door open.
I go still. It could be anybody coming in here. Is it my sister? If she frees me, maybe there’s still time to go after him...
“Princess. ”
I gasp. “Luka?”
He strolls in looking sexy and relaxed, pocket square gleaming, hair roguishly mussed. Face still faintly bruised.
“Ohmigod, what happened? Did you change your mind?”
“Not exactly.” He climbs onto the bed next to me and unlocks the handcuffs.
“What happened?”
“Remind me to teach you how to get out of these one of these days.”
He’s talking about the future— us in the future.
“Luka!” I get up on my knees and grab his shoulders. “You changed your mind! You decided to blow off the whole he-man-stroll-into-a-hail-of-bullets thing!”
“No, I went.”
“What?”
“You know I had to go.” He checks the bandage on my wrist. “This okay?”
“You went?”
“Your hand?—”
“It’s fine.” I yank it from him. “Tell me what happened.”
“The DNA test worked out in my favor.”
“Wait, what? So that means you’re your father’s son, after all? You seemed sure you weren’t.”
He hauls me into his lap. “The DNA test suggests that I’m descended from The First—a purebred kyre, I suppose you could say.”
“So you’re not... related to your father?”
“I’m related to my father in that my father is descended from The First, but my blood is purer. I’m more closely related to The First. At least that’s what the test said.”
I blink. “So... your mom had an affair with some super purebred guy or something?”
“Well, no.” He gazes out the window, thinking. Processing. “It’s actually bullshit. You know that ring Orton wears? ”
“The one with the big red stone?”
I explain to her about the relic ring. How our people took relics from The First’s body—usually hair or bits of his burial shroud—and shut them up into those rings. And now Orton wore a fake ring.
“The hair is old, probably degraded, but there was enough DNA in it to make me look like the second coming of the original kyre.”
I look at him in disbelief. “The man who one hundred percent would want to kill you if you turned out to be a regular guy posing as a true blood? That’s the guy who fixed the test.”
“It’s... a lot to process.”
“Is it, though? It’s called loyalty, Luka. You earned his loyalty.”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose?!”
“It’s a lot to get used to.”
I trace his cheekbone. He’s so beautiful and damaged, and he can work out complex operations in his head and do ultra-dangerous things that would put the fear of God in any normal mortal, but somebody doing something for him because they give a shit about him personally is beyond his comprehension. “He would do anything for you.”
“Maybe.”
I poke him in the chest. “No maybe about it.”
He clasps my hands in his. “I would do anything for you . Because I love you.”
This bloom of happiness fills my heart. “I would do anything for you, too.” I kiss him, then I pull away. “After you apologize for handcuffing me to the bed.”
“What?”
I wrestle him to his back—or, more like, he lets me do it—and climb on top of him, looming over him. “You heard me.”
“Excuse me? I should apologize for cuffing you to the bed after you cuffed me to the bed? Trying to make me miss my meeting?” He flips me over. “Not thankable.”
“Oh, it was thankable,” I say, looking up into his deep chocolatey eyes.
His mouth is all frowny and serious, but his eyes are smiling. “Everything with us is thankable, even the unthankable stuff.”
“Mind blown,” I whisper.
He kisses me. I lose myself deliciously in the kiss, deliciously in him, so growly and feral and full of life, and my last thought before my mind pretty much explodes with pleasure is that I’ll never get enough of him and his brutish, uncivilized ways.