Page 92 of Hunted

For a fraction of a second, the snark falters, replaced by something raw and startled.

Then her mouth tightens.

The sharpness returns. Because now she is holding my truth in her hands.

And she is going to have to do something with it, even if that something is pretending she does not believe a word.

20

EIRA

I stare at him as if staring hard enough might rearrange reality into something that doesn’t involve the words ‘fated mate’ sitting between us like a verdict. Because dear Gods, I’ve survived too much, learned too much, bled too much to be blindsided by a concept that sounds like it crawled out of an old superstition and decided to ruin my life personally.

Fated.

Mate.

No.

Fucking no, thank you.

My tongue rejects it on principle. My mind tries to dissect it into harmless syllables. But my body, treacherous little bitch that it is, goes utterly still, recognising something before my brain can catch up.

Valentin watches the war on my face with savage calm.

I swallow, because I need to anchor myself to something physical, something real, and because I can’t afford to stand here looking like a woman who has just been told her life belongs to a vampire.

‘You can’t really expect me to just… accept that though.’

‘And why not? You’re merely a hunter, contracted to do a job. Do you wish me to believe you treat every hunt as a personal crusade?’

Heat crawls up my face and I have to bite back my temper at his derision. At every heightened emotion – and Gods, there are way too many – this vampire drags out of me. ‘No. But… seriously…’ My voice wobbles, and I want to punch my own throat for it. I clear it. ‘That fated mate thing isn’t really a thing.’

I’m desperate for him to deny it. Sure, he can’t lie, but maybe someone fed him a load of bullshit. Maybe I can help him reason it out.

Wow. We’ve arrived at bargaining-with-vampire-delusion faster than expected.

‘It is,’ he replies, as if we’re discussing weather.

‘It’s not,’ I insist, because denial is my first line of defence and it’s either that or scream. ‘Vampires don’t get fated mates. That’s shifter nonsense. Wolf-pack romance novel nonsense. That’s⁠—’

‘Mortals assign names to things they do not understand. The mechanism exists whether you approve of its terminology or not.’

My eyes narrow so hard it hurts. ‘Did you just call my species a terminology problem?’

‘You are not a problem,’ he says, with a slight pause before he adds, colder, ‘unless you choose to become one.’

Of course.

I should be furious.

I am furious.

The problem is fury keeps tangling with shock, and shock keeps tangling with something else I refuse to name, because naming it would mean admitting that term fated from this powerful being has made some buried part of me go eerily quiet.

I can’t reveal myself.

Not the name or the past or the fact that Lyra Hannigan is standing right in front of him, wearing armour and a borrowed life. Because I’ve lived my life like a locked vault and now this vampire is standing in front of me holding the key like it grew out of his blood.