Page 78 of Roguefinder

He trailed me outside and through the gate.

I walked faster, relief doing more pathetic things in my chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said at my shoulder.

“You said that in France, too.”

He opened his mouth. Shut it.

The laugh that came out of me was dry and short. “Yeah, you’re sorry again. I guess you thought I forgot the last time.”

“That’s not what I think.”

Ahead of us, a cluster of crows pecked at something on the pavement. They scattered at our approach, wings fluttering as they croaked their irritation.

“Where are you going?” Jesse asked.

“Why would I tell you? We don’t share shit with each other, right? Isn’t that how it works?” God, I sounded like a whiny bitch. Like a teenager storming up to my room and slamming the door.

Jesse didn’t answer. He just matched my pace, tight energy wrapped around him. The scent of baking bread and espresso drifted from shops. A scooter whined past, close enough that Jesse’s hand twitched toward me before he caught himself and pulled it back.

We walked in silence for five minutes. Ten. The anger in my chest burned hot, but uncertainty spread beneath it. Was I being unfair? Jesse had seen what my visions did to me. He’d worried about me going to Carlo’s with doubts in my head.

And the visions didn’t come when I tried to force them. If I’d walked into the opera house distracted, would I have felt whatever was hidden inside the door?

And Jesse had filled me in eventually. He’d just dragged his feet.

Still, I couldn’t go through life with this imbalance between us. Riding his dick had never made me feel small. Being managed would make me lose my mind. He claimed he wanted to protect me, but there was a difference between stepping between me and certain danger and deciding whether I was a big boy who could handle the truth.

I stopped and faced him. “Open your side of the mate bond.”

He looked around the street. “I don’t⁠—”

I grabbed his wrist and pulled him down an alley barely wide enough for both of us. Shuttered windows climbed the buildings on either side, and bundled electrical wires stretched over our heads like clotheslines.

“Give me everything,” I said, crowding his space like he was a defensive end. “You’ve been hiding from me since the day we met. That doesn’t work anymore. I can’t be married to someone who doesn’t respect me.”

“I respect you,” he said in a raw voice. “Christ, Caleb. How could you think I don’t?”

“Then open the bond. Back in New York, you told me you were all in, wolf and man. If that’s still true, you can’t keep pieces of yourself from me. You’re either all in, or you’re not.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he closed his eyes.

Emotion slammed into me without warning, a wall of it hitting my chest and driving the air from my lungs. Worry, love, anxiety, anger.

And fear.

Not the surface kind. Jesse’s fear was a bottomless well of cold, swirling terror. It rotated like a hurricane, devouring everything else.

“Shit,” I gasped, rocking on my feet. Jesse grabbed me and steadied me.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. I asked for it.” I pressed my hand to his chest and felt his heart pounding beneath the cashmere and muscle. “Is this what you’ve been carrying?”

“Not all the time.” With a low sound, he rested his forehead against mine. “Stefanos has always been my handler. When the Council wants me to track, he arranges everything—hotels, money, cars. I’ve never had a reason to question his orders. But I do now. The thought of you getting hurt is…” Jesse closed his eyes, and another icy wave of fear sloshed across the bond.

I gripped his arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m too annoying to die.”