My heart stopped.
“It is a connection beyond friend, lovers, family, or mates,” he said, voice lowering to a whisper. “It is an eternal tie between an Otherborne and a human that transcends time and space.”
My breath caught as a sudden, shocking thrill made my gut clench in anticipation. It was as though he was explaining what Willow had once mooned over all those years ago. As if the concept of mates from her books was actuallyreal.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He clamped it shut, scowling, and looked away. At that moment, as if by perfect timing, the dusk sunlight speared through the window, covering him, making it seem as if he was glowing gold. He seemed so otherworldly just then, it made my breath catch again.
The sight made my heart stutter, and that stutter turned into a full-blown cardiac arrest when he finally spoke again. “Back in that alley behind your building, the moment I opened my eyes and saw you, a deep, unavoidable knowing settled inside me, and I knew. I justknewyou were that for me. An Eteria—a human mate whose soul is bound to the Otherborne for eternity.”
My heart was so loud, I swore he could hear it. And the tightening in my gut, caused by a sudden sense of excitement, made me search for his arctic-blue gaze.
But it almost seemed like he refused to look at me. As if he wereashamed.
Why?
“It may sound like a blessing,” he said hoarsely, “but it’s a fucking curse.”
That caused me to stiffen further, and I blurted in a barely audible whisper, “I don’t understand.”
I understood that being his Eteria had put me in danger. But it didn’t seem like a curse to me. To him, though, perhaps it was. He didn’t really want me to be his Eteria, after all. Maybe he hated that we were tied on such a deep level like that.
And yet, I knew there was something more to this than just that. The thing he was avoiding telling me every time I asked him about my being his Eteria.
His shoulders slumped and he dropped his head, the auburn curls casting a shadow over his face as the sun set behind him. “One of the main reasons why Otherborne are not allowed to associate with humans beyond what’s necessary is the possibility of finding their Eteria,” he said in a somewhat emotionless voice. “I always thought that this reason made no sense, since you have the same odds of finding an Eteria as winning the lottery. But the law was still put in place under the pretense that it’s to protect us Otherborne from having an unnecessary weakness that the humans could use against us.”
He turned to look at the window, showing me the back of his head and his hard shoulder blades, his gleaming golden skin pale around the raw wound.
“The reality is, however,” he murmured, “that it protects humans from us. And for a good fucking reason.”
Still not looking at me, he said, “Because once a human manifests as an Otherborne’s Eteria, they can never love another.”
His words felt like a punch. Him dropping the l-word was even more gut wrenching. I had always thought Lucien was drop-dead gorgeous, but I viewed him like an unblemished Greek statue in a museum. I hadn’t allowed myself to think anything else about him, if only because I still believed he was way out of my league.
But now, what he was saying ...
“The Otherborne, however, can make a choice, unlike the Eteria,” he said, and suddenly he turned to face me, catching my gaze with his own grave one. “They can decide whether to consummate their bond, thus tying their Eteria to them until the end of days and even beyond,or let the Eteria go, never knowing about that bond, and have them recoil from anyone else, being unable to love or have sex with another person, until they die.”
My head bobbed back and forth, nodding automatically as if I understood what he was saying. But I didn’t.
I didn’t love Lucien. Hopelessly attracted to him, sure, but not in love with him whatsoever.
Did I feel some sort of instant connection to him from the moment I saved his life? Yes, I did. But I would’ve felt it with any other injured animal for sure.
And yet it was one thing to find a dying wolf, think he was a dog, and try to save him.
It was quite another to insist on having the dog, now wolf, stay with you instead of calling animal control.
“But that’s not even the worst of it all,” he said now, his eyes seeming almost dead now, as if he was done with everything. “The same cosmic magic that turns the human into an Otherborne’s Eteria would also force them to love the Otherborne unconditionally.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe that.
He gave me a smile so humorless, it sent a chill down my back. “Basically, you are magically wired to not just lust after me, and only me, but to love only me too.”
Chapter 19
Who’s Whose?
I studied Lucien now as he silently watched me. From the moment I first saw his human form, I was a goner for his looks. No one could be this good looking, after all. And yet to be able to want only him for the rest of my life? Knowing that the chances of him returning these feelings were zero?
