Aveline
The silence of the suite was different now. It wasn’t the heavy, charged silence of Matteo’s presence, nor was it the vibrating tension of our argument on the desk. It was a hollow, ringing quiet—the kind that settles over a grave before the first shovel of dirt hits the wood.
I had spent the last hour in the bath, trying to scrub the scent of the wolf-bane gas from my lungs and the feel of Matteo’s desperate, bruising kisses from my skin. My body felt like a map of contradictions. My pulse still hammered with the memory of his hands on my hips, but my chest ached with the coldness of his rejection when he saw the brand.
He looked at me like I was a broken thing, I thought, pulling the damp silk robe tighter around my frame. Not a mate. A tragedy.
I stepped into the bedroom, th
