Page 18 of Avaritia

“Now you entertain yourself while I return to my work,” I told her, because wasn’t that obvious? With a curt nod, I exited the room, heading down to my workshop with Verity’s slick still coating my skin beneath my shadows.

A very successful evening indeed.

Chapter 6

Theon shut his bedroom door behind him, leaving me sitting in the sodden mess that was his sheets, an ache between my thighs and a still-bleeding throb on my neck.

Mated.

I was mated.

On the first fucking night. Theon really did not waste any time in securing the permanency of his mistress storage dungeon occupant.

Mated.

And here I’d been, naively thinking that I could manage Theon. Clearly, that had been a mistake. I doubted there was a being in this realm or any other who could manage him.

Tentatively, I walked my fingers up my neck, surprised to find the raised bump of scar tissue already forming, the blood that had seeped from the wound mostly dry.

“What the fuck,” I whispered, my heart rate picking up slightly. The speedy healing and lack of pain were pretty disorienting on their own, but combined with the overall weirdness of the whole situation, and I was totally adrift.

And yet… not filled with regret either. I mean, that would probably come in time—perhaps when I was better acquainted with the stranger I was now bonded to for life—but at the moment, I was feeling weirdly smug about the whole thing. I could recognize that there were some toxic impulses at play—it was nice to feel wanted, to drive him so out of control that he’d sunk his teeth into me, to finally feel like I belonged—but whatever. Maybe the toxic hole of abandonment issues was just where my brain lived now and I could be fine with that.

Wincing at the knot-related ache between my legs, I climbed off the bed, ducking into Theon’s far-larger, grander bathroom to do a cursory cleanup so I didn’t leave a trail of slick down the secret stairs, before wrapping myself back in my robe and tucking my feet into my slippers. He clearly hadn’t expected me to stay here, so I headed back down to my room, a little of the smugness wearing off with each careful step on the narrow staircase. I didn’t need us to stay up late braiding each other’s hair and talking about our feelings or anything, but a little aftercare would have been nice and made me feel less like a fleshlight with bonus charging capabilities.

I let myself into my room, startling at the sound of running water. Aderith poked her head around the bathroom door, gesturing for me to come in.

“I thought you might want another bath.”

“That sounds amazing, thank you.” My face was on fire at the thought of poor Aderith being subject to whatever sounds I’d been making up there. The whole knot situation had definitely busted my brain-to-mouth filter.

Aderith nodded before doing a double take, her gaze trained on my neck, a look of abject horror on her face.

“What has he done to you?”

Oh. She was worried for my sake?

“It’s a mating bite,” I replied hurriedly. “It’s okay. It doesn’t really hurt. It’s already healing.”

“But why? Why did he do that to you?”

On reflection, Theon hadn’t seemed fully informed about the whole ‘mate’ concept either. Since he never spent any time at court and seemed to despise everything about his brother, maybe all his information about the ex-Hunters was secondhand gossip rather than cold, hard facts.

“The mate bond is a connection between Shades and my kind,” I explained, fumbling slightly over the words. “It’s like… a supernatural thing, I guess. Tethering us together for life. Like marriage, but more permanent.”

Now that I was focusing on the strange new sensation forming in my chest, I realized I could probably follow it directly to Theon if I wanted to. It felt like a magnet, drawing us together.

Aderith looked stricken, which was frankly a far more reasonable reaction to have than Theon’s had been.

“But you just met!” She walked past me to pace alongside the bed. “This is very bad, Ver— Your Grace.”

I blinked. “You really don’t have to call me that. Verity is fine.”

“It will be ‘Your Grace’ in front of His Grace,” Aderith muttered, still pacing. “The king will not be pleased at this turn of events. He is very distrusting of his brother, you know.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I replied mildly, heading into the bathroom because there was a real situation happening on my inner thighs. I left the door open so I could still hear Aderith, and stripped off my robe, climbing gingerly into the steaming-hot tub.

“What will you tell the court?” Aderith asked, raising her voice slightly so I could hear her from the bedroom. “Wilder says that Prince Damen is coming tomorrow to check on your well-being.”

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