Page 104 of Mate of a Monster

“By sitting on her floor in the dark?” Legend’s mouth twists. “How noble.”

Something dangerous flickers in Creed’s expression. “Brother.”

“Don’t.” The word lands heavy. “Don’t call me that right now.”

Smoke slides across the floor and finds my feet. It coils around my ankles and climbs my calves, warm as skin even while it looks dead, and every place it touches the bond sings. I clamp my jaw and crush my hands into fists behind my back to keep from reaching for him like an idiot.

Legend catches it. His stare tracks the smoke then snaps to my face when my body gives me away. For a moment, his fury fractures.

Rage slams back in and lights his eyes white-hot.

He lunges for Creed.

Instinct yanks me forward before thought can catch up, my boots planting between the brothers.

Heat climbs my throat when I realize how close I’ve stepped. My chest nearly brushes his, and I’m about two seconds away from throwing restraint out.

Legend scrutinizes me, and in all my fucking life I’ve never wanted a single thing more than I do him.

“Move,” he demands.

“No.”

“Haide.” He bares his teeth. “Move. Now.”

“He was apologizing to me.” Being this close is not helping. Fuck. “Not fucking me.”

His pupils blow wide, his chest hitching on an inhale that doesn’t fully land.

Creed rears back. “What the fuck?”

Legend knows this, of course. But I wanted to see this right here. This unrestrained animal standing in front of me who has spent the better half of our time together making my life fucking torture. And I know torture. I’m a fucking artist at it.

“Go,” I tell Creed without breaking Legend’s stare.

Legend doesn’t shift, either, and Creed’s footsteps die as seconds pass.

Then it’s just us and the bond that’s been starved of us both for too long.

I’ve been looked at by this man before. In the cave on Exile, when he first found me. In the palace, when he dressed me up and paraded me around like a prize. In the ballroom, when he threw me away in front of everyone who already thought I was less than shit.

This is different.

This is the look of someone who’s had their sight restored, and the first thing they see is the very thing they destroyed.

“You left,” he calls me out.

“You were unconscious.”

“You left.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Rage snaps up so fast it catches me in the throat. I spit the words like they’re poison. “Plant myself at your bedside? Hold your hand? After everything you– ”

“Yes.” He takes another step and his smoke comes with him, cold and oily, sliding over my skin and tightening my lungs. “Yes. That’s what you were supposed to do.”

“Fuck you.”

Another step. “You think I can’t feel what the fuck I did to you? What they made me do? It’s in me now, every second of it, every word I said to you in that ballroom. I can taste it.”