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“But you didn’t let the bond form there and then?” There was no reproach in the question, only curiosity.
“No. I wasn’t comfortable with psychically binding myself to a complete stranger. I’m not criticizing those who do it,” she hurried to add. “It just isn’t for me.” She slanted her head. “Did you and Khloë fight the pull of the bond initially, or did you just go for it?”
“We didn’t fight it. But we weren’t strangers to each other. Some members of my clan are . . . work associates of a few of her imp relatives, so we’d met quite a few times before we realized we were anchors. If I hadn’t known her in advance, it might have played out differently.”
Larkin swallowed. “It must have been nice to realize that your psi-mate is someone you know and like.”
“It was. Were you initially happy to find your anchor?”
“Yes. Holt claimed to be just as thrilled. He wasn’t pleased that I wanted to get to know him before we formed the bond, but he agreed to prolong his stay in Vegas so we could spend time together.” Feeling a heaviness settle over her chest, Larkin rubbed at it. “In the beginning, he was a regular white knight. He focused on me to the exclusion of all else. Love-bombed the fuck out of me, too.”
Teague’s brow creased. “Love-bombed you?”
“Oh yeah. But I never thought of him that way. He accepted that—or claimed to. But it didn’t stop him from repeatedly tossing declarations of love my way. And it made me uneasy. Suspicious.”
“Suspicious?”
“Holt wasn’t only pushing me to hurry and form the bond. He wanted me to join his lair and move to Canada.”
“He asked a whole lot of you,” Teague noted, not liking it. Of course it was natural for demons to wish to be close to their anchor. But it was also natural for them to ensure their psi-mate’s wellbeing, not demand too much of them. Holt had literally asked her uproot and leave pretty much everything behind—her home, her career, her family.
“He got pushier and pushier, which achieved nothing. So I wondered if maybe he was trying to haul me into a relationship so I’d do what he wanted; that the love-bombing was pure manipulation. I’m still not convinced he ever truly felt that way about me, no matter what my demon believes.”
She could well be right. The cambion sounded devious and self-centered enough to employ such a trick to get what he wanted. “Did you ever consider moving to Canada?”
“I thought about it. Knox told me I could remain part of our lair if I did, I just wouldn’t be able to keep my sentinel position because it wasn’t feasible, but that the position would always be open to me if I decided to come back. I didn’t want to leave the US, though. I’d have been too far away from the only family I have.”
“Understandable.”
“Not to Holt,” she said, her voice tight. “He didn’t see why it would be such a problem, even though he wasn’t prepared to make that same sacrifice.”
Teague felt his jaw harden. “So, in addition to everything else, he’s a two-faced fucker?”
“Yup. I didn’t ask him to join my lair or move to the US. I would never have asked him to give up so much. He brought up the subject, saying there was no sense in him making the transfer. And he was right.”
“In what sense?”
“He would have lost his position of sentinel, and then he would no longer have been in the run-in to become a Prime. Knox might have one day made him a sentinel if he’d switched to my lair, but that was all Holt would ever have been—there’s no way he could have usurped Knox. Holt ain’t that powerful. So it was best for him to remain in his lair.”
“That doesn’t mean he should have expected you to make all the sacrifices, especially if you weren’t demanding things from him.” His ambitions weren’t more important than her welfare—it was that simple.
“That’s not how he saw it. In his view, there was no reason at all why I shouldn’t make the transfer—I didn’t want to become Prime, so it shouldn’t matter to me if I lost my position of sentinel. And, you know, it wasn’t like the guys are my ‘real family’, they’re just ‘friends and colleagues’.”
Fuck, this guy was something else. “It was really all about him.”
“Very much so. I suggested that we both remain as we were. It wasn’t like we needed to be part of the same lair or live near each other. We could still have had regular contact.”
Teague nodded. “Not all anchored pairs answer to the same Prime or reside in the same country.”
“I pointed that out multiple times. But Holt doesn’t like to compromise, he likes to get his way—full stop. So he kept pushing. And I kept saying ‘no, let’s stay as we are’.”
