Page 30 of Consume Me
I take a breath I don’t want. “It’s reminding me I can still honor the bargain I made with them.”
His gaze narrows. “What bargain?”
My stomach knots, but I have to come clean. He deserves the truth. “To kill you.”
His stillness is worse than rage. Guilt presses down around me. At what I would have done to this gentle warrior. At what’s already been done to him by these daggers.
The room feels too quiet.
The dagger purrs in my head, pleased with itself.One last kill, and we are free. You and I both. Do it now, little fae.
“No.” I grit my teeth. “I will never kill for you again,” I snarl.
We’ll see about that,the dagger whispers, voice curling around my mind like smoke.
The dagger’s hum recedes to its usual ugly murmur, but when I look up again, Noctan’s stare is like a weight. I can’t help but remember that he’s spent the last four hundred years hunting this very blade with no intentionof letting it exist a second longer than necessary. Yet, here he is, forced to endure it—and the pain of that rune—long after he vowed to. Mate or not, it can’t be easy to remain in the same room as that thing and do nothing to avenge his friends. His family.
What would I do to avenge mine? Hell, protecting them is what landed me in this mess in the first place. I would suffer again and again if it meant saving Tori and Legion. I can’t ask this of him.
“I should go home,” I say finally.
One dark brow lifts. “Home?”
“I can’t just… stay here.”
He frowns. “Why not?”
“Because…” I trail off, unsure what to say. “We just met,” I blurt.
His brow lifts again, and this time, the sight of it does something to my core. And now, the dagger is forgotten, and I’m hyper-aware of that moment we spent on the couch. Ugh. Stupid hot fae warrior. “You didn’t have a problem with that five minutes ago when my fingers were inside you.”
My face heats because, fuck, he’s not wrong. “That was different,” I mumble.
“Was it?”
“Whose shorts are these?”
“What?” My question catches him off guard. But I don’t care.
“Whose shorts are these?” I repeat, bracing myself for the answer. “You said you’d never found anyone you cared about more than your vow. But these are a female’sshorts. They can’t possibly fit you. And yet you had them in your bedroom.”
“Those shorts belonged to Liara. She was a member of my cadre, and she kept a room here. They all did. Before…”
Liara. His cadre. Of course. Fuck, I’m an idiot.
He clears his throat. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to throw their things away. And tonight, when I saw you needed clothing, I chose what might fit best.”
“Shit, Noctan, I’m sorry. I assumed…”
“Is the mate bond not enough for you?”
I hesitate, unsure how to answer that. But in the end, I go with honesty. Something about this man draws it out of me, apparently. “I guess I never expected to live long enough to find it.”
He looks troubled at that but doesn’t argue. And that only convinces me more that I should go.
I sigh. “Look, you’ve spent hundreds of years hunting that dagger to avenge your friends. I can’t ask you to sleep under the same roof as your enemy. It’s not fair.”
He steps over the dagger like it’s nothing more than a fallen letter opener and closes the distance between us. When he’s standing in front of me, his gaze softens. Slowly, he cups my cheek with a calloused palm, and I lean into it, grateful for the peace and quiet it brings.
