He blinks. I fight to urge to giggle. Have I short-circuited him?
But then he says, very quietly, “I don’t.”
Liar.
I know what jealousy smells like. It’s bitter and metallic, a spike of something primitive and hungry. And Zane’s scent—usually cool, smooth flint—has gone sharp at the edges.
I lean in, narrowing the gap between us. “Do you think I don’t notice when you go all ‘alpha’ every time you’re around them?”
He shakes his head in a fast, frustrated movement. “They’re not the problem.”
“Then what is?” I don’t mean to raise my voice, but the storm outside makes it necessary. “Zane, what the hell is the problem with just talking to me? We’re in this weird situation together.We’ve always been together. And we’ve been scent-matched from day one.”
He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands. For the first time since I’ve known him, Zane looks tired, like the armor is slipping. “You’re not mine to talk about. Hell, you’re not mine, period.”
My laugh is bitter. “That’s untrue.”
“I’m your bodyguard, Helena,” he grits out. “That’s all that can ever be.”
I gesture toward one wall of the rental but intend far farther than that. “Prince Kellen just tooktwobodyguards into his pack. If theprincecan do that, surely, I can, too.”
He doesn’t answer. The lights die in a single, anticlimactic sigh, leaving us in darkness, as if Zane had summoned a power outage to hide his true feelings. The wind shakes the flat. Rain pounds the roof so hard, I think it might cave in. The only light is the blue flicker of the TV screen before it gives out too.
Zane’s footfalls echo. He’s moving by instinct, not sight, probably to his go-bag by the door, always ready for an emergency. I wait for the telltale snap of a lighter and soon there’s a stubby candle burning on the coffee table. Zane sets it down and comes back to sit, closer this time, the heat of him folding into the air.
I like the way the candlelight makes his face look: softer, a little more haunted. His eyes reflect the flame. I can’t tell if he knows he’s beautiful, or if he’s just never cared. Zane is the opposite of vain. He’s more likely to apologize for the space he takes up than to try to fill it.
I wait. The silence is deeper now, storm and all. The darkness in the flat has made it safer to say the things we shouldn’t.
“Did you know,” I say, “that when you first got assigned to me, my mother called it a blessing and a tragedy at the same time?” The words escape before I can lock them down.
He stares at the candle. “Your mother never liked me.”
“She thought you’d make me soft,” I say, which is hilarious in hindsight, since Zane’s entire approach to bodyguarding is treating me like a soldier, not a porcelain doll. “She thought you’d get attached.”
Zane’s mouth quirks. “She wasn’t wrong.”
That surprises me enough that I forget to breathe. “You got attached?”
He shrugs. “I’m not good at—” He gestures vaguely, as if to include all of human emotion in that sweep. “Talking about things.”
“That’s a lie,” I say, softer. “You’re great at it. Just not when it comes to yourself.”
He’s silent, letting the wind fill the gap. “I don’t want you to choose something you’ll regret because you think you have to.”
“You mean Cole and Lucas.”
He nods, the candlelight catching on the furrow of his brow.
I inch closer so our knees are almost touching. “I’m not going to imprint on someone just because it’s what’s expected of me. You should know that by now.”
Zane studies me, a storm in his eyes to match the one outside. “I know.”
“Then why are you acting like you’ve lost something?”
He closes his eyes, long and slow. When he opens them again, it’s like the walls have finally cracked, and I can see through to something raw and real. “Because I scented you first. Before you ever went to finishing school. Before anyone knew what you’d be.”
The world goes quiet except for the rain.
