Page 23 of Clash of Sin and Secret

“Hey,” I manage, but it comes out rough. “I’m sorry you’re hurting, princess.”

A sob wracks her, and I shift to the couch and pull her into my lap. “I don’t know how to do this without him. I need him. I want him back.”

“So do I.” Bran was her father by blood, but he adopted me into their family when I was fourteen. He was my mentor and guardian and everything I wanted to be. Scottie isn’t the only one feeling alone and adrift because of Bran’s death.

The man meant everything to me.

And last night, I thought I’d lost her, too.

“You were dead.” The words spill out before I can catch them. “When Zane screamed, my heart shattered, my panic to get to him driving me. But when I saw you lying in his arms…it destroyed me.”

A shiver runs through me as the memory threatens to pull me under. “I didn’t have time to process it. All I could think of was that I couldn’t lose you. Not when I just lost Bran and not when I never told you the truth.”

She stiffens in my arms and tenses to pull away, but I don’t let her.

“The night of your twenty-first birthday, Zane sent me to check on you. His vampire side was coming into its dominance, and his bloodlust was out of control. He knew he couldn’t handle himself around you and was too ashamed to tell you.”

She blinks at me, hurt and confusion warring in those beautiful eyes.

“He didn’t trust himself,” I continue, heat rising under my skin. “I found you heartbroken and feeling worthless.” My voice falters as memories flood back…

Her tears glistened in the candlelight while Zane wrestled with his demons in the royal residence just down the wing.

“You were so fucking beautiful, and when you turned to me, I let my feelings cloud my judgment. I had loved you both for so long, but never enough to break through your bond. You two only ever saw one another. I was always invisible. My feelings never returned.” My chest tightens with every word as they tumble out.

Scottie shifts slightly, sitting up straighter now. “But?—”

“Don’t. Let me finish,” I whisper fiercely. “I came to you, and you kissed me and begged me to stay—to make you feel loved. You made me promise I’d never hurt you and leave you.” The memory stabs deep, still fresh in my mind, the desperation in her gaze as I swore to her that I would never hurt her.

“And you lied,” she says, pushing against my chest and gaining some distance from me. “Do you know what it did to me to wake up in the morning and find you gone? To realize I’d been fooled by not just Zane, but you, too?”

My heart squeezes in my chest, and I fight to breathe. “I loved you so fucking much. I thought you’d finally realized that, and so I gave in to my feelings. I promised you I’d never leave, and you gave yourself to me. It meant everything to be your first. I was honored…and completely shaken by it.”

The weight of my confession hangs between us as silence stretches thin like spider silk. “I laid awake watching you sleep, memorizing the way the firelight made your hair glow like spun gold, and how you made little noises as you dreamed. I imagined you dreaming about me, about the perfect moment we’d just shared.”

But then a knot forms in my throat as darkness creeps back into focus—my heart twists painfully at what followed after that blissful moment.

“You smiled in your sleep, and then…you whispered Zane’s name. You said you loved him, and you’d always be his,” I choke out finally, fury mixing with heartbreak in equal measure. “We’d just shared the most incredible moment of our lives, and you dreamed of Zane loving you.”

Her mouth falls open and I swipe a hand across my eyes and swallow past the tension in my throat. The crushing truth lingers heavily between us.

“I knew then you never truly wanted me—not really. I was a placeholder for Zane, and I always would be.” The admission hurts more than any physical wound ever could—the finality clawing at my insides until there’s nothing left but emptiness where hope once thrived. “And so, I left.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Scottie

Istare at Huntley, my mind struggling to process his words. The firelight catches the pain in his blue eyes, so raw and honest it steals my breath. All these years, I’d carried this weight of shame about that night, believing I’d been nothing but a conquest to him.

“You were in love with me?” My voice cracks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I had shown you. Then, hearing you whisper Zane’s name in your sleep…” He looks away, his massive frame seeming to shrink. “I couldn’t stay after that.”

The memory of that night floods back—the gentleness in his touch, how safe I’d felt in his arms. I’d been so broken over Zane’s rejection, and Huntley had been there, solid and real.

But I’d hurt him just as deeply without knowing it.

“When you were gone the next morning, I thought you had gotten what you wanted.” I wrap the blanket tighter around myself. “To prove you could have what Zane couldn’t.”

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