Page 6 of Lucien

His monster had other ideas.Isn’t this what you’ve been searching for? Your flower in the desert. Your mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.

Christ Almighty, the beast was actuallychanting. Luc was going to lose it.

His monster wasn’t wrong. Hehadbeen searching. For decades. He’d been hunting for that fated soul to tether him to his humanity. Ever since Luc had first learned mates existed—that the descent into a feral state could be avoided by a bond to another—he’d been desperate for it.

A way to live forever. A way to avoid eternal damnation.

A way to never end up alone again.

But he hadn’t accounted for the power of that first encounter. All that searching, and at the moment of meeting, he’d been…terrified.Who’s the scared little lamb now?

Luc was a being on the edge, barely in control of his own faculties. How could he expect to accept a mate without crushing him in his overly greedy grasp? Would the monster even let itself be tamed?

Nothing to do but ask the beast itself.

And you would allow that?he asked his monster, keeping his words in his own head this time.A mate?To be shackled by a human?

The monster inside him was silent for a long time.I want him, it finally answered. It almost sounded like a plea.

Well, what the fuck was Luc supposed to do with that?

Luc hadn’t always had full conversations with his monster, like a fucking lunatic. It had used to be a series of urges, long ago, and then it had gradually grown to simple commands.

Feed. Fuck. Hunt. Kill.

But as he’d lost his way, giving in more and more to anger and greed and a lust for blood, the monster inside him had gotten more…vocal. Persuasive. A snake in the proverbial grass. Luc couldn’t tell if it and he were melding together or becoming more distinct. It was hard to know when they so often wanted the same thing.

Like this young man. This desert flower.

Luc wanted him too.

He made it to his car somehow, his mind a hazy fog. He stood outside the driver door, taking in his own reflection with glazed eyes. What had the stranger seen to make him smile like that?

Something beyond the superficial, apparently. Because, Lord…what a fucking mess.

Luc was still handsome, no doubt about it. It wasn’t arrogant to say, when he’d never in his multiple centuries of living had any trouble finding a partner for the night. But his thick dark hair, with its permanent smattering of gray at the temples, was overly long, his usually artfully stubbled facial hair overgrown. His clothing was rumpled, and was that…bloodon his collar?

Shameful. Absolutely shameful.

This wouldn’t do.

He thought back to the young man as he climbed into his vehicle, holding a picture of him in his mind’s eye. That wild green hair, the chipped black polish Luc had noted on his nails. His mouth had tasted of cinnamon but also of ash.

He wasn’t who Luc had ever imagined for himself.

I’ve been waiting for you, you know. The words rang in his head. He couldn’t get them out. Nor the image of that open smile, that sweetly crooked incisor.

Why would anyone smile at Luc like that?

He’d thought once, some decades ago, that he’d found his mate. He’d convinced himself that attraction, admiration, and the first stirrings of love were the signs of a soul bond.

Victoria.

Beautiful, elegant, wild.

A perfect match, he’d thought. But he’d been wrong. He’d fooled himself—himself but no one else—and he’d lost it all. The woman and his chosen brother all in one fell swoop.

But his attraction to Victoria hadn’t felt likethis. This gut punch, this overwhelmingpull.

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