Kelly gently brushed my arm in support.
"And were you?" Mr. Franklin asked quietly. "In love with him, I mean."
I nodded, a bitter swallow catching in my throat. "At the beginning, yes. Very much so. Though, looking back now with a clear head, I can’t truly say if I was in love with him or with the idea of him, or of the bond. We were friendly at best, but mostly just polite to one another. From the very first day I joined his family I realized he had a unusually deep, intense connection to his late brother’s mate, Diana. I thought absolutely nothing of it initially, except for the fact that it deeply upset me, because she was very rude and mean to me from day one, and Lucian never tried to defend me or told her to stop. He spent significantly more time at her house than our own. Whenev
