Page 86

I want that version of me back too. I stare at the dark sky. “Kane, my life is a mess.I’ma mess. I don’t know what you see in me, but you’ve picked the wrong girl.”

“What I see in you?” Again, he laughs, but this time, the sound has a pained edge to it. “You saved my pack mate—you nearly died doing so. You are hilarious and a fucking good time when you cut loose. You’re honorable, beautiful, and powerful.” His eyes drop to my neck again.

I’m barely breathing. Intuition is telling me to back away from the shifter, but I’m also caught up in his words.

He reaches out and touches the pulse at my throat. “Would it really be so bad?” he says again. His gaze flicks to me, and his wolf is in his eyes. It looks…hungry.

I go still the way I imagine hares do when they face down a predator.

“You’re not serious, are you?” I breathe. I can’t tell, but intuition is still insisting I back away.

“I could claim you. Right here, right now,” he says, his eyes fixed on my throat. “I would make sure it didn’t hurt.”

Holy Goddess.

I force myself to turn more fully to face him, startled at the proposition. I search his features. “You hardly know me.”

He draws his attention up to my eyes. “There is an understanding shifters have with their wolves that mates are a matter of instinct. My wolf likes you—he has since the moment you healed him.”

“I’m already mates with someone else,” I say.

“You are with a monster,” Kane says. “One who was happy enough to destroy your life when it suited him.”

Sort of. I mean, shit pulled an Uno reverse real quick.

“If I claimed you,” he continues, “then I would have an equal right to be your mate.”

I place a hand over the juncture between my neck and shoulder and shake my head. “Kane, I don’t want that.”

His eyes are lupine when he takes a step toward me. There was barely any distance between us before; he’s fully in my space now.

“Are you sure?” he says, his voice unnaturally low. “Imagine what it would be like to be tied to someone who wants you, loves you.”

Idoknow what that’s like. That’s never been the problem. For all Memnon’s flaws, he’s always loved me.

This is…a lot. And if my life was different—simpler—I might happily bare my neck for Kane and go along with this.

But things aren’t simple.

“I think,” I say, carefully picking my words, “if it’s loyalty your pack holds in high regard, then you’re going to understand that Ican’tbe with you like that.”

Kane looks like I struck him, and I feel like I’m carving my own heart out with a dull kitchen knife.

“I have a soul mate,” I continue. “One who is legitimately terrible, but he’s…mine.” I laid claim to him in my mind earliertoday, but the sentiment rings even truer now that I’ve spoken it out loud. “Long ago, I gave my life for a spell strong enough to be with him again. To be here, in this life, trying to figure it out with him, and I owe it to who I was to?—”

I choke, the rest of the words falling away as sharp, burning pain blooms from my side.

“Selene?” Kane says, alarmed.

I grip my ribcage against the sizzling pain, grinding my teeth together to keep from screaming.

“What’s wrong?” the shifter says, reaching for me.

“My side,” I gasp out.

Kane gently pries my hands away and lifts my shirt. The skin beneath is smooth, unblemished. I neither sense nor see any malicious magic, but it hurts like someone has shoved a hot poker into it.

What in the seven hells is going on?