EMILI
I looked at him from the bed, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure he could hear it. The Lycan King stood by the door of his own bedroom, arms crossed, wearing that unreadable expression he used when he didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking.
I was afraid. But by now, fear was an old acquaintance, a traveling companion that no longer paralyzed me. I had faced death too many times to be afraid of it—at the cliff, in the forest, with the demon, with the fat man in the red robe. What was a conversation compared to all that? What was opening my chest with words after life had already ripped it open with claws?
I had already lived through the worst. Or at least, that’s what I wanted to believe.
“I’m not going to be just another woman on your list,” I said.
Alaric didn’t mo
