Page 136 of Claimed

The Heartshard Glass ignites so violently that every shard on the wall burns white, then red, then silver, bathing my chambers in light sharp enough to blind. The Tower answers from its foundations. Somewhere below us, the bloodline stirs, every sired vampire in my city feeling the shock of a truth that should have been mine to know six years ago.

Lyra Hannigan is in my arms.

But… Eira Cross is in my arms too. The woman I hired to find my missing mate is the mate I have been hunting.

My mind refuses the shape of it, then my blood tears refusal apart.

Recognition detonates beneath my skin.

Sweet cursed Gods of Netheris. I see it now. It was always fucking there.

Her scent beneath the witchwork. Her blood calling to mine through the false trail. The violence of my reaction in South Carolina. The way my mark answered when she entered a room. The hunger, the fury, the pull, the maddening certainty that no other woman in five centuries had unsettled me like this.

Lyra.

Eira.

My hunter.

My mate.

She sags against me. Because the truth has cost her too much.

Even now, blood pours down her chin and throat, soaking into my shirt. Her skin is cold and her pulse stutters beneath my fingers, fast and weak, and the enormity of what she has said collapses instantly beneath a simpler horror.

She is still bleeding.

‘Rowan,’ I roar.

The Tower carries my command with enough force to crack the remaining window glass. Lyra flinches in my arms. I hate myself for that too, for adding another violence to the catalogue I have already written across her skin tonight.

‘I have you,’ I say, though I am uncertain whether the words are for her or for what remains of my sanity.

Her eyes lift to mine. Hazel, yes. But the spell is falling.

I see it as I lower her onto the bed. The glamour does not peel away cleanly. It shivers over her face in translucent layers, each one flashing and vanishing. A subtle change at the line of her cheek. A softening near the mouth. A deepening of colour in her eyes, as if gold buried under brown is finding light for the first time in years. Her hair darkens by degrees, then brightens through hidden strands Selphine’s work had muted.

Finally, her scent breaks through the veil in a rush.

I stop breathing.

Six years ago, I stood in a young woman’s bedroom and found the future I was arrogant enough to believe would wait for me.

This woman is older. Harder. Sharper. A survivor made of knives, wit, skill and rage. The girl I intended to claim did not vanish. She grew teeth.

She became Eira Cross.

A sound leaves me before I can stop it. Pain, perhaps. Worship, perhaps.

Eira… Lyra’s lashes flutter. ‘If you make that noise again, I’ll assume you’re dying and be very annoyed.’

Her voice is shredded.

Mine nearly follows. ‘You fucking, reckless woman.’

‘Your fault. You begged. I panicked.’

‘You were bleeding.’ Even now, the horror of it prowls through me.