Page 42 of Veradel
“Is everything okay?” I repeat, determined to prevent a fight that could very well demolish Lucan’s entire house.
“Saskia.” Lucan turns back toward me, his claws retracting, his jaw twitching. “I laid out some clothes for you right outside the bathroom.”
“Oh.” I glance down at my bare neckline, the swell of my breasts beneath the towel. From my periphery, I can see Soren smirking and Merrick looking away, while Vivian and Lucan’s mother exchange glances. “I didn’t see them,” I say firmly, lifting my chin. “I heard shouting and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
I push out a little warning in those last words, wanting everyone in the room to know that I willnotbe locked outside of an important conversation. I’ve been locked away for too long. If everyone else in this ghost town wants me gone, I need to know.
Lucan rakes a hand through his hair, disheveling it.
“I was just trying to convince them…”
He trails off, glancing uncertainly at his mother, who raises a slender white eyebrow. My heart twists.Trying to convince them not to hate you. Not to kill you. Not to think of you as the enemy,I’m sure he means. Because they do. They hate me now. They want to kill me.
Vivian strides toward me, and my muscles tense in preparation for a blow. Her hand raises.
And then she lays it gently on my shoulder. “He was trying to convince one of us to fight him for the alpha position.” She shoots a glare over her own shoulder. Not at me. At Lucan. “He was just going to hand it over, as if any of us want it.”
“What?”
I crank my head toward Lucan, trying to read the stoic expression plastered over all his emotions. He hauls in a deep breath and meets my eyes.
“Better the alpha position goes to one of them than Gabriel.”
“But…” I don’t know much about the system of werewolves—oranythingabout it, in fact. But I haven’t seen a single other pack member who’s as strong, or as determined, or as brave as him. “You’re a perfect alpha, Lucan. Why would you want to give that away?”
Now, his eyes drop to the floor, and it’s his mother who answers from her chair. “My son here thinks that his duties as an alpha—as a king—directly contradict his feelings for you. And that he has to choose one over the other.”
The tone leaking from her words couldn’t be any clearer: she disagrees. But I turn toward Lucan again, every promise and declaration he’s ever given me swelling in my chest, nearly bursting. I can’t tell if my stomach flutters with soft, delicate butterflies or if those butterflies have razor-sharp wings, threatening to shred me apart from the inside-out.
“You want to choose me over your pack? That’s absurd, Lucan!”
“No.” He lifts his head, and the entire kitchen seems to drop several degrees until I’m shivering in place. “What’s absurd is that you’d think I’d choose anythingbesidesyou, little nightmare. I’ve told you over and over that I’m not leaving you, so when are you going to fucking hear me?”
When he eats the distance between us in two enormous strides and crowds into my space, everything else disappears except for the two of us. Just me and him, yellow and red pupils locked on each other.
“Do you need to hear the actual words before it gets through that beautiful mind of yours?” he continues in a softer growl. “I love you, Saskia. I loved you before I even laid eyes on you. I fell in love with your thoughts. Your worries. Your joys. Your fears. The way you talk and observe the world and fight for what’s right, no matter what. What runs through your blood doesn’t matter to me when I already know what runs through your heart.”
I stare at him, unable to lock down the feelings swirling through me at his conviction. I know I should be saying something back right about now, but my jaw seems to lock up when I try to move it.
Lucan shakes his head, his eyes dusting over my face with the gentleness of a feather. “No need. I’m not expecting anything in return. I just need you to understand that yes, I do choose you over the rest of the world. You don’t have to like it. But there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
His mouth sets in a firm line, and I have half a mind to take him right here, in this very kitchen, to soften the harsh lines written all over his face. But someone clears their throat and knocks some very important sense back into me.
“Fortunately,” Lucan’s mother says, “what’s best for the pack and what’s best for Saskia aren’t mutually exclusive.” Lucan and I both whip our heads toward her, the bubble popping around us. She grips the live edge of the kitchen table and hoists herself to a stand. “So you don’t need to give up your alpha title at all, son. Not when both sides of the coin need you.”
Lucan holds his breath, glancing between his mother, his friends, and me, his eyebrows pinched slightly.
Soren rolls his eyes. “Do you need to hear the actual words before it gets through that beautiful head of yours?” he taunts, and raps a knuckle against Lucan’s head before Lucan can fend him off. “Weneedyou, man.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Lucan pushes Soren away, but Merrick’s clutching his stomach with suppressed laughter, and a smile twitches in the corner of Lucan’s mouth.
Vivian beams at me. “Now that that’s out of the way… come on.”
She extends her hand out to me, and I take it, finding more solace than she could ever, ever know in the fact that she’s still willing to touch me even though our skins are so different—mine as hard as marble, hers flexible enough to shift.
“Let’s get you dressed. Not to impress this time, but to kick some ass.”
I certainlyfeellike I could kick some ass in this garb.
