All Chapters of When Monsters Mate: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

LydiaThe ride to Leonidas’ home was quiet.Not the kind of quiet that soothes, but the kind that makes your thoughts louder. I stared out the window of the carriage, watching trees blur past. My hands were cold. My heart beat like it didn’t know whether to race or slow down.I didn’t know what I expected when the gates opened. But it wasn’t this.Leonidas’ home looked nothing like my father’s. It was big, yes, but not cold or lifeless. It was wild and strong. Stone walls covered in thick ivy. Tall wooden doors shaped by time and weather. The whole place looked like it had grown from the earth, not built by hands. There were no marble columns or golden statues. Just dark wood, smooth stone, and firelight glowing through the windows.It looked like a house that didn’t need to prove anything.And somehow, that made it feel more dangerous.The front door opened before I reached it. A servant bowed his head and took my bags without a word. His eyes barely met mine before they dropped to t

Leonidas’s POV“What are you doing here, Little Flame?”The words left my mouth before I could stop them, the nickname that she could swear she hated but I could see the effect it had on her. She didn’t answer. She just stood there in the center of my room, her eyes wide, her chest rising and falling a little too fast. Her fingers clenched around something at her side, small, delicate, metallic, but she moved quickly, tucking it behind her, almost like she was hiding something.But I didn’t press.I couldn’t.Because for a full second, no, longer than that, I just stared at her. Trying to place her face into memory, not like I could ever forget.Gods.The air shifted. My skin tightened. Everything around me faded.She was barefoot. Her hair loose. And my scent embedded in this room, was now clinging to her too.I hadn’t seen her since the ceremony, but I had felt her. Every day. Every breath. Her presence tugged at my senses like a ghost that wouldn’t leave. And now, seeing her here,

Lydia’s POVI left Leonidas’s room with my head buzzing.My feet carried me, but my mind was somewhere else entirely, still sitting on the edge of his bed, still staring at the way his jaw flexed when he spoke, still hearing his voice when he said he’d never mated before. Still wondering what that grin of his meant, and why it made my breath catch.I didn’t expect the conversation to affect me the way it did. Not after everything. Not after all the rules I had drawn for myself. But it was harder than I imagined, sticking to lines when the other person didn’t even try to color inside them.And Leonidas didn’t.He just stood there, all calm and controlled, yet managing to light fires in places I didn’t want to name.I wasn’t even sure why I stayed that long.But I knew why I left when I did, because any longer and I would’ve done something stupid. Said something I couldn’t take back. Like the truth. Like I missed you.I turned the corner of the long hallway, distracted, my mind racing,

LeonidasI watched Lydia walk away with my teeth gritted in frustration at the intrusion. Lydia’s shoulders were tight, fingers gripping her skirt like they were the only things keeping her upright. Her cheeks were still warm, flushed from what we almost did before Kaela barged in and shattered the moment.I hadn’t meant to get carried away. Last night had felt like a fever dream, her breathless voice calling my name, her insistence to stay beside me, the tremor in her hands as she cleaned my wounds, her tear-streaked cheeks when she saw the blood. I didn’t think Darian Morvain’s daughter could bleed like that, for anyone, least of all for me.I opened my eyes and she was still there, staring down at me like she didn’t understand what was happening inside her own chest. I knew the feeling. The plan had been simple: use her, break Darian from the inside out. The moment I laid eyes on him, I saw it, how much he valued her, how much it cut him to give her to me under the name of peace.A

Lydia’s POVWe moved quietly through the thick underbrush toward the eastern border, the earth damp beneath our boots, the silence between us louder than anything.Leonidas walked ahead, shoulders squared and jaw tight, his attention fixed on Cassian and one of the other soldiers trailing beside him. His back was to me the entire time, cold, unreadable, distant, and I couldn’t stop staring at it, trying to find the man who had kissed me like he couldn’t help himself just hours ago.But whatever that had been… it was gone now. Buried. Or maybe shoved into some place he couldn’t let himself go back to. And Kaela was nowhere to be seen. I had expected her to attach herself to his side like usual, but this time, she was absent. Which somehow made his silence feel even louder.He hadn’t glanced at me once since we left.Not once.I kept thinking about that look on his face right before he pulled away from me in his office, so full of rage, need, and restraint that it felt like it had been