Page 24 of Claimed

Lucien is very still. For three long seconds, I genuinely cannot read him at all. Then he says, “Kim is not as subtle as he believes he is.”

I blink. “What?”

“He looks at you the way starving men look at honey.” Lucien pushes off the sideboard and crosses to me, slowly, giving me time to move if I want to.

I don’t want to.

“I’ve known for some time. I was waiting to see what you would do about it.” He tweaks his finger beneath my chin, tilts my face up. “And what you did about it was stop, and then sit in a dark room all night so you could tell me the truth to my face.”

“You’re not angry?”

“I’m a possessive five-hundred-year-old predator, Luna. There is a part of me that wants to nail the doors shut and keep you where no other man can even breathe near you.” His thumb strokes along my jaw. “But that part of me is precisely what Steven was and I refuse to be him. I want you to be happy and fulfilled, and to have the pleasure you deserve.” He pauses. “And in the interest of the honesty you’ve just shown me; I have thought about Kim before.”

“You’ve thought about⁠—”

“He’s loyal. He’s brave. And he’s rather beautiful in a dishevelled, over-caffeinated way.” Lucien’s lip twitches. “If it would make you happy, I would do it or I would watch you do it. Whichever pleases you the most.”

“Just like that?”

“Not just like that. Nothing about this is simple.” He takes my hands, laces his fingers through mine. “But yes.”

I stare at our joined hands. “But if I fucked him without you there? Would you be jealous?”

I almost gasp at myself for asking that, but I try to keep my cool and stroke Lucien’s hand as he contemplates his answer.

Lucien is quiet for a moment. “I would need to think about that,” he says finally. “Honestly. I don’t yet know what I’d feel. But I know that above everything else I want you to be happy.” His voice drops. “Kim can walk with you by the river on a Sunday morning. He can sit across from you in a café with the sun on his face. He can grow old with you. Those things are closed to me, Luna. They always will be. And if some of your happiness has to come from somewhere else... I would rather it came from a man I trust.”

There is an ache behind my eyes, sudden and sharp.

Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the thing Steven never once did in two years – put my happiness above his own.

Lucien leans down and kisses me. Slow. Deep. His hand slides into my hair, and I melt into him.

When I pull back so he can see my face, I say, “Lucien, listen to me. Whatever Nix offers – he will never tempt me away from you. Never. I’ve spent my whole life being told what I am by men who wanted to use me. I know exactly what that feels like, and I want no part of it.”

His eyes flash at that, and I press on.

“We’ll find a way to make him leave. Together. Out of Cambridge, for good.”

“Together,” Lucien echoes. He kisses my knuckles, and for one moment his face is soft and open and almost human.

Then the softness fades, and he’s a vampire again.

“But there is one thing left we have to decide, kitten. And I fear it’s the hardest part.” He glances toward the blinds, where the grey dawn is turning gold at the edges. “Nix could leave this city tomorrow, and it wouldn’t end. As long as The Covenant of Shadows exists, he will never stop coming for you.”

The shadows in the corners of the study go still.

“So the question isn’t only what we do about my brother,” Lucien says. “It’s what we do about The Covenant itself.”

11

Nix

CAMBRIDGE – LAST SUMMER

Of all the cities in all the world, The Covenant of Shadows had to surface in his.

I have spent over one hundred years choosing my addresses by a single criteria – wherever Lucien is not. Paris after Vienna. Petersburg after Paris. A very dull decade in Buenos Aires. And then the one thing I have wanted longer than I have wanted anything pops up in a stuffy university town in England.