Chapter 20
EIRA
I stare at him as if staring hard enough might rearrange reality into something that doesn’t involve the words ‘fated mate’ sitting between us like a verdict.
Because dear Gods, I’ve survived too much, learned too much, bled too much to be blindsided by a concept that sounds like it crawled out of an old superstition and decided to ruin my life personally.
Fated.
Mate.
No.
Fucking no, thank you.
My tongue rejects it on principle. My mind tries to dissect it into harmless syllables. But my body, treacherous little bitch that it is, goes utterly still, recognising something before my brain can catch up.
Valentin watches the war on my face with savage calm.
I swallow, because I need to anchor myself to something physical, something real, and because I can’t afford to stand here looking like a woman who has just been told her life belongs to a vampire.
‘You can’t really expect me to just… accept that though.’
‘And why not? You’re merely a hunter, contracted to do a job. Do you wish me to believe you treat every hunt as a personal crusade?’
Heat crawls up my face and I have to bite back my temper at his derision.
At every heightened emotion – and Gods, there are way too many – this vampire drags out of me.
‘No. But… seriously…’ My voice wobbles, and I want to punch my own throat for it.
I clear it. ‘That fated mate thing isn’t really a thing. ’
I’m desperate for him to deny it. Sure, he can’t lie, but maybe someone fed him a load of bullshit. Maybe I can help him reason it out.
Wow. We’ve arrived at bargaining-with-vampire-delusion faster than expected.
‘It is,’ he replies, as if we’re discussing weather.
‘It’s not,’ I insist, because denial is my first line of defence and it’s either that or scream. ‘Vampires don’t get fated mates. That’s shifter nonsense. Wolf-pack romance novel nonsense. That’s—’
‘Mortals assign names to things they do not understand. The mechanism exists whether you approve of its terminology or not.’
My eyes narrow so hard it hurts. ‘Did you just call my species a terminology problem?’
‘You are not a problem,’ he says, with a slight pause before he adds, colder, ‘unless you choose to become one.’
Of course.
I should be furious.
I am furious.
The problem is fury keeps tangling with shock, and shock keeps tangling with something else I refuse to name, because naming it would mean admitting that term fated from this powerful being has made some buried part of me go eerily quiet.
I can’t reveal myself.
Not the name or the past or the fact that Lyra Hannigan is standing right in front of him, wearing armour and a borrowed life. Because I’ve lived my life like a locked vault and now this vampire is standing in front of me holding the key like it grew out of his blood.
Valentin’s gaze moves over my face with unsettling precision… as if he can see the places I’m barricading. My skin prickles with the urge to move, to create distance, to remind myself my body still belongs to me.
‘You wish for more information.’
My head snaps up. ‘I do not.’
‘If you are that desperate for more,’ he continues, voice unhurried, ‘you may propose a new arrangement.’
A new deal.
Of course.
He treats knowledge like currency and consent like a ledger, and the horrifying part is that he’s not wrong.
I’m desperate. I just hate that he can see it. ‘I’m not desperate,’ I insist.
‘Mm.’
I glare. ‘Don’t “mm” me.’
His gaze flicks to my mouth.
I feel it everywhere. Bones. Belly. Pussy. The memory of his tongue against mine turns my anger dangerously combustible.
‘Admit it, little hunter. You’re beyond curious.’
‘I’m not—’
‘You are,’ he corrects smoothly. ‘And you’re attempting to pretend otherwise.’
‘I’m tired, and I would very much like to go to bed.’
Fucking fuck it.
His gaze stays on me because he doesn’t even need to look at the bed to know we’re both thinking about it. Both imagining too much. Hands. Sheets. Sweat. Hard cock pounding dripping pussy until sense and sanity burn down together and we leap from climax to climax.
The silence stretches, heavy enough to press on my ribs.
‘If you want answers,’ Valentin says at last, ‘you will return to the Tower with me.’
The words are a cold slap, made stranger by the way he seems almost surprised by them himself.
My stomach drops.
The Tower. Onyx and obedience. Elevators that swallow you whole. Malachi’s eyes tracking me like I’m a problem waiting to happen.
I can’t go back with him now. Not with my head spinning and those two words lodged under my skin.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I say, bracing fear into backbone. ‘Not tonight.’
His gaze narrows. The room changes with it, predatory pressure gathering at the edges. ‘You will.’
‘I won’t.’
We lock there, and I feel the weight of his will against the room. Not the immobilising freeze from earlier, but a reminder.
He could. He doesn’t. And that restraint feels like a test.
‘Very well, little hunter,’ he says finally, which is not a concession. It’s recalculation. ‘If not tonight, then by morning. You will present yourself to me at breakfast.’
My heart skips, then punches hard. ‘That wasn’t the agreement. You said I had twenty-four hours.’
His mouth tightens as his gaze sweeps the room, lingering a fraction too long on the neatly laid bed. ‘The original agreement did not include you spending a mere hour in Louisiana and frittering away the remaining time on… me time. Be thankful I’m allowing you to remain here.’
‘You’re not allowing me shit. And if the me time sticks in your craw so much, take this as me needing to digest this.’ My voice sharpens because if I don’t say it, I might fracture. ‘You can’t just drop fated mate on someone like it’s a weather report and expect them to, what? Curtsy?’
His eyes cool, the silver from before all but gone now. ‘Your dramatics are noted.’
‘My dramatics,’ I echo. ‘You’re the one spouting fated mates and blood bonds and essential timelines you refuse to explain, and I’m the dramatic one?’
He doesn’t blink. ‘Yes.’
I exhale through my teeth. I swallow the screaming questions.
How? Why? Since when? What does it mean? And the one clawing hardest at the back of my throat.
How can I be a vampire’s fated mate when I am standing right here and he is talking about someone else?
I swallow the questions down like broken glass.
‘I’ll return to the Tower,’ I say, the words tasting like poison. ‘Tomorrow.’
His gaze sharpens, as if he smells the calculation. The way I’m buying myself a night. A few hours. A sliver of breathing room to think and plan and not fall apart in front of him.
‘Tomorrow,’ he repeats, threat wrapped in softness.
‘Sure. Fine.’
He takes one slow step closer, just enough for me to feel the heat and danger of him.
‘You will be there by morning,’ he says. ‘Or else.’
My pulse stutters. ‘Or else what?’
Silver expands in his eyes, a private satisfaction blooming there. ‘Do not ask questions you do not want answered.’
For a moment, I’m painfully aware of the broken glass scattered on the floor, shards catching low light. If I step wrong, I’ll bleed.
Maybe that’s the point.
He follows my gaze, then he blurs around the room.
By the time I complete my next breath, the shards are gone.
The sight is so strange, so domestic and wrong after everything else, that it punches disorientation through me. He holds the broken pieces in his palm as if glass can’t cut him.
As if nothing can.
Another blink and he’s back, having disposed of it.
His gaze flicks to my mouth and I feel the pull like a hook beneath my ribs, that awful magnetic awareness of him. I hate that my body still answers. Hate that I’m standing here thinking about his taste when I should be thinking about survival.
‘You’ve greatly exceeded your welcome, Don Moretti,’ I say suddenly, because words are the only thing I can throw. ‘Please leave now.’
A flicker passes through his eyes. Almost amusement. ‘As you command, little hunter.’ Mockery wrapped in elegance.
Then he’s gone.
A blur of impossible, predatory movement, stealing the air with him. The room is suddenly too quiet. Too empty. Too normal.
As if I didn’t just bargain a kiss with a vampire and hear the words ‘fated’ and ‘blood’ spoken in a sentence.
I stand there for several seconds, frozen by my own thoughts, listening to the absence, to my pulse roaring in my ears, to the lingering imprint of his scent.
I should call Selphine.
That’s the logical next step.
Selphine knows things. Selphine’s shop is a nest of secrets and potions and half-truths wrapped in musty velvet. If anyone can verify whether vampires truly have mates, it’s her.
I reach for my phone. Then stop.
Because Selphine also withholds things. And calling the witch means saying it aloud. Means admitting I kissed the most powerful vampire in the world on a wing, a prayer, and a boatload of insane lust. Means hearing myself say fated mate and waiting through Selphine’s savage, knowing silence.
I can’t handle that right now.
My sanctuary feels too small. He has invaded my space, and now the walls feel closer, the air watchful.
I pace, short restless steps, trying to burn off the panic.
Valentin believes Lyra Hannigan is his fated mate.
And I’m standing here wearing Lyra Hannigan’s skin beneath armour I built to survive.
My breath turns uneven. I press my fingers to my mouth, anchoring myself to the one sensation that doesn’t feel like it’s spinning.
His taste.
Proof that this happened. That I didn’t hallucinate a kiss, a confession and a threat.
Tomorrow. By morning. Or else.
I stop pacing and stare into the dim reflection in the window. The face I chose. The eyes that have seen too much.
Something cold crawls through my chest, heavier than fear.
If fate exists, if blood can reach across years and lock on to a woman like a claim, then I’m not being hunted by strategy any more.
I’m being hunted by inevitability. And inevitability in the hands of a vampire is not romance.
It’s captivity with a pulse.
I lower my hand from my mouth and force air back into my lungs, because collapsing is a luxury I don’t have.
Still, the thought returns, relentless and final.
I’m a vampire’s fated mate. A fate I know in my bones is worse than death.