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“I don’t understand. How can that… what do you…”

I’m not sure I’m breathing as Blair lifts my hand to his lips and presses a brief kiss to the backs of my fingers before he answers.

“When I lost Lizzy, I couldn’t bring her back, and I knew I wouldn’t be joining her for hundreds of years, wherever it is we go after this.” His voice is low and rough, words scraped from his chest like each one is an effort. “All I could do was honor her in the only way I knew how. Locking away all the parts of myself I felt died with her.”

I think about everything he told me about her—the vibrant, adventurous woman he lost—and his words don’t make a lot of sense.

“You think she would have wanted you to live like that?”

Blair visibly flinches.

“I’m sorry,” I say, immediately feeling like an ass. “I don’t mean to pretend like I know anything about—”

“No. You’re right.”

We both fall silent. Blair’s looking out of the gazebo, over the wide expanse of plains that bleeds into distant mountains. I’m looking at him, watching the play of his thoughts over his face, waiting with held breath.

“I didn’t think… I never even considered the possibility I might have another mate out there somewhere. So when I met you, I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I couldn’t take my eyes off you. That I didn’t want to be anywhere in the world other than near you.”

I let out a short laugh, hoarse and shaky. “Other than to be an absolute menace to me. Stalking me, pretty much.”

He flinches again. “I was wrong for that.”

It’s my turn to squeeze his hand this time, and when he looks back at me I give him a small smile. “I already said we’re square,” I say, thinking back to that day in his office, just after our first kiss. “As long as there’s no more kidnapping.”

His lips twitch up at the corners, but the regret doesn’t leave his eyes.

“Even so,” he murmurs. “I plan to spend the next few centuries making it up to you. Making itallup to you, Kenna. Every time I left you to pay for my mistakes. Every time I made you feel anything less than cherished. I plan on making up for it all.”

In the silence that follows Blair’s solemn declaration, the enormity of his words washes over me. Of what he’s saying. Of what it makes me.

Mate. Blair’s mate.

Even as something small and trembling blooms in the center of my chest, I’m not sure what to think, what to believe. If what he’s saying is true…

“I think she would have liked you, Kenna.”

The words might almost feel manipulative, if it weren’t for the soft sincerity in his tone, the note of longing and sorrow and fragile hope that puts a massive crack right down the middle of that wall I’ve constructed around my heart.

Suddenly, it’s too much. All of it.

Standing, I cross the gazebo and brace myself on a post, doing everything I can to keep my breathing even and my heart from shattering completely. Even when I hear a couple of slow, soft footsteps behind me, I can’t make myself turn and face him.

No, I just keep breathing, keep my eyes fixed on the horizon as I try to process what he’s just told me. It’s only Blair’s soft voice from behind me that pulls me out of the spiral of my thoughts.

“Do you need some time?”

Do I? Would that fix any of this? Maybe, and since it’s still so damn hard just to think with him standing so close, I nod slowly.

“Yeah, time would be good. Is that alright?”

“Of course it’s alright,” he says gently. “Like I said yesterday, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t you have a Bureau to run?”

“I quit.”

If there was anything in the world that still could have surprised me, that would be it.