Page 30 of A Mountain Man Christmas

He eyed the murky liquid swirling in the bowl, then looked up at his sister. “I’m fine.”

“I’m not offering to heal your wounds,” she snapped. “I’m asking you to take the potion so you don’t turn again and kill me and Lyla.”

Here, I thought you were trying to poison me.

He pushed the thought guiltily out of his mind and, after another moment’s hesitation, took the bowl from Ariadne. The potion tasted bitter, but he forced it down and handed the bowl back to his sister.

“The potion is meant to suppress any manifestations of the curse,” she explained. “It’s the same kind our ancestors took for the same purpose. It doesn’t erase the curse itself, but a regular dose should keep you from…”

She trailed off, but the message was clear. Tristan bit his lip, feeling two pairs of eyes on him. They were all thinking the same thing, he knew. He’d drunk the potion because he was cursed, because he was dangerous, a bloodthirsty killer who had taken lives already and would take more if he wasn’t stopped.

“If I can prevent you from causing any more deaths, there’s no reason I shouldn’t,” Ariadne said, and Tristan got the feeling she wasn’t talking about the curse.

His sister stood for a moment, watching him as if expecting some kind of reaction to her potion, then retreated from the living room, leaving him alone with Lyla once again.

She blinked at him, rubbing her arm with some of the salve Ariadne had left with her. “So…what’s going to happen now?”

Tristan avoided her gaze, focusing instead on the tongues of flame dancing around the fireplace.

“Now,” he said, “we’ll wait. We should be safe here, from Angus. Fromanyone, really. This place is hard to find.”

Chapter Eleven

“I Feel Lucky to Have Met You”

It was the middle of the night, and Lyla had never been more wide awake.

Great. Just great.

She and Tristan lay on a thick furry rug in the spare room Ariadne had offered them earlier. The room was dark, but the light coming in from the fire in the main room cast a flickering shadow across the ceiling. Their makeshift bed was barely large enough for one person, and she and Tristan were squashed together.

Lyla was grateful for the opportunity to rest in a place that wasn’t a cave or a snowy forest floor, but no matter how long she kept her eyes shut, she couldn’t sleep. She could feel Tristan’s warm breaths against the back of her neck.

She could feel his firm body pressed against hers.

She could feel every twitching muscle.

Because there was no fireplace in here, the room was colder than the rest of the cabin. The stone floor was cool to the touch. So why did she feel so hot and restless?

She wondered if he felt the same way.

“If you still feel uncomfortable,” Tristan whispered, “I could give you some space.”

At his words, Lyla’s entire body went rigid. Her breath froze in her throat. She hadn’t even realized he was still awake. Had he been up the whole time?

She swallowed. “Un…comfortable?”

There was a rustle as he moved, which she took to mean he was nodding. “You’ve been uncomfortable ever since the night you got attacked.”

Sothatwas what he was talking about. Lyla’s cheeks burned. She hadn’t even been thinking about that.

“Oh, I didn’t realize.” Still, now that he mentioned it…. “But I guess you’re right. I was pretty shaken by everything that happened. I’ve had a lot to think about since then. I…I’ve been having mixed feelings.”

“About whether I’m innocent or not? About whether you can trust me?”

“That attack was terrifying,” she said, trying to keep the horrifying memory at bay. “But you’ve saved me multiple times. On that bridge, and even when Angus and his men attacked us….”

“I’d do it all again if I had to,” he said.

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