Lucas’s office is suddenly very quiet. Outside, the sun has climbed higher while we were talking. The estate is bustling—footsteps in the hall, a door closing somewhere downstairs.
A witch.
The word turns over in my head. A witch in Silvercrest territory. One powerful enough to unbind a curse built over a hundred years ago. The odds are bad. They are bad in the way of long-shot sales, the kind I have learned to detect on my first read of a pitch deck.
The odds are bad, but they’re not zero.
My feet find the floor. I stand and turn to face Lucas. “I’m not giving up.”
He tilts his head at me.
“I have no plans of dying because your ancestor was a raging, murdering asshole.”
He blinks, and the corner of his mouth moves. “You don’t swear very often.”
“I don’t have a generational curse on me very often,” I snap.
My steps carry me toward the door, and he asks carefully, “Where are you going?”
“To my room.”
He hesitates. My hand is already on the knob when he speaks again. “Sienna. We are bonded mates.”
I freeze. “And?”
“Everyone in this house is going to know it by lunchtime,” he goes on. “The mark is visible. Anyone within twenty feet will feel our bond.”
My hand drops as I spin around. “So?” The word comes out sounding defensive.
He lifts a brow. “So”—his tone is patient—“you shouldn’t go back to the guest wing. You should stay in my suite.”
My stomach does an uncomfortable flip. The word “stay” lands there with too much weight.
His expression falls. Whatever just moved across my face, his own is bracing for a hit.
“Things have changed between us,” he says quietly. “Haven’t they?”
I rub my arm, which is something I do when I don’t know what to do with my hands. “I don’t know how to feel right now, Lucas.”
He doesn’t move.
“I’m not happy. With any of it. With the curse. With the mark. With the way it happened. With…this.” The gesture my hand makes between us is limp. “I can’t simply pretend that I am.”
The bond carries his hurt across the room to me before his face shows it. A sharp, cold pulse of pain hits me low in the chest and almost makes me reach for him instinctively.
“That’s alright.” His face stays smooth, and his voice is even. “I won’t push you. But you will have to move into my rooms, Sienna. Sleeping in the guest wing with my mark on you would have the household gossiping, and I am not going to have anyone look at you sideways. Not ever.”
There is an argument in my mouth, but I cannot find it. He is right.
“I won’t cross a line.” The promise comes without him looking away from me.
I sigh. “Fine.”
He pushes back from the desk and crosses the room to me. There is no touch. He opens the door and lets me through it first. We walk back to his suite, where the bed is still unmade and the air still smells like both of us. Lucas presses a button on the intercom panel by the door, and a young woman’s voice answers a second later, bright with energy.
“Yes, Alpha?”
“Have a wardrobe brought up for Miss Carter. Full set. Top tier. I want it within the hour.”
