chapter 8

Daisy

For one second, I thought about running. I could make it out the window. I could shift in the garden and be over the border before sunrise. Moonstone taught me how to vanish. I'd done it once already. Then I looked at Damien's face, and I couldn't move.

"How?" I whispered.

"Cards," he said. I stared at him.

"You used to cheat at cards when you were ten. You'd tap your left ear before every bluff." He gave me a tired little smile.

"You did it at breakfast when he asked you if you liked the cake. You did it in the hallway when Seraphina asked you who Daisy was. And Helena keeps calling you by your name."

I sank down against the door and put my face in my hands. Ten years of training. Two years of hell. And I got caught by a stupid habit I didn't even know I had.

"Are you going to tell him?" I said. He was quiet for a long time.

"That depends," he said,

"on whether you're planning to leave again."

I lifted my head. "Why do you care?"

"Because last time, it nearly killed him." Damien set the pills down on the bed.

"You don't know what happened after you left. The first month, he didn't sleep at all. He tore the house apart. He went to Moonstone himself and nearly started a war at their gates when they refused to tell him anything. Then somebody said they saw you get into a black car with a man." He rubbed his face.

"He hunted every man in five territories who owned a black car, Daisy. Some of them didn't survive it," he said and I felt sick.

"That's not my fault," I said.

"No. It's not."

"He called me a plaything, Damien!" My voice cracked.

"You were there! You heard him! He said I was a charity case and he'd rip his own throat out before he made me his Luna! He said he hoped I'd never come back!" Damien looked down at his hands.

"I was there," he said.

"And I heard him. And I know why he said it." My heart stopped.

"Then tell me."

"It's not my story to..."

"Don't you dare say that to me again!" I was on my feet before I knew it.

"He broke me! I deserve to know why!"

"You do," he said quietly.

"But you need to hear it from him. Not me." He stood up. At the door, he stopped and looked back at me.

"I won't tell him," he said.

"But Daisy, you need to understand something. Your scent is already starting to come through." My blood went cold.

"I can smell you," he said.

"Faintly. And if I can, his wolf already knows. He just hasn't figured out what he's smelling yet."

He left. I sat on the floor with four pills in my hand, it would do until morning. I swallowed two at breakfast. Two left for tomorrow. Then nothing.

The day was hell. Lucien was everywhere. In the hallway when I came out of Helena's room. In the kitchen when I went for her tea. In the doorway of the library, watching me with those dark, heavy eyes until my skin felt too tight for my body.

He didn't touch me. He didn't say a word about the garden. He just watched.

In the afternoon, I went to the library to find a book for Helena. I was reaching for the top shelf when I felt him behind me. I didn't hear him. I just felt the air change.

He reached over my head and pulled the book down for me. His chest brushed my back. He didn't step away.

Then he leaned down, slowly, until his nose was almost touching my hair. And he breathed in. I froze.

"Did you change your soap?" he said.

"No."

"You smell different today." His voice was low and strange. "Like rain. Like..."

He stopped. I turned around so fast I nearly hit him. His eyes were narrowed, searching my face like he was trying to solve a puzzle he couldn't see.

"Like what?" I said, praying my voice didn't shake.

For a long moment, he didn't answer. Then something closed off behind his eyes, and he stepped back.

"Nothing," he said.

"Forget it."

He shoved the book into my hands and walked out. I leaned against the shelves and tried to remember how to breathe. Rain. When I was little, he used to say I smelled like rain.

Celeste watched too. Every time I turned a corner, she was there, smiling that terrible little smile. That night was the full moon.

I'd forgotten. At Moonstone, they gave us suppressants on full moons so nobody lost control in the dorms. Here, there was nothing. By ten o'clock, my skin was burning. By eleven, Nyx was pacing so hard I could barely stand.

'Him,' she whimpered.

'I need him. Please. It hurts.'

'No.'

'He's right there. He's on the other side of the wall. I can hear his heartbeat.'

So could I. Slow and heavy, right through the plaster. Every beat pulled at something low and hot in my stomach until I was curled up in a ball on the bed, sweating through my sheets, biting the pillow to keep from moaning.

I swallowed the last two pills dry. It didn't help. At midnight, the connecting door to his room opened.

I hadn't even known there was a door. Someone had hidden it behind a bookcase years ago. I heard the shelf slide, then his footsteps, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Rose," he said. His voice was barely human.

"What the fuck are you doing to me?"

"Go away," I begged.

"Please, Lucien, go away."

"I can't." He was beside the bed. I could feel the heat coming off his skin.

"I can smell you through the wall. I've been standing on the other side of that door for an hour like a fucking animal."

"Then go back."

"I tried."

The mattress dipped under his weight. His hand touched my ankle, and my whole body arched off the bed like I'd been shocked. He made a sound low in his throat. Pure wolf.

"Tell me to stop," he said,

"and I'll stop. I swear in my mother's life, Rose, I'll walk out that door and never touch you again." I opened my eyes.

His were pure black. His chest was bare and heaving in the moonlight. He was shaking with the effort of holding himself back.

He had a Luna. He had a ceremony in a month. He called me a plaything. And I was so tired of being strong.

"Don't stop," I whispered. He was on me before the words were out.

His mouth crashed into mine, rough and hungry. His hands tore at the shirt I was wearing, his shirt, and the fabric ripped right down the middle. He kissed down my throat, my collarbone, over the burn Celeste had left, so gently I gasped. Then not gently at all.

I pulled him closer. I dug my nails into his back and he growled into my skin, and every bit of pain from the last two years burned up in the fire between us.

He lifted his head. Pushed my hair back off my face. Looked down at me with something so raw in his eyes that I couldn't breathe. And then he said, rough, broken, like a prayer.

"Daisy."