Page 84 of Bite The Power That Feeds

“I promise I will never keep anything from you ever again. You have my word—”

“You’ve given me your word before—”

“Our relationship is totally different now.”

“I said I need time.”

“Larisa—”

“I will forgive you. We will move past it. But right now…I’m just not ready.” I gave him the reassurance that he needed, that this relationship was ironclad, that we would be married for as long as we both lived. But I still needed some time to come to terms with the betrayal. “So please give me space. And don’t assume anytime I speak to Elias that I’m going to fuck him.”

He held my gaze, calm and ferocity both at play at the same time. He seemed to require all his strength to agree. “Alright.”

“If you want me to forgive you, then you need to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me that you’ll accept whatever I decide.” I already knew what my decision was, the only one that would make us both happy. But I needed to know that he would truly make the sacrifice if that was what I wanted, that he would give up something just as important to him as it was to me, that this wasn’t a one-sided relationship.

Fear returned, flushing through him like heat. “I would give up everything to be with you. My title. My immortality. My family. Everything. Because you’re the single most important thing in the world to me. If that’s what you decide, I’ll accept it without question. As long as we’re together, as long as we can resolve this, the details don’t matter.”

22

KINGSNAKE

I slept in the four-poster bed alone.

Well, not truly alone, because Fang was there. He stayed on his side of the bed, and I stayed on mine. He was like a dog at the foot, coiled up in a ball, giving off quiet snores when he was in his deepest sleep.

It was still daytime. I could see the light coming through the closed curtains. I found it hard to sleep when my wife was elsewhere. Our honeymoon phase should be in full swing right now, but instead, it felt like we were on the verge of divorce.

I stopped trying to sleep and sat up in bed.

One of Fang’s yellow eyes opened.

“You can go to Larisa. You don’t have to stay.”

I want to stay.

“It’s okay, Fang. I know you prefer her company.”

Right now, I prefer yoursss.

I rested the back of my head against the headboard and stared at the dead fire.

It’ll be alright, Kingsssnake.

“I can’t believe he did that to me…my own father.”

Sssecrets never die. She would have dissscovered it eventually. And you ssshould have told her.

“Yes, I’m realizing that.”

The light lessened, turning a faint blue and bringing the bedchamber into darkness. It was hard to be there, in the very castle where that spineless prick had bedded my wife then left her for someone else. I’d been with lots of other women, but the idea of her being with anyone else…made me sick. Did they fuck in an empty bedroom? The one I lay in that very moment?

A knock sounded on the door. “They’re approaching the gate.” It was Cobra.

I flung the covers off and got out of bed.