Page 46 of Fallen Court

She paused next to the window and began examining her wrist. Finally, she threw her hands up. “I don’t have one. Is this a…joke?”

She stumbled over the final word like she’d planned to say something else, and I flinched. Maybe it was the bond between us—the bond she was now questioning—but I knew what she’d intended to say.

Was it a trick? Was I toying with her?

I waited for the anger to come, for the red-hot fury that always blazed when someone questioned my integrity. But this wasn’t someone. It was Cate, and if anyone had the right to question me about anything—from the weather to my intentions—it was my mate. Instead, a heaviness crushed my chest, like the weight of every problem I’d been ignoring had been suddenly deposited on my shoulders.

“Take off your ring,” I said in a quiet voice.

She needed to know the truth. Not that the truth was going to win me any favors, especially when she realized everything I had kept from her. But if she was going to be pissed at me, she might as well get it all out in one go. Having the fight was the first step in making my mistakes up to her. Potentially, jewelry and flowers would have to get involved, too.

She blinked a few times before shaking her head like she was experiencing a glitch. “I c-c-can’t.”

“Can’t?” I frowned, pushing to my feet and moving toward her.

Red stained her cheeks as I approached, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as her gaze swept down my body. The attention provoked my own blood to rush to the spot. Not my intention but impossible to prevent. She turned her focus out the window, her blush deepening. “Will you put something on? I can’t think.”

I cursed under my breath as I swiped my boxers off the floor. That was the other reason for holding off on this serious conversation: no one believed in mates anymore. Probably because nobody knew a mated pair. But they’d existed once, gifting the fae lexicon with phrases such as “fuck like mates” and “breed like mates.” Slang that still existed today. Although humans had changed “mates” to “bunnies,” which raised some serious concerns, if you asked me. But the birds and bees were roughly the same. Newly mated pairs wanted to fuck. A lot. It was an impulse that was hard to control. Even now, some primitive part of me bellowed to throw her over my shoulder and deliver orgasms until she forgot her own name. I’d hoped to get some of it out of my system before it was time for this conversation.

That might have been a mistake. Just another one to add to my incredibly long list of things to atone for. I needed to start writing shit down.

“Are you trying to think of an excuse?” she asked.

Looking up, I realized she was staring at my moving tattoos. I could usually keep them in check, but with Cate around, they were the bane of my existence. She could always tell when I was thinking. “No.” I shook my head. “Just deciding where to start.”

Probably not with the fact that we were mates. That might be too big of a shock. It was better to work our way there slowly—one of the reasons that I’d latched on to married when she brought up Oberon handfasting her. Incidentally, another good reason to kill him. Slowly. But married seemed less intimidating news than mated.

I might have been wrong about that, too. But now that I had her back, I would do anything to keep her.

She crossed her arms over her chest, raising her chin as she prepared to give an order, but her lower lip quivered. “Tell me about the ring.” Her interest surprised me, until she added, “You used it to break the bargain.”

“Yes.” So she remembered that, despite the bloody chaos of MacAlister’s final moments. I took another concerned step toward her. “What do you mean that you can’t take it off? Did you try?”

I’d told her not to—warned her. Of course, she’d done the exact opposite. I loved her tenacity, but it was going to kill me.

“No way,” she said firmly, drawing a deep breath. “You’re answering the questions, and I have a lot of them.” As her eyes skimmed my bare chest, the redness on her cheeks blossomed again and she looked away. “I think something is wrong with me.”

It was going to be a long night.

“Maybe we should head toward the Avalon before we get caught trespassing.” She gestured toward the exit sign glowing over the nearest door. “Or at least get outside where I can’t…”

“Jump my bones?” I finished.

“Believe it or not, I have some self-control.” The way her throat bobbed suggested otherwise.

“Not,” I said with a sigh. Keeping the truth from her was getting us nowhere. I took a deep breath. “You don’t have any self-control because of the mating bond.”

Her eyes widened, and she took a shaky step backward, bumping into the wall. She braced herself against it as she continued to stare at me. Her heart rate sped up through the bond we shared. “Mating?” she said in a strangled voice. “You said we were married.”

“It’s kinda the same thing.” It was not remotely the same thing. I felt Cate in every atom of my being. She was as fundamental a part of me as the blood in my veins, my bones, my flesh. Every moment I wasn’t touching her was agony. Her taste lingered in my mouth. I craved her in a way that was so primal, I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t feel this way. She was my beginning and my end and every breath in between.

As though she could sense the lie, she pointed a finger at me. “Get dressed. We need to really talk.”

She grabbed my coat off the floor and marched out of the reading room. I threw the rest of my clothes on and followed, not bothering with buttons.

Cate was waiting on the large front porch, her attention focused on the lawn. It was warm for late October, even in New Orleans, but she clutched the jacket closed. She didn’t bother to look at me as I stepped out of the library.

Fog shrouded the avenue as we started on what was bound to be a very long walk home; even the moon seemed to flee behind the protection of a bank of clouds. The street was quiet, guarded by ancient oaks whose branches draped over the pavement in a protective canopy. Not a single light shone from the old, weathered mansions that lined the block as though every soul in New Orleans wanted to stay out of this conversation. But the air was heavy, damp with the smell of earth and autumnal decay as we made our way between patches of light cast by the iron streetlamps.