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The smallest sliver of an opening from her.
I pounced on it.
My head shaking, my voice dipped low. “Cletus might have shared the same power as you, but me…me…I come from his same blood. The same evil that ran through his blood runs through mine.”
“Yes.” She sat up, meeting my eyes. “And you also said we could choose who we were. You’ve managed to do that your whole life. Do you not believe in that anymore? Do you not believe in yourself?”
I puffed out a breath, truly considering her words. “I do. But you make me question everything, because I cannot control you.” My shoulders lifted as my eyes met hers, truth vibrating in my voice. “I don’t want to control you. But that leaves me…” I heaved a sigh, my palms lifting upward.
“Vulnerable.” She leaned forward, her hand lifting to cup my jawline. A wry smile, slight, played on her lips. “Welcome to the fucking club.”
I puffed out a chuckle. “It is a dumb-ass club with the worst fucking rules for entry.”
She grinned fully, her hand dropping from me. “Then you’re going to have to figure out a way to trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
Her brow lifted. “You trust me not to leave you?”
She had me there.
My jaw shifted to the side as I considered my next words. I couldn’t exactly tell her I trusted locking her in a tower at Netherstone and never letting her out more than anything.
No. That was not the route to take in this instance.
I sucked in a breath to steady myself. “I want to.”
She stared at me for a long moment, her green eyes squinting slightly like she could read the tyrannical, overbearing, and completely wrong thoughts in my head.
She pursed her lips, then nodded to herself. “Then I give you this to help. Here is what I trust. I trust that you will protect me when I need protecting. I also trust that you will know that I can protect myself when I need to. I trust that you are going to drive me mad over our lifetime together, and I may just drive you even madder. I trust that you are the exact mate I need, and that we were predestined in a way that Cletus could never touch. And I trust that you know it as well, because you recognize this mystical energy that flows between us, just the same as I do. Energy that doesn’t need words or dreams or thought. Celestial energy that exists as a certainty that will not be denied.”
Stunned, my body breaking into a million disparate pieces, I could only stare at her, forgetting to breathe for a long minute.
She waited.
My hands lifted, shaking as they moved to cup her face and I leaned in. “Are you declaring your love for me?”
She smiled, the lightest laugh chiming like a bell escaping from her lips. “Trust that I am. And trust that I don’t even need to hear you do the same, because I already know it.”
My forehead dropped to hers, and that peculiar energy that pulsated between us sparked alive, warming my chest and making me believe in ways my mind wouldn’t, everything she said. “I do. Love you. And I trust that one day, long from now, our stars will be entwined in the sky for all of time.”
She angled her head slightly so her lips could brush against mine. “That would be pretty wondrous.”
“You know what else is wondrous?”
She shook her head, her forehead rubbing on mine.
“You’re pregnant.”
“What?” she shrieked, her face snapping out of my hold, her eyes huge. “You haven’t even touched my belly.”
“I did while you were out.” I reached out and set my palm wide against her lower abdomen. The steady, secondary beat of a heart interwoven with hers punctuated along my nerves. “But I knew it when it happened, for it was that jarring a change in your body.”
Her eyes went impossibly wider. “When?”
“On the balcony the first night at that hotel in Athens.” I smirked, wicked. “The rest of that night and what I did to your body was just for show.”
Stilled to silence for long seconds, she finally exhaled and slumped back onto the pillows, tears streaming down her face.
