Chapter Sixteen
Legend
I had more than enough time to reconsider before landing here, yet here I am.
Standing inside the doorway of what was my sister Temperance’s “fuck around” den when we were young.
She and my mother had way too much fun growing and smoking the devil’s lettuce, playing with all sorts of weird magic.
In order to scare us from coming in, Temperance used to joke that it was alive.
That didn’t stop us. This place grew the best herb on this side of Rathe.
I fucking hate it here. Yet something inside my chest dragged me across the grounds while my brothers argued about floods and my mate whispered words I couldn’t hear.
A soft chuckle sounds in the dark space, and my muscles coil.
Haide thrashes in the single bed, limbs tangling in the burgundy sheets. Her mouth opens on a silent scream that turns into a gasp.
I step closer before I know what I’m doing.
I’m barely a foot away when the glow of steel has my pulse fucking stop.
A dagger—what the fuck. I reach into my pocket, pressing my palm against the cold steel in my pocket. Still there.
But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s pressing a goddamn weapon to her throat in her sleep.
My knee hits the mattress as I lunge over to cover her with my weight and catch her wrists.
Bone against bone. Even unconscious, she fights me, muscles locking tight as she tries to break my hold.
A low vibration hums through my shoulder, spreading from her own.
Shadows crowd the edges of my vision until all I see is her.
Her eyes snap open.
“Holy fuck.” I blink. The color of her eyes is swallowed by crimson.
Slowly, it bleeds out and her natural green returns.
I feel every breath she takes like it’s my own.
She stops fighting the hold, instead focusing on weaponizing her glare.
Pure hatred, or at least that’s what I convince myself I see.
It lights her up better than any magic ever did. Except for that one time…
Neither of us move. The air thickens, weighed with something that has nothing to do with fear.
Her hips shift beneath me, maybe an inch. My cock hardens against my thigh, pressing against the fabric of my pants until the ache spreads. Fuck. A hunger I didn’t even know existed stirs inside me, yet satiated at the same time.
“Get off me,” she whispers, barely fucking convincing.
My mouth curves. “You’ll slit your own throat if I do.”
My mate is back in my room. My fucking mate is back in my room.
The thought should stop me cold. Instead, I’m fixated on shit I shouldn’t be.
Like how Haide’s body molds to mine in places I didn’t know I had.
How her tits feel against my chest and how they felt in my mouth.
Her thighs bracket my hips. Each ragged inhale shoves her tighter into me.
Fuck. I’m a thread away from snapping and grinding my shit against her until I fucking lose it. I remember us. Our sex. Our fucking obsession with each other. Your fucking mate is in your room.
I keep my weight on her wrists. One twitch and she bleeds out, and then what? Oops, I slipped and now the problem is dead, that’s what.
Except every muscle in my body tightens like someone is winding them up.
“Maybe I want to,” she challenges, the words drawing my attention to her mouth.
Is she fucking testing me? Like I wouldn’t let her?
“I think you’re overestimating how good of a lay you were, little pet.” My nose touches hers and I swear her breath catches. I unpeel my fingers from around her wrists. “Go on then.”
If I just inch a little—my lips skim hers and my chest fucking splits open.
“Do it. Show me how pretty you are when you bleed…”
“As if you could forget,” she whispers, then quickly nicks her skin. “Mate.”
My smirk falters the second the first bead of blood slides down her skin and kisses the edge of the blade. It moves slowly, stubborn, like it wants me to watch it happen. Like she wants me to.
The smell hits me hard. Silver, sweat, metal. There’s something underneath it that I can’t name, something familiar. But it’s not her.
It’s me.
My breath turns rough. I hold it anyway.
What the fuck?
I stay still, locked over her, weight planted where it pins her.
Her body is rigid beneath mine, every line tight, every muscle braced to either bite or break.
She’s warm. Too warm. It sinks into my palms when I press her down into the wood.
I feel her pulse banging against my thumbs like she’s trying to knock me off with nothing but blood and spite.
Her eyes don’t flinch. Her mouth doesn’t part. She gives me nothing. No fear. No plea. No shaky breath that I can use.
She’s making a point, trying to force me to cave and expecting that I will.
Why would she think I would?
She’s nothing.
It takes everything in me to keep my face blank. The want is there, thick and brutal, crawling under my skin. It fills my throat. It crowds my lungs. I want to tilt my head and drag my mouth over the cut. I want to taste the proof that she’s real and still mine enough to bleed under my hand.
I want to fucking give everything; and that’s exactly why I don’t.
Because the second I give her anything honest, she’ll take it. She’ll twist it. She’ll use it to hurt me the way she always has.
The blood keeps sliding. A thin line now, painting the blade’s edge, trembling with each breath she refuses to let turn into a sound. The room feels tighter. The air tastes like metal. My fingers flex against her wrists, and I feel the faint slickness where her skin sweats under my hold.
And then she does the one fucking thing she shouldn’t.
Her hand shifts. Quick. Controlled. Like she’s been waiting for the exact moment my attention narrows to the blood.
Her thumb finds my mouth.
It presses against my bottom lip, damp with her blood and her skin and – whatever the fuck she is hiding behind that stare. The contact jolts straight through me, and my eyes roll back.
My lips part on instinct. A breath catches in my chest like I just swallowed fire.
The taste hits, and my brain stutters.
My stomach drops and for a second the room tilts. Fury burns into excitement. Rage. A fucking drug.
My tongue twitches, wanting more. At this point, I’d fucking drink from her anywhere.
My gaze travels down her body and between her legs. Fuck…
My thoughts slam into each other about as hard as I’d fuck her.
Nah, not that hard.
Her blood. It doesn’t remind me of her exactly.
It’s something else, deeper – darker. It’s like I can feel its path: the slow slide down my throat.
It doesn’t pause; it multiplies and spreads, running through my organs until it’s pumping through the very veins threaded through my heart. It sings deep and dark in my damn soul.
Want.
Need.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
“What’s the matter?” she asks, voice low, calm enough to make me want to crush it out of her. “Little miss nothing got your tongue?”
Her thumb drags again, smearing blood across my lips. I feel the wetness there, feel the sting where my skin splits from how hard I’m holding my mouth shut.
“You know, as mad as I was that you forced me to go to school like some human, I did end up learning a thing or two.”
My nostrils flare. I breathe in her blood and feel my control strain, thin as wire.
I keep her pinned anyway. I keep my stare locked on hers, and I force my voice to stay buried while my body screams to do something that will ruin us both.
“Legend.” Her voice raises with confidence.
The sound of my name on her lips only winds me tighter.
I inch forward.
Haide’s eyes drop to my mouth. Then back to my eyes. “Ask me what I learned.”
Zevryn shifts on the floor and I stiffen. Is that why she’s prolonging the conversation? She thinks she can wake up her friend to help her?
“He,” I begin, voice low, “won’t save you.”
She swallows. “I’m not the one who needs saving.”
A scowl builds across my brows.
Lights stutter in the wall. One dies. Then another. Darkness pools deeper as shadows stretch from corners, bleeding outward.
Zev sits up.
“Luda?” He murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
She doesn’t answer. She keeps looking at me. Waiting.
I should leave. I should let her go. My hips shift, barely an inch, but enough that I know she feels how much I want her. Because I do. I fucking want her like I never threw her against that wall and exiled the exile.
A low, vibrating hum rolls down the length of my spine, settling deep in my gut. Like a current, it’s a feeling that you can hear. Or maybe it’s just me fucking growling because I’m about to fucking snap.
I grind my hips against hers. All the tension between us finally snaps when my hand finds her neck, fingers pressing into the damp skin at her hairline.
“Fuck,” I gasp, her pulse hammering against my thumb in a frantic rhythm that matches the one in my head.
Her legs widen and I drop my full weight against her. Just as she leans up into me, something crashes on the floor, startling us both. Every fucking light turns on, and I flinch at the sudden brightness.
“Can you not fuck with me in the room if I’m not invited to join?” Zevryn calls out from the floor.
I growl, ready to slit his fucking throat, but Haide’s legs lock tight around me, forcing me still.
“I should kill you right here, right now,” I force past clenched teeth.
“You could have killed me the second you stepped in here,” she points out. “You didn’t.”
My muscles tremble and I feel a little crack somewhere in my gut. “That doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“Maybe not, but you know what it means to me?”
Tell me. Please. Tell me why I can’t kill you. Explain to me why it’s all I can think about but the last fucking thing I want to do?
Tell me what’s wrong with me and why everything leads back to you.
A tenderness I didn’t think her capable of falls over her. She stares like she can see into my fucking soul. Like she heard my fucking fears and wants to answer them.
How can she be my biggest fear, worst regret, and most uncontrollable desire all at fucking once?
“Wait—” Haide shifts. “Who turned the light on?”
I blink.
Shit. I swing up, waiting for the guilt to swallow me whole and spit me out. Instead, every fucking step away from her only spreads the void in my chest.
Before either of them can say shit, I slam the door and jump from the platform, landing on the grass with a thud.
Right at the feet of Arabella.
Fuck.