Chapter 2 #2
With the horn still in my hand, I shoved Bastien’s shoulder against the mattress, pinning him there, and rolled on top of him.
One spark, and I was ablaze with power. He stared up at me as if he was seeing me for the first time.
As if the fire raging inside me had burned away all traces of the old Claire and replaced her with this new version.
“I want you. All of you. Just as you pledged. And no bruise or scratch or moment of guilt is going to stand between us.”
“That cut on your head is not a scratch. It’s barely stopped bleeding.”
A flash of anger tore through me. I was fine. I’d show him. With my free hand, I reached between us and undid the laces on his trousers and pulled him free. The thick, hard piece of him that I wanted.
“Claire,” he groaned.
“You said you were at my mercy. You said I could choose your penance.” I paused, my emotions finally catching up with my want.
“Bastien,” I said, a heavy knot forming in my throat, “don’t you desire me?
” The question sliced against my insecurities, and I knew he could feel the intensity of it.
My need for him and my need to be wanted mixing together.
With the speed and strength of a vampire prince, he grabbed my wrist and held me still. Then slowly, he rose into a seated position with me on his lap, putting us face-to-face, breath-to-breath. “Did my wife, my mate, just ask if I desire her?”
The anger burning inside me made me want to fight back.
Wanted to throw a barb at him. Before he’d claimed me as his wife, he had spent many nights avoiding me.
Even now, after he’d announced to his small council that I was the new Duchess of Roselyn, he’d sent me back to our room while he had private words with Tyson.
Words he had not shared with me. But those angry sentiments fled like a terrified enemy in the face of his look.
His darkened eyes. His clenched jaw. His uneven breath.
He wrapped my hand around his hard length, then covered it with his, holding me tight around him.
Almost painfully tight. “This is what you do to me,” he choked out as he began working our hands up and down.
Up and down. Using the same rhythm he used the night I found him alone in that feeding tent.
When he’d called out to me through our bond without meaning to.
“I do not just desire you, Claire. You are an ache that never dulls.”
I sucked in a breath that drew us closer, and wrapped my arm around his neck to hold myself upright, pressing our cheeks together.
He continued. Lips pressed against my ear.
“One glance, one word, one breath of your delicious scent, and I’m ready to give you everything.
To do anything.” Up, down. Up, down. A bead of warmth dripped between my fingers, making them slick.
“And that’s how it will be until I draw my last breath. Do you understand?”
I tipped my head back, drawing in power from the horn. Sweat rolled between my breasts and down the sides of my face. And yet, it wasn’t enough. Not hardly enough.
He let go of my hand and pressed a punishing kiss to my lips. One that did not leave me questioning how he felt. I scooted closer, closing the distance between us, wanting more.
“But you need rest,” he said against my mouth.
“I wasn’t gentle when I claimed you. I didn’t treat you like I should have.
And neither did those witches.” He pressed a kiss to the cut across my brow.
When he pulled back, he licked dark red blood from his lips as if to prove a point.
With a tiny, irritating smile, he added, “There is no rush. We can wait.”
The power and heat that had been streaming from the horn dulled, and the absence of magick left me shivering. Panic tore through me while anxiety clawed at my throat, almost as tightly as the barbs of Mama’s choker. The magick—I needed it back.
“You don’t get to decide when I’ve had enough.”
“That’s true,” he replied. “But I get to decide when I’ve had enough.”
I let out a scoff. “I thought you said your want for me was endless.”
“It is. Which is why I have to be the one to draw a line. Otherwise, the only thing we’d ever do is fuck and feed. Fuck and feed. You’d never sleep. You’d never eat. You’d only be mine. Over and over and over.”
My lip quivered. I reached out through our connection to try to convince him another way, to let him see that I was fine, but I ran into a wall of stubbornness.
He was afraid he would break me. That he’d gone too far, too fast. But I didn’t want to be treated like glass.
Not when power was collecting in my body.
Not when I felt like this was the answer to my unstable magick.
I needed him and the demonic relic. Together, they would remake me. The two felt tangled, impossible to separate. I needed to become strong. For Sera. Always for Sera. And for him. And… for the thing we weren’t saying out loud.
My throat tightened as I lifted my gaze back to my mate. Bastien had shown me a vision inside his council room. Of a baby. Our baby. The one he feared might kill me. The one I feared, he promised, Tyson would never be born.
When I closed my eyes, I saw his little face staring adoringly up at me.
His cold fingers tangling in my hair. It was a vision so vivid I could feel my heart reshaping around it.
It was the one image, the one thought, that felt like destiny.
Opening my eyes, I saw Bastien’s, which were the same shade of winter frost as our child’s.
I pledged to master my dark magick for them.
To free myself from Mama’s curse and be the woman strong enough to keep them safe.
I knew Bastien was absorbing the storm of my emotions through our shared connection. His jaw clenched and unclenched, as if he were waging a war between his desire for our family and his resistance to it. “I almost lost you twice. I will not risk your life again. No matter what.”
“This has nothing to do with me needing rest. You’re afraid of him. Our child.”
He swallowed hard. “Of course I am.”
For a moment, I had no words. I could only glare at him. “Since when has a baby scared the Duke of Roselyn?”
“Since I saw him killing you.”
If I closed my eyes, I could see it too. The bites on my neck. The sickly pallor of my skin. The way my body failed while he thrived. I glanced at the horn, and something pushed back against that image. That wasn’t how my story ended.
“You saw the girl I was,” I told him. “Not the woman I am. Not the witch I will become.”
“Claire…”
His pity stoked a flare of shame in my belly, burning hot up my throat. But I refused to buckle. Jaw high, shoulders squared, I gestured to the two wolves bonded to me. “Hera underestimated me. I’ll ask you not to do the same.”
He tried to reach for me, but I jerked away.
He grimaced. “This has nothing to do with underestimating you. I’ve always seen the fire.
I’ve always known you were made to burn as bright as the stars.
But… there is much we don’t understand about why you received this power and why it doesn’t work properly. ”
“The answer is here! Between you and me. And in this horn,” I insisted, holding it up for him.
“I can feel my power charging when you touch me. If you would only try.” He ran a hand over his face and gave the barest shake of his head, and with that one dismissive gesture, my temper came exploding out.
“You and your stubbornness are what’s keeping me from my magick! ”
“My stubbornness is the only thing keeping you alive!”
And there it was. The truth he was clinging to.
I pushed away from him, not wanting to hear the rest, but Bastien didn’t relent.
“You can’t feed me and a baby, Claire,” he continued as tears pricked in my eyes.
“We would kill you. And the worst part is”—his voice broke—“you’d let yourself die trying to prove me wrong. ”
I crossed my arms and turned away from him. I had nothing more to say. Nothing at all. If he thought so little of me, if he put so much trust in some half-formed vision, then this conversation was over.
“Once we arrive at Chastity’s Stronghold, she will know how to remove that necklace. I believe it’s interfering with your magick. Once that’s taken care of, we can discuss everything else.”
I let out a disgusted huff. I didn’t need the help of some witch I didn’t know. I was ready to walk into the darkness, to embrace this power I grew up fearing, to become the woman no one needed to protect. And… to hold the baby I never thought I’d have.
“I want to charge my magick,” I demanded in a voice that didn’t altogether sound like mine.
It was stronger. Fiercer. The voice of a woman who didn’t quake.
I lifted the curved sheep’s horn Cora had gifted me.
The one she’d claimed was her Gran’s favorite relic.
I was the new owner of her grandmother’s magick, so it seemed fitting that I follow this instinct.
“And when I do, I will take care of the necklace myself. Then I’ll prove that I’m strong enough to bear our child. ”
The pressure of phantom barbs squeezed around my throat, a warning to bite my tongue about the necklace.
I tried not to let the pain or the panic show on my face, but Bastien’s attention was on the relic.
He was looking at it with the coiled focus of someone spotting a shadow where there shouldn’t be one.
Something ancient passed across his expression, so faint most people would miss it. But our bond wouldn’t allow it.
“What is it now?” I asked.
He slowly reached for the horn. I jerked my hand away, not wanting him to take it, but he grabbed my wrist and held me still.
As soon as he touched me, the world inside him detonated.
Our bond surged so violently that I gasped.
Shockwaves of emotion slammed into me before he could shut it down.
A dark, violent flash of knowing so old it tasted like iron.
He let go of my wrist, and the connection between us slammed shut like an armored gate. Breathless, he said, “I need to speak with Sir Gavin about the plans for Roselyn’s security while we’re away.”
He was hiding something from me. I could sense it. But I didn’t want to know what it was. Not if it was another half-formed vision. The anger that had been simmering under my skin boiled over. “Yes, by all means, go speak with Sir Gavin!”
“Do not do anything reckless while I’m gone.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Grace.”
I tried to spin around, but he caught me by the wrist again. Holding my gaze with fire in his blue eyes. “You are my everything. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”
He wanted to keep me safe. But safety wouldn’t break the curse on my necklace.
And neither could the Dark Witch he wanted me to see.
Only a true-born Prideaux could. A fact he didn’t know and couldn’t so long as I was beholden to Mama’s necklace.
I needed to solve this problem myself. I had to harness my powers to break the curse.
Before something in me broke us.