Chapter 82: Strawberry Lips
ÉTIENNE
As she finished, I cleared my throat, the sound breaking the hush between us.
"You can go."
Margaux arched an eyebrow, curiosity flickering in her gaze.
"The girl with the Archambault files should be here soon," I continued. "Once she arrives, I’ll have Laurent release the Beta and the sentinels. They can all go home."
"And that’s it?" she asked.
"That’s it."
She held my gaze for a long moment, then leaned back in her chair, settling in.
"Well... I don’t have anything else to do anyway," she said with a shrug. "So I can stay."
"That will not be necessary," I assured her.
"Well... My counter is also that I am half terrified the magic user will come for me again." She said it simply, without theatrics, which somehow made it worse to hear. "So I will just stay here. I am sure that is fine."
Absolutely not.
"I will put Laurent in your charge then." I shifted my weight carefully and reached for the mask to straighten it. "Or better still, I can call a dozen sentinels."
She gave me a look. "Laurent is not in the right headspace currently. You know that." She gave it a beat before going on. "And I get the feeling a lot of sentinels will not enjoy being put on my watch when it means certain death."
She turned toward the window for a moment and said, almost to herself, "You know, when I was being attacked in the bathroom, and I genuinely thought it was a talented assassin, I did wish my pack had let us women train."
I studied her profile, searching for something unspoken.
"At least then I would have been able to put up a fight." She chuckled, but it was the kind of chuckle that carried something tired underneath it, and then she shook her head. "But turns out it is just a witch or warlock who happens to be fixated on me."
"They did not kill you with their second attack." I considered it carefully before I continued. "That makes me think there is more to this. It is starting to feel like a taunt, especially since they finished the job with that poor sentinel." I paused. "I did think at first it was an enemy of the Valcourts. But I am not so sure anymore."
"The odd thing is, Valcourt has never had enmity with magic practitioners," I said. "They hide themselves well. Stick to their haven in that elusive witch mountain of theirs and keep to their own."
"Neither does Beaumont," she said.
I scoffed.
"How would you know?"
She turned to look at me. "Rude."
"The truth hurts."
She sighed then, and there was a tiredness in it that told me she meant what came next. "I do not want to fight." She folded her arms across herself. "But if we somehow got on the bad side of a witch, I am very certain they would not have wasted time with a ’mere woman.’ My brothers are there, and they are considerably more profitable targets."
"You are not just a mere woman."
The words were out before I could think better of them.
Heat rushed to my cheeks the moment the words escaped, and I turned away at once.
"Well." I fixed my gaze on the far wall and forced my voice into something clipped and businesslike. "You do not need to linger on it." I moved past the moment like a man stepping over something he would prefer not to identify. "Having a magic user hidden somewhere on these grounds gives me the heebie-jeebies. So I will make every effort to source one willing to proof this place."
"They are rare," Margaux said. "They avoid communities that are not mostly their own, and they hide well. How would that even be possible?"
"I control a very large pack." I let the certainty of it sit plainly in the air. "I am certain anything is possible if you push hard enough for it."
A hush settled between us.
"You would do that for me?"
I looked back at her. The expression on her face was open in a way that made something uncomfortable happen in my chest.
"I am starting to think you are intentionally poking at me."
She laughed.
It was her true laugh, the one I remembered from every summer spent pretending not to watch her. It burst out, sudden and unguarded, and my heart betrayed me in a way I would never confess.
I had not let myself realize how much I missed that sound until it filled the room again.
This was dangerous territory.
I looked away from her immediately.
"Well." I straightened. "Back to business." I kept my voice brisk, the way I did when I needed to remind myself what shape I was supposed to hold. "There is no point in your staying here for forty minutes or more. Laurent is professional enough to push his personal matters aside for the sake of the pack. He will manage you."
I turned to the head healer, who had been quietly tidying his workstation throughout all of this.
"I want Laurent brought here."
The man was already beginning to nod when Margaux said, "That will not be necessary."
I looked at her.
"I am staying right here." She met my eyes without flinching. "Unless I am dragged out, of course."
I let it go. I had no good reason to fight her on it that did not involve admitting reasons I had no intention of admitting.
"Well." I settled back against the headboard and looked at the ceiling instead of her. "If you are going to be here, do not eat my ear off with small talk. I am frankly not interested."
"That will be fine," she said. "I am tired. I just want to rest."
I did not answer.
I stared at the ceiling, then the far shelf, then the window where the light had grown warmer and stretched across the floor. I looked everywhere but at her, even after the healer quietly left and true silence settled over the room.
When I finally turned back, she looked asleep.
"Very funny," I said.
She did not move.
I checked the bond the way I had learned to do without meaning to, feeling for the hum of her usual awareness. Her barriers were never fully up. She had never quite learned that particular skill, or perhaps she had simply chosen not to bother. Either way, I could tell she was not performing this.
She was asleep. Genuinely, deeply asleep, right there in the infirmary chair with her arms loose in her lap.
My heart had other ideas, foolish as ever. But she was not pretending.
I sat motionless for a moment, then stood, abandoning any sense of self-preservation. I hobbled toward her, careful with my bad ankle, and stopped when I was close enough to feel her presence.
I let myself truly look at her face for the first time all afternoon.
From the dark sweep of her lashes to the line of her nose, and then lower, to her mouth. It was the kind of mouth that made certain thoughts difficult to discourage. There should have been an urge here, and there was, which I acknowledged and then immediately resented. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew the mate bond was doing what mate bonds did, pulling at the threads between us whenever I dropped my guard for half a second, and I had apparently dropped it more than half a second today.
I could end this. That option had always existed. A rejection would sever it cleanly enough. It would hurt, the way all severings did, but it would be done.
I stood there and realized I did not want to.
The realization was so unwelcome I almost laughed aloud.
Margaux had not rejected me either, and she had plenty of reasons to. She had made that abundantly clear today in every small, stubborn way she had of making things clear. She kept reaching for me. Kept turning toward me despite every wall I threw up, and I had thrown up quite a few.
Laurent’s voice came back to me, unbidden: my bullshit was the phrase he had used, patient and exhausted in equal measure.
If I still loved her, where would that leave Séverine?
I swallowed the thought down and reached out anyway. My fingers drifted toward her mouth in the half-dark, close enough that I could feel the faint warmth of her breath against my skin, close enough that I had approximately two seconds of common sense left before I crossed a line I could not easily walk back.
The door opened.
"Theodore?"
Séverine’s voice hit the room like cold water.
"What are you doing?"
I straightened. My hand dropped to my side. I turned to face her with the composed expression I had been wearing since before I could remember, the one that gave nothing away, the one that had carried me through worse moments than this.
But my face, beneath the mask, was still red.
And Séverine was already looking at Margaux.