I stand up, pulling the sheet off the bed with me. My legs are unsteady for a completely different reason than they were last night. I take one step, and the room pitches. Lucas is on his feet at once, his hand reaching for my elbow, but I jerk away from him.
“No. Stay away from me. Please.”
His face goes hollow, and I feel it through the bond before I see it. His pain. His guilt. And underneath both, worst of all, his love for me. It is killing me to walk away from him.
I go into the bathroom and close the door. I drop the sheet and stumble into the shower. I turn it on and step under the spray before the water has warmed up. I sink down to the cold tile until my knees are pulled up to my chest. The water beats on the back of my neck, and I don’t move.
I don’t know how to feel.
The anger is still in me. It has not gone anywhere. But it is muffled now, drowning under the shock of what he just told me. Lucas didn’t reject me. He never rejected me. Every cruel thing he has done since the day I walked into him in Darius and Violet’s hallway was him trying to keep me alive. He let me hate him because the alternative was to watch me die because of him.
I want to be angry with him. I want to keep being angry with him. But underneath the anger is the awful logic of it. He tried. He tried with everything he had. It was my own stubbornness, my own pride, my own refusal to let him go that pushed us both into his bed last night.
I don’t know how long I stay on the floor of the shower, but my skin is pruning when I get to my feet. The water has gone from cold to hot to tepid. I shut it off and step out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The mating mark is on the right side of my throat. Dark. Already healed at the edges. A perfect crescent. I touch it with two fingers, and the bond hums brighter. I swallow hard.
This is not how I wanted his mark. Not feeling so confused and conflicted. Not with my eyes red and my body sore.
I drop my hand.
I turn to face the mirror straight on, and that’s when I see it: a small, black mark on my collarbone. Faint. Like ink someone tried to wipe off my skin, but from underneath. My heart drops.
Is this it? Is this the curse? My body starts to tremble, whether from the cold or the curse or the fear of it, I do not know.
One of Lucas’s shirts is hanging on the back of the door. I pull it on because I cannot bear the thought of yesterday’s clothes. The cotton smells of him.
I’m still shaking when I exit the bathroom. Lucas is leaning forward with his hands on the windowsill. He turns when the door opens, and his eyes find me. The shirt. My wet hair. The way I am holding myself.
I sit on the edge of the bed again, my voice small again. “I’m ready to talk.”
He picks up a towel from the chair and brings it to me. He doesn’t ask; he just stands in front of me and starts drying my hair, slowly and carefully.
“I want to talk,” I repeat.
“I know,” he says quietly. “Give me a minute. This isn’t easy for me, either.”
So, we stay like that. Me sitting on the bed in his shirt. Him standing in front of me with the towel in his hands. The morning light is climbing the wall. His fingers work through the ends of my hair, then the nape of my neck, then the tangled crown. I do not pull away from him. I should, but I sit there and let him. The bond is humming between us. My wolf is settled and silent.
Finally, he sets the towel down and returns to the armchair. He lowers himself into it and braces his elbows on his knees.
“I don’t know much,” he says. “What I do know, my father told me in pieces.”
I wait.
“My great-great-grandfather was in love with a witch. She was expecting a child with him.”
I watch him as he talks.
“He found his fated mate and left the witch for her. And then, to protect his secret from leaking out, he killed the witch.”
I press one hand over my mouth. Lucas doesn’t meet my gaze.
“According to what I was told, as she was dying, she cursed him. And every firstborn son of his line. The fated mates we are given. The marks we put on them.”
He stops. He looks down at his hands.
“My father lost his fated mate to the curse. He told me it took a year. The death was slow. Agonizing.”
