Chapter 81

Chapter 81
When Lucien brought me back to my apartment, it felt as though I was standing on the edge of losing my mind completely.
I had barely spoken during the drive back from Jacob’s apartment, and even now silence clung to me as I stood by the window staring at the fading sunlight beyond the glass. My heart still had not settled. My thoughts crashed into one another so violently that it felt difficult to breathe around them.
I did not want to cry. I could not.
The tears burned behind my eyes, but they refused to fall.
Sarah hated me. Not just hated me, but resented me deeply enough to betray me while pretending to stand beside me all this time. Jacob had been sleeping with her, and somehow that hurt almost as much as discovering he was apparently capable of things that should not have existed outside fantasy novels. Light bending beneath his hands. Shields appearing out of nowhere. Powers he had never once trusted me enough to reveal.
But he had told Sarah.
That realization cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
The image of her on top of him replayed viciously in my head, twisting through my chest until it physically hurt to breathe.
And then there was Lucien.
I turned slowly toward him.
He stood in the center of my living room watching me in silence, his expression unreadable, as though he was waiting for the exact moment I finally shattered so he could catch the pieces.
Or maybe I was delusional.
Maybe I had been a fool from the very beginning, and Jacob was right. Maybe Lucien really was going to destroy me in the end.
The distance between us suddenly felt enormous despite the smallness of the room, not just physically but emotionally, as though everything that had happened had placed something cold and impossible between us.
I inhaled shakily, and this time tears finally gathered in my eyes.
Hurt came first.
Then rage.
It rose so quickly I could barely contain it as I pushed myself away from the window and walked toward him, stopping beside the couch.
“I can’t take the lies anymore.” My hand cut sharply through the air as I spoke, frustration bleeding into every word. “Tell me everything I need to know about you. It’s the only way I can trust you. It’s the only way...”
My voice faltered as I swallowed hard.
“If you can’t, then this will be the last day we ever see each other.”
Lucien did not answer immediately. He only stood there staring somewhere beyond me, jaw tense, as though he were fighting thoughts I could not see.
I took another step closer, anger sharpening beneath my skin.
“You can’t keep ignoring me,” I snapped. “And don’t give me that bullshit about protecting me, because I’m already in danger. You should have realized that by now.”
He exhaled heavily and rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture strained and restless. But when he finally looked at me, what I saw in his eyes was not frustration.
It was fear.
Fear so deep it unsettled me instantly.
“I don’t know what to say to you, baby girl.”
That broke something in me.
“Of course you know what to say,” I shot back. “The truth. Just tell me the fucking truth. What were Jacob and Sarah trying so desperately to tell me? What do you want from me, Lucien? What?”
My chest tightened painfully.
“Do you even love me?”
Something shifted in his expression at that.
His pupils darkened, emotion flickering across his face so quickly I almost missed it. Regret. Fear. Maybe even love.
“It’s not about knowing what to say,” he said quietly. “Things have become far more complicated than you realize.”
“They’re complicated because you let them become complicated,” I fired back, my voice trembling under the weight of everything I felt. “Because both of us did. I should have demanded the truth sooner, but I’m done pretending none of this is happening anymore.”
I dragged a hand through my hair and turned away for half a second, trying to steady myself before the pressure inside me exploded completely.
“Fuck!” I shouted, the word ripping out of me raw and frustrated before I looked back at him again. “Just tell me everything.”
Lucien ran a hand through his hair, visibly torn apart by something.
“What good is the truth going to do,” he asked quietly, “when it won’t change anything?”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you serious?”
“Nala has already won.” His voice carried a heaviness that made my stomach twist. “That’s how I can ask that. Sarah and Jacob are the least of my worries right now.”
“Nala hasn’t won,” I said immediately, stepping closer. “And she will not win.”
My voice softened slightly, but only because exhaustion had begun settling beneath the anger.
“What I want to understand is what you meant earlier. About not being able to mate with a human.”
The words felt strange leaving my mouth, unreal even now.
“Why did you match with me then, Lucien? Why did you let this happen? Why did you make me fall in love with you if you already knew we could never truly be together?”
Lucien moved toward me then, reaching for my waist as though instinct pulled him there automatically.
“Calm down.”
I pulled away immediately.
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
He flinched.
Not dramatically, not visibly enough for most people to notice, but I saw it. My words had hurt him.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
His expression tightened with something desperate.
“I want you,” he admitted softly. “I need you.”
The confession hit me so hard it almost hurt.
“I’m sorry, Allison. I should have told you everything before Nala became involved. But I was scared.”
“Scared of what?” My voice cracked around the question. “Tell me.”
His eyes locked onto mine.
“That I would lose you.”
Pain clenched hard around my chest.
“You can never lose me,” I whispered, even though nothing in my life had ever felt more uncertain. “I want the truth so I can stand beside you, not so I can leave you.”
Lucien closed his eyes briefly, anguish flashing across his face.
“Whatever stands in the way of us being together can be destroyed,” he said quietly. “But it isn’t that simple.”
“It is to me.”
I stepped closer again, refusing to let him retreat behind silence.
“We’ve come too far for this to end now.”
His composure finally cracked.
“Do you think I want this to end?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion. “Do you think I can even imagine a life without you in it anymore? We are linked, Allison.”
I swallowed hard against the ache rising in my throat.
“Then why can’t we be together?” I whispered. “Why can’t we mate?”
Lucien looked at me like the answer was destroying him from the inside.
“Because if we do,” he said, his voice breaking into something almost feral, “you’ll die.”