Page 37 of Heir of Blood and Moonlight

I searched Gavin’s eyes. “Why were you there?”

“The attack—”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Of all the locations that were attacked, why did you come tomyhome?” I took another step closer to Gavin. “You told Micah your mom was a queen, that your lineage makes you among the most powerful of our kind, so why didn’t you have a queen of your own to protect that night?”

Gavin clenched and unclenched his jaw and looked away. “Iwasprotecting my queen,” he snapped. “Or, at least, I was attempting to.”

“Not my mother,” I thought aloud. “You’re still alive. If you shared a blood bond with her, you would be dead.”

“I had earned a place as Prime Consort to a queen, but she was young, and I had not yetcommunedwith her,” he said, his voice a hushed murmur.

“Amaya?” I asked.

Gavin shook his head. “That was to be Javier’s role,” Gavin said softly, one hand drifting up to his neck to run his fingertips over the invisible sigil. “I was always intended for you.”

I sensed the truth in his words, and the rightness I felt around him made more sense.

“I should have been there,” Gavin said. He turned to face me and bowed his head. “I should have been there to protect you, but I wasn’t, and everything I have done since has been to atone for that failure. And the other night, if I had realized it was you in that club, that you were my Luna, my queen—” He shook his head. “I never would have left you there.Never.”

His gaze scoured my face, lingering on my eyes. “I can see it now. When you unleash your glow, you are unmistakable, but you were so changed then . . . so depleted.” He released a bitter laugh under his breath. “I thought I had found a lesser queen.” He shook his head again. “I certainly never suspected your powers were being chemically suppressed.”

“I—” My voice stalled as I searched for something, anything, to say. Gavin wasn’t the stranger I had believed him to be. He was always supposed to be mine.

20

Gavin’s focus shifted pastme to where Bastian still sat on the edge of the bed. “We should get your shifter something to eat,” Gavin said, his tone begrudging. “He looks like he’s about to pass out.”

I twisted to look at Bastian. His back was slumped, his gaze unfocused, and his copper skin appeared unusually pallid. My cheeks heated as I realized the reason—because he had fed me, twice. He was suffering from blood loss, and only then did I remember he had been injured during the fight with the wolf shifter. There had beena lotof blood in the car. Shifting had healed him, but it must have depleted his energy stores.

“Oh, Bas . . .” I quickly pulled my top on over my head, then gripped Bastian’s forearm to help him up to his feet. He was shaking, and I wrapped an arm around his back to keep him steady.

“Does anything sound good?” I asked Bastian, then glanced at Gavin, recalling that Javier hadn’t needed food for sustenance. I feared there wouldn’t be much of anything ready-made in thefridge, though I knew from my booze hunt through the kitchen that the pantry was stocked. “What do we have?”

“Meat,” Bastian said, his voice weak. “I need protein.”

“I don’t know what’s in the fridge,” Gavin admitted. “Ash ordered groceries for you as soon as we knew you were coming here. I told him to get a bit of everything.” Gavin opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway ahead of us, a cruel twist to his lips as he watched me help Bastian out of the room.

“Don’t worry,” I grumbled when the vampire made no move to help the shifter. “I got him.”

Gavin’s eyes narrowed, but his sneer remained.

“Sophie!” Micah said, rushing toward us from the floor-to-ceiling corner window in the living room as soon as we reached the mouth of the hallway. “You’re okay! What happened? Here—” He ducked under Bastian’s other arm and helped me half drag the bigger man into the living room.

We settled Bastian on the couch, and I shot an irritated glare in Gavin’s direction as he strode toward the front door. “Thanks,Micah,” I said, the two words more directed at Gavin than at my son.

Gavin glanced back at me over his shoulder, his expression seeming to say he was enjoying watching Bastian suffer. Considering I had commanded him not to hurt Bastian, I supposednot helpingwhen Bastian was suffering was the next best thing for him.

I rolled my eyes and hurried into the kitchen.

“Does he need to feed, too?” Micah asked from where he stood by the couch and the starving shifter.

“Sort of,” I said as I opened the fridge door.

The fridge was stocked full of a bit of everything. I rummaged through the clear plastic food containers holding pretty much every kind of pasta salad in existence, but they contained littlein the way of meat. I grabbed the small tubs of tuna and chicken salad, hoping Bastian didn’t mindstuffmixed in with his meat, then pulled the three bags of fresh-sliced deli meat from the fridge drawer.

I set my finds on the counter beside the fridge, then pulled open the freezer drawer. “Jackpot,” I sang under my breath as I stared down into a treasure trove of frozen raw meat.

I pulled out a package of four enormous steaks and frowned, wondering if that was enough. Then I pulled out three of the one-pound squares of ground beef as well. I dumped the frozen packages of meat into the sink, plugged the drain, and turned the faucet on to thaw the meat faster. Then, finding the silverware drawer, I grabbed a spoon.

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