Lilia’s POV
I expected to be confined to my room.
He wasn’t.
He sat me on the edge of the bed, brought out antiseptic and gauze, and dressed the wound in my palm with unexpectedly gentle hands.
The cold antiseptic seeped into the cut; I hissed, and the tear balanced on my lashes fell at that exact moment, landing on the back of his hand.
He looked up at me.
Whatever he saw in the red-rimmed eyes and the bitten lip, he lowered his head to the wound and breathed gently across it.
“Does it still hurt?”
I shook my head.
“I only want you to behave.” He wound the gauze around, loop after loop.
“Lilia, so long as you’re good, I’ll give you anything.”
While he spoke, he drew a small box from his pocket and opened it,a silver diamond bracelet, a teardrop of pale pink crystal at its end.
He fastened it around my wrist.
“I saw it while choosing a gift for Alaric. It suits you.” He studied my wrist with an absorption I rarely saw from him.
“It really is… beautiful.”
I lowered my eyes.
In all these years he had never given me anything this costly.
In his eyes I was probably still the child who needed coaxing through her growth.
Punishment, then reward.
I was long past being patient with these childish games of his.
He held my wrist, thumb moving over the bracelet, and when no thank-you came his face sank.
He stood, planted a hand on the bed on either side of me, and leaned down.
“Are you angry with me?”
”No.
How could I be?”
I turned my face aside.
He came closer, breath scalding my cheek.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
My lashes trembled, and I raised my eyes slowly to his.
His breathing faltered too.
He came nearer until our noses nearly touched, his presence closing around me.
His lips moved slightly.
And then the restraint gave way completely, and he turned his face in.
“Nathan!”
It came out almost as a scream, my hand thrust between us.
His mouth landed on the gauze at the back of my hand, and in that second I scrambled back across the bed.
His whole expression dropped.
“What is this reaction?”
”You already…
you have Tina.” My voice shook.
“You can’t do this to me.
We can’t,”
”Why can’t I?”
He cut me off, caging me between his body and the mattress.
“I saved your life, Lilia. Every inch of you belongs to me.” The words came up from somewhere deep.
“The promise I made you,that you’d be Luna,I have never forgotten it.”
My heart jolted.
I bit my lip, fighting for one clear thought.
“You remember?”
”Mm.” He nodded.
“I told you I feel nothing for Tina. I need Blackwater’s strength to hold down the two Packs circling my territory,let them tear at each other while I take the profit. If you hate it that much, I can stop.”
As he spoke, his hand passed gently over my cheek, the tone soft,and underneath it, unshakeable.
“But you have to promise me: from now on, no one else comes near you, no one else steps into your world.
You’re mine alone, Lilia.
We keep…
the promise we made back then.
All right?”
”I…”
Kael’s face surfaced out of nowhere,the way he liked to bury himself against my neck, to hold my eyes straight on, the undisguised want banked in that near-gold gaze.
Why think of him now?
Because Nathan had nearly kissed me, and left me with some guilty flutter?
But hadn’t Nathan already been with Tina?
If anyone owed an apology here, it ran the other direction.
I shook the thought off.
“I understand.”
He studied me a moment, then leaned in again,aiming this time for my eyes.
I flinched away on reflex.
When his face darkened, I hurried to explain.
“I…
I can’t.
Not yet.”
”That’s all right.
I respect that.”
He smiled, meaningfully, straightened and righted his collar, looking down at me.
“Alaric’s birthday banquet is tomorrow. You’re coming with me.”
I went still, sure I’d misheard.
“You said…
the Elders mustn’t see me.”
“The marriage with Tina has been settled with the Elders. The date is fixed.” He paused, fingertip on the bracelet at my wrist.
“I’ve kept you hidden because I couldn’t afford complications.
Before the marriage was settled, anyone could have used you against me.
Now everything is negotiated.”
”You’ve been wronged these past months, and I’ve made that clear to them.” He smoothed a strand of hair back from my face.
“At this banquet you appear as my stepsister, standing beside me in the open,part of what I owe you. The seat of Luna I can’t give you yet. Give me time. All right?”
It sounded reasonable,the alliance was settled, the risk lower than before.
And yet something in me snagged on a thread I couldn’t name.
Still, I had no reason to refuse.
A gathering like this was the busiest marketplace of influence this territory had.
Any object on these people was worth more than a lifetime of my wages.
Even a fragment of valuable news overheard from someone’s mouth, or some way to turn what I had into cash, was better than rotting in this house waiting for Nathan to decide which way my road went.
Five million had to start somewhere.
“All right.” I nodded.
“I’ll come with you.”
Nathan blinked, not expecting the easy agreement.
“Good girl.”
He stood, tied off the last of my bandage, and turned for the door.
“Wear the blue dress tomorrow.”
The door closed behind him.
I looked down at the new bracelet on my wrist, and then at my other hand, the palm still shadowed with dried blood.
Two things, half an hour apart, from the same pair of hands.
I sat there a long time.
Nathan loved me,the dream I’d been dreaming since I was nine, finally stepping into the light.
Yet none of the joy I’d imagined came with it.
A pure want, once it has picked up too much else, never returns to its original shape.
And I would never trust him like that again.
Nathan and I had never once stood on even ground, from the day we met.
I owed him my life, and twelve full years of shelter.
There was only ever his will in this arrangement.
I had never truly chosen anything.
I wiped my eyes, picked up my phone, and messaged Cora.
“I have other plans tomorrow. Don’t wait for me.”
The moment it sent, the phone rang.
I thought it was her, didn’t look, and answered.
“Miss Lilia.”