Fated to My Vampire Lord novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Rule He Broke

A week.

I slept for nine hours, and I woke with the word still in my mouth.

It was dark again.

I could hear the whole house.

Otis snored two floors down with a splinted arm.

Ottoline's stick tapped on the stairs.

On the other side of the connecting door stood a man who was not breathing at all.

I got up and opened it.

Tiernan stood by his cold fireplace in his shirtsleeves, and he had not changed since the ballroom.

"A week," I said.

"Yes."

"You tasted my blood in the cellar and knew the word wolfless was wrong."

"Yes."

"You watched the footage. You asked your grandmother."

"Yes."

"And then you stood across a ballroom from my father and let me dance."

"I did."

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't prove it." His voice was steady, and his hands were not.

"You had been told you were empty for six years."

"So?"

"I would not lead you to the edge of a hope and then have to walk you back."

"That wasn't yours to decide."

"No."

"I stood in that circle and thought I was nothing. You had the one fact that said I wasn't, and you kept it in a drawer."

"Yes. I was wrong." He didn't look away. "Hit me, if you want. I won't stop you."

I thought about it.

I crossed the room instead, and stopped close enough to smell the cedar on his collar and, under it, the cold.

I could smell the cold.

"No feelings," I said. "That was your rule, in the car. No feelings, Lord Crowhurst."

"I remember."

"You sat on a marble floor all night with your hand in my fur."

"I did."

"Is that no feelings?"

His throat moved.

"I broke that rule," he said, "the night you cut your hand."

I had waited three weeks to hear something like that, and now I could not move.

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