Munro began to pace. “Say Jels was no more. We still canna stay as we are. I’ve told you that my claiming bite alone could kill you, much less what my beast would do to you under the influence of the full moon.”
She’d given these scenarios a lot of thought. “You don’t have to mark me. We can have intercourse without a bite. And for the night of the moon, Desh can trace us to a place where it has already set.” Assuming the demon wasn’t the one who’d informed on them.
“Then am I never to have my mate under the light of the moon? You canna imagine what you’re asking me to give up.”
“More than I have given up?” Grasping for patience, she said, “I’m looking for a solution that we can both live with.”
“You fucking have no’ found it. If you could just trust me. Have I steered you wrong in bed? Do you no’ enjoy the things I do to you?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to sacrifice more of me to experience more of you. Why must you go to such dangerous lengths to change me? Just be with me.”
“For how long? I can never forget that in two of your lifetimes you’ve died by a Lorean’s hand before you reached thirty. What if that’s your destiny and immortality is the only thing that can change it?”
“And what if the ring doesn’t work right? You intend to meddle with powers you know nothing about to alter me. The choice must be mine.”
“Then make the right bloody one.”
She refused to be browbeaten into this. Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Munro, as long as you’re bent on this course, I can never allow my feelings for you to deepen any further.”
“Then we’re fucked,” Munro grated. “Because as long as you’re mortal, I canna allow mine to deepen.” As if he could moderate his feelings for her.
She stood with her eyes flashing, her chin raised—as necessary to him as air to his lungs. “You truly don’t see me as your equal.”
“Equal in strength? In fortitude or longevity? No, I doona consider a mortal my equal, just as you would no’ consider a green hunter to be yours. But if you’ll accept what I am desperate to give you, then you can have these gifts.”
Why could she not understand what his worry was doing to him? What was it Munro’s mam had told her sons? In every relationship, sometimes you’re the steady strop that brightens the blade. Sometimes you’re the blade in need of care. You canna always be one or the other.
With Will, Munro had forever been the strop. He’d spent nine hundred years working his arse off to keep his twin alive. Now that Munro might finally be able to rest on that score, was he to have the same fight with his mate?
The thought spurred his temper, the pressures of the last several days threatening to explode. The pressures of the last several eras! “I’ve awaited you for nearly a millennium, begging fate to give you to me. Then she does, but that fickle witch had a surprise in store. My mate is selfish.”
“Because I want a say in my future? I went from being in charge of myself and others to being powerless. I went from knowing my world to knowing nothing. I need to reclaim my power, but you plan to rob me once more.”
“Is that why you hold yourself distant from me? You give me your body, but no’ your heart and mind.” Lykae mates always shared secrets, yet Kereny remained close-lipped. “I still have no idea how your parents died or why you loved everyone in the circus so much. I still have no idea how to make both of us happy and earn those feelings for myself. But one day, I will figure this out.” He reached for her, cupping her nape with a shaking hand. “And once this obsession runs both ways, you’ll thank the gods that I was ready to do whatever it took for us to be together.”
The mulish set of her chin told him he wasn’t getting through to her at all. So what the hell should he do with her?
He couldn’t keep marching toward Dacia as the full moon neared, and he couldn’t leave her behind at Glenrial. He respected her determination as he would a foe’s might—and if she’d made up her mind to go after Jels, she bloody well would.
Sweat beaded his upper lip. His beast was rising, barreling to the surface. It wanted to sink its claws into her so she could never get away. By the way she stared at his eyes, he knew they were turning, which just added fuel to flame. “This is about more than changing your species. You still hate immortals.”