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My eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”

“Lachlan didn’t tell you?”

“It…hasn’t come up.”

Too busy trying to stick your tongue down his throat to ask the pertinent questions.

“Aye, it burned half the building down. Lost a lot of records that year.”

“Huh.” I toy with the handle of my cup absently. “That must suck for Lachlan.”

It also explains why he still has so little to go on after all this time.

“I imagine,” Brodie says with sympathy in his tone. “I actually oversaw the reconstruction of that wing some time back,” he says. “There hadn’t been funds to do anything with it before then, so it was mostly empty and half destroyed up until that point. It’s right as rain now.”

“That must have been interesting,” I say. “Find anything cool?”

He blinks back at me, sputtering a bit when his tea seems to go down the wrong way. He beats his chest and coughs to try and right himself, finally shaking his head. “Nothing but some burnt-up documents and smoke-damaged books.”

“Oh…That’s too bad.”

“Aye,” he sighs. “Always hate to see history lost that way. Makes it too easy for people to try to fill in the blanks with nonsense.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” I say with a small laugh.

Brodie checks the clock on the wall, frowning at the time. “Och, I’d better get off to bed. Early day tomorrow.”

“More work for your side project?”

He looks sheepish again. “I know how silly it is.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” I say. “Hell, I’m basically here for the same reasons. Maybe we can compare notes sometime.”

Brodie beams at me. “Aye, maybe we can.”

He bids me good night then, and I think to myself that it seems a lot of people in town might have misjudged him. He’s actually very easy to like once you give him the chance. I certainly felt a bit better chatting with him than I did when I stomped into the house.

I scowl. Just the memory of Lachlan’s rejection makes my chest sting, creeping back in through the warmth of the tea and leaving me cold and bitter. I try to remind myself again that it’s not fair to hold him to any promises, because he certainly didn’t make any. Not that it makes me feel any better.

I carry my irritation throughout the process of washing my cup, then up the stairs toward the small bathroom across from my room as I brush my teeth. I stare in the mirror as I work the brush, cataloging the tiny, fading marks on my throat left by Lachlan’s teeth that are hidden by my hair. I can tell they won’t be there tomorrow, and the thought of that makes me feel even lower than I already do.

I want Lachlan.

The realization hits me harder than it should, because you would think it would be obvious, given how hungrily I’d kissed him earlier, how disappointed I’d been when he suddenly declared we wouldn’t be doing it again—but it isn’t until this very moment that the extent ofhow muchI want him makes itself known.

I want to help him. I want him to have a better life than theGreers before him. I want to kiss him again, and laugh with him, and find out what more there is to the man underneath the shadow of a monster he desperately wants to escape. Once I get the thought in my head, it burrows deep, refusing to be dug out.

Even lying in my bed later, waiting for sleep I fear won’t come, I’m still thinking about him. About the absurdity that Lachlan, the man afflicted with a centuries-old curse that could literally steal his life away, would take it upon himself to protectme. As ifI’mthe one who needs saving.

And when sleep finally takes me…I find that I’m angry as hell about it.

18

Lachlan

Last night was pure shite, to put it mildly.

Not to say that nights spent as a mythical creature, trying to connect with your monster father who doesn’t remember what it was to be human areusuallygood—but last night was particularly awful.