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My eyes flew open. He was smirking at me, but there was a hint of regret in his eyes.

“You aresupposedto be my mate,” he clarified, and I sagged forward, kneeling on the edge of the mattress. “Technically, you aren’t my mate until you accept the bond. Keep working on your phrasing. You’re getting better.”

“I hate you.”

His eyes followed a lazy line over my body on their way back to mine. “And I think the feeling is mutual, bookworm,” he murmured, but his mouth twisted to one side.

“No,” I said, adjusting to sit down on the bed. “I really hate you.”

Wren’s—Lucais’s—face was the portrait of innocent alarm. “I know. You threatened to kill me while I was drinking your blood.” He arched his golden eyebrows. “Thank you, by the way. I’ve spent weeks wondering how you taste, and this part of you, at least, did not disappoint.”

I made a gagging face. “You make me sick.”

He smiled softly. “I recall saying something similar to you not long ago.”

Intent on sprinting towards the point instead of jumping over the hurdles in his games, I leaned towards him and propped myself up with my elbows on the mattress. He mirrored me, coming as close as he could with a hand braced on the bed.

“Why?” I demanded. “No lies, no trickery, no bullshit. Tell me why.”

Some of the light in his eyes dimmed. “You want the truth?”

“Always.” I narrowed my eyes at him and added, “Even if it kills you. Especially then.”

He gave me a withering look. “Fine. I didn’t want you to know that you were designed to be my mate because I don’t want you here. I meant what I said—that it would be easier for me if you were never born, because the things that they will do to you if they find out…”

I flinched, and he grasped one of my hands. The touch was warm, affectionate. I pulled away.

“Aura,” he murmured, flexing his fingers as he stared at my hand. “They will pull you apart in ways that prevent me from ever putting you back together. If you accepted the bond, thenI’m signing your death warrant, and I can’t even fathom how I would survive that. How Faerie would survive that—”

A bitter laugh bubbled out of my mouth, and I shook my head at him. “All because some Oracle showed you a vision?”

Wren’s—Lucais’s—eyes softened in a way I had never witnessed before. The rest of his face followed, smoothing down into an expression of handsome desire. “The vision made me curious. I wanted to meet you until the Malum sent their first message, and I realised how dangerous it would be if we ever did. I had no idea who you were when I returned to Belgrave, but the moment I appeared in that bookstore, and it was covered in your scent…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If you hadn’t come back that night, I would have slaughtered the caenim and destroyed the portal and thrown a ward up around your town. And come home.”

“So, why didn’t you?”

“Because you came back,” he answered simply, opening his eyes. “Even after catching a glimpse of the monsters following you. Didn’t you ever wonder why?”

Because I’d left my keys behind.

No.

Because he was there.

“I knew the moment I laid eyes on you for the first time that you were my mate, and that I couldn’t leave you,” he went on. “I couldn’t evenpretendto leave you without putting the whole of Faerie in jeopardy from the storms it could create, but you couldn’t know the truth. It was better for you to hate me if it meant keeping you and my world safe.”

My gaze dropped to his mouth, my heart beating out of rhythm. The question was on my lips, but I was too afraid to press further.

“In the cottage,” he said, answering it anyway. “I knew that the bond was real and true in the cottage that night whenyou woke up from a bad dream, screaming for me. Hearing my name on your lips like that for the first time broke my heart. I felt it first in the Forest of Eyes and Ears when you had the whole damn thing attack me, but that night cemented it.”

Part of me wanted to touch him. Lucais. Not the Lucais I had been introduced to, buthim.The one in front of me. The man from my dreams.

His hand was resting on the bed, so close to mine, and I wanted to hold onto it because I was reminded of the way he screamed as the spike was pulled from his torso. The scream that had tormented me for months, from the man I had wanted so desperately to save. The man I had wanted tolove.

He was staring right at me with a warmth in his eyes that I had missed before now, a warmth that I had felt mirrored in my own eyes so many times.

But he’s been staring at me for weeks.

Lying to me.