“The right side,” I blurted. “The good side.”

“You think I’m good? How many women have I killed again?”

“Fine. I meant the bad side. I’m firmly on the bad side.”

“Ah...” He smiled thinly. “So I’m the villain now?”

“No, of course not. Stop twisting my—”

“I’m an idiot. All this time I thought you understood my need for revenge, but you’ve been secretly trying to get away from me.” He balled his hands. “You lied to me.”

My phone kept on ringing. My head kept on pounding. “I never lied to you. Not once.”

“Then tell me how you really feel!” he hissed. “Give me the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“Are you on my side or not?”

“I just told you. Yes, I’m on your side. Besides, how can you even ask that?” Hurt pinched my heart. “Especially after everything—”

“Answer the fucking question, Rook!”

“I just did!”

“Then why do I feel like you’re about to betray me like everyone else?”

Whisper shot to his feet and went to his master, wrapping his long tail around Lucien as if holding him back from attacking me.

My heart skipped as I clutched my buzzing phone and tried to give him what he needed to hear. “I will never betray you, Lucien. I will always be on your side.” I licked my lips and added an important caveat. “As long as you don’t hurt innocent people and don’t harm me, then I will never stop being on your side. You have my full support to seek vengeance on those who did this to you and your family.”

His fury faded a little as his shoulders sagged. His hand landed on Whisper’s head, his fingers fumbling with the panther’s ears. He looked so unsure and in such pain, he reached into my chest and ruined me.

I moved to go to him, but his chin tipped up and he sighed heavily. “Are you sure? Are you sure you can even stand to look at me after what happened here tonight?”

My gaze flickered to the barbecued wall.

He followed my stare, shuddering just once. “What if I lose control again? What if I turn out to be a worse monster than them?”

My phone kept buzzing and I didn’t know what to say.

“What if I’m exactly what all those women said I am?” he whispered. “That my very existence is an apocalypse waiting to happen...will you still love me then?”

Love him?

He choked.

We both froze.

That frightening little word fell to the floor and exploded around our feet. A word that came with so much danger and depth...

But...it seemed like I did, didn’t it?

How else did I explain how I felt about him?

How else could I ever go this far or accept so many unexplainable things?

“Lucien, I—”

“Don’t,” he hissed, cutting me off with a swipe of his hand. “Don’t say anything.”

The urge to tell him how I felt came strong, but a dam formed in my throat. An obstruction made of fear and shyness. He was the first and only person I’d cared about since losing my parents. I would do absolutely anything in my power to keep him safe, all while knowing I was absolutely useless.

Especially now I knew how different he was.

How valuable he was to the men who wanted him.

“If I didn’t have feelings for you...how else could I have self-medicated with your blood while you were in the shower? How else could I bring myself to drink your very life-force if I didn’t feel connected to you above everyone?”

His body heat buffeted me like a fallen comet. “What?”

“I drank what you gave me this morning.”

He stiffened as if my admission that I’d willingly ingested his blood—the very blood he’d had to force down my throat before—affected him on a primordial level.

“So you see...I trust you, even after what happened,” I said softly. “I’m not afraid of you and I’m not going to betray you—”

“You were in pain?” he cut in, his voice full of gravel and smoke.

“I was but...now, I’m not. Thanks to you.”

His shirtless chest came alive with patches of heat as if the subject of the conversation turned into molten magma in his veins.

I couldn’t look away as his eyes gleamed, embers replacing his pupils. The longer we stared, the more the air arced with electricity. I could almost taste power bleeding off him, feathering out to lick across my skin and rattle the windows in their frames.

Whisper whipped to look at the windows, baring his teeth at the shivering glass.

“Eh, Lucien...?” I trembled as another wash of ridiculously hot energy blasted from him.

The curtains quivered.

Red shadows danced over his chest—

Whisper snarled, looking back to Lucien and nipping his arm. Lucien coughed and stumbled backward as Whisper bit a little too sharp.

The spell broke.

The windows stopped rattling and the air temperature returned to normal instead of blistering like the sun.

God, now what?

What the hell just happened?

Who the hell is he?

And why wasn’t I running like I should?

“Are you...” I swallowed hard, trying so hard to pretend all of this was normal. “Are you okay?”

Raking both hands over his face, his shoulders sagged. Dropping his arms, he caught my eyes and slowly shook his head.

“You’re not okay?”

He shrugged.

“You don’t know?” I whispered.

His fingers strayed to the vitalsync core that was dull and dead over his heart.

My phone hurled itself around in my hand, reaching its furious crescendo.

Lucien’s gaze locked on it and everything he was feeling shut down. His unreadable mask slipped back into place as he crossed his arms, and ordered, “Answer it.”

Chapter Twenty

FAT LOT OF GOOD MY ORGASM did me.

My body was on a damn roller coaster—burning alive in the bathroom only to find solace in Rook’s arms. I hadn’t planned on having my second ever release while still wearing my goddamn pants but...it’d happened.

Again.

And I couldn’t even care about the damp discomfort left behind because all that ashy, violent heat just went away. She didn’t just calm me physically, she calmed me emotionally—dousing me in ice and cocooning me in snow, allowing me to breathe without setting fire to the bed.

For a few grateful moments, I found a pocket of existence that didn’t come with suffering but then...him.

“Well?” I hissed. “Are you going to answer it?”

Rook clung to that hated little device as if it might detonate in her palm and reveal everything she didn’t want me to know.

Back in Cinderkeep, I didn’t care who she was in the outside world.

I had no way of imagining her life before me or what she got up to outside my walls. I’d become so insular—so cut off from the rest of humanity—that I couldn’t picture what life looked like out there, so I literally had no drive to ask.

But now?

Now I wanted to know everything.

I wanted to tear her history wide open and rifle through every interaction, relationship, and secret.

“Do it,” I seethed, making Whisper chuff as if reminding me to contain my temper. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop ringing until you do.”

Her gaze landed on mine, her lips thinning with determination. “Just remember...Dillon is like an older brother to me.”

So what?

He was still a man and she was mine.

I would happily slit his throat if he thought he could take her away from me—related or not.

My hands balled as heat flooded through my veins. Instinct urged me to go to her. To touch her. Kiss her. To bind myself to her so she could keep me cool enough that I didn’t burn the bed and breakfast down.

“Oh God, here we go...” Sucking in a deep breath, she stabbed her finger onto the green symbol and tossed it onto the mattress as if it was a live grenade.

She cringed away as if it truly was about to erupt—