Page 172 of Problematic

He sat up slowly, taking me with him, but he didn’t speak. He turned his face away, and that hurt more than I expected. The great, terrifying, impossible demon lord of New Abaddon caught by his own name and still hiding behind his mask as if I hadn’t already bled half my heart out on his balcony.

“I know it’s you,” I forced out. “So take off the mask.”

He didn’t move.

“Please?”

The room held its breath.

“I can’t,” he said after a long pause.

My laugh came out wet and ugly. “Why?”

His jaw flexed beneath the mask.

“I already know,” I said, voice shaking harder now. “There’s no reason to hide. I’m not stupid.”

His head turned a fraction. Not enough. Only enough for his collar to shift. That was when I saw it.

His mate mark, darker now.

It sat near the side of his throat, partly hidden beneath the fabric of his shirt, dark against his skin, Milk foam swirling inside a rose leaf. Smoke curling between the lines as if the mark were burning.

Impossibly beautiful.

Mate marks represented the other person.

Their mate.

My breath caught so hard pain flashed under my ribs. His body went rigid. I stared at the mark until my vision blurred.

“This would all make sense if you were my mate,” I said, the words spilling out too fast, tripping over one another. “The roses. The mugs. The library. The way you watch me. The way something under my skin keeps trying to wake up when you touch me.”

I swallowed a sob and forced myself to face the mask instead of the beautiful, horrible proof on his throat.

“Make it make sense, Lux.”

He flinched at his name. I hated that. I also wanted him closer.

“I’m falling for you,” I said, and there it was, the humiliating truth, bloody and shaking in my hands. “I’m falling for you, and I don’t know what happens if, after all this, I find my mate, and it isn’t you.” His fingers tightened around mine. I was crying again, and at this point, my tear ducts had unionized and started demanding benefits.

“I don’t think I would survive that,” I whispered. “No one has ever seen me. Not really. No one has ever wanted me without needing me to be useful first.”

My breath hitched, and a broken little sound came out of me.

“I spent years telling myself I was fine. No mark. No power. No ancient bloodline. I made jokes about it because what else was I supposed to do? Sit on the floor and scream every time another girl got chosen?”

His shoulders tightened.

“I wish . . .” I dragged in a breath that barely made it past my lips. “I wish you were my mate.”

The silence after that scared me.

“I know that’s impossible because you already have a mark, and everyone says mate marks don’t make mistakes, and mine never showed up, and I’m being ridiculous because you’re you and I’m me, which is honestly a cosmic clerical error if this is going where I think it’s going, but I can’t—”

He turned. “Liv,” he said, voice wrecked.

My heart kicked once, hard.