Chapter 175
Sebastian
By the time the lock clicked, nearly an hour had passed and my hands were a bloody mess, crescents carved deep into my palms where my claws had punctured skin and kept going. The door opened slowly, revealing Lirael in my silk robe—when the hell had she taken that from my closet?—her face pale but composed, those silver-grey eyes meeting mine with defiance that would've been admirable if it wasn't so fucking infuriating.
Then her gaze dropped to my hands, to the blood still welling from the wounds, and her mask cracked.
"What did you do?" She grabbed my hands before I could stop her, fingers gentle as they pried my claws away from the torn flesh, and the wolf settled fractionally at her touch despite everything. "Sebastian, why—"
"Moonshade," I interrupted, watching her pupils contract fractionally—there, that telltale flinch that confirmed what I already knew. "Don't try to deny it—I saw. "
I thought she might lie anyway, spin some bullshit story about cleaning products or herbal tea. But her shoulders sagged, exhaustion bleeding through her defenses in a way that made something in my chest constrict painfully.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, but the words lacked conviction. We both knew it.
Fuck this. I reached out slowly, giving her a chance to pull away if she wanted, and tilted her chin up with one bloodied finger. Her pupils were dilated despite the harsh lighting, and there—barely visible if you knew what to look for—a faint purple luminescence around her irises, like someone had traced them with ultraviolet ink.
"Your eyes still have the residual glow." My thumb brushed her cheekbone, smearing blood across her pale skin. "That only happens within twenty-four hours of exposure, and only in beings with significant magical reserves. So I'll ask again, and this time I want the fucking truth—why?"
She held my gaze for a long moment, and I could see the calculation happening behind those storm-grey eyes, the rapid assessment of how much to admit versus how much to hide. Finally she sighed, the sound carrying bone-deep weariness that made me want to pull her close and never let go.
"I needed it to boost my reserves." The words came slowly, carefully chosen. "I'm working on a treatment protocol for your condition, and it requires power I don't naturally possess. The moonshade accelerates the process."
The admission drove the air from my lungs like a physical blow. She'd poisoned herself—deliberately, knowingly subjected herself to that level of agony—for me. To help me. To try to fix something I'd long since accepted as unfixable.
"Jesus Christ, Lirael." My voice came out rougher than intended as I pulled her against my chest, my arms coming around her with a possessiveness that probably should've alarmed her. "Do you have any idea what that substance does? The pain it causes? People have gone mad from a single dose. They've begged for death rather than endure another second of it."
"I know." Her voice was muffled against my shirt, steady despite everything. "But if it helps save you, if it gives us even a chance at stopping the entropy, then it's worth it. You're worth it."
The words should've made me angry—did make me angry, hot fury rising in my throat at her casual dismissal of her own wellbeing, at the presumption that she had the right to sacrifice herself without consulting me first. But underneath the anger was something else, something I didn't have a name for and wasn't sure I wanted to examine too closely. Something that felt dangerously like what other people meant when they talked about being moved, about being touched by someone's sacrifice in a way that fundamentally changed you.
"Goddammit." I tightened my hold, burying my face in her hair and breathing in her scent—lavender and moonlight and underneath it all, that faint bitter trace of moonshade that made my stomach turn. "Promise me. Promise me that next time—if there is a next time—you'll tell me first. That you won't go through this alone."
I felt her nod against my chest, felt the slight relaxation in her frame that suggested she was accepting the compromise even as I suspected she had no intention of keeping it if circumstances required otherwise. Lirael was a survivor. Survivors learned early that sometimes you could only rely on yourself, that trusting others was a luxury you couldn't afford.
But for now, I'd take what I could get and hope it was enough.
---
Dinner was quiet, both of us too wrapped up in our thoughts to make much conversation beyond the necessary pleasantries. I kept catching myself staring at her across the table, cataloging every small movement, every flicker of discomfort that crossed her face when she thought I wasn't looking. The moonshade was still working its way through her system—I could smell it, could see it in the slight tremor of her hands when she reached for her water glass.
It made me want to break something. Preferably whoever had provided her with the fucking poison in the first place.
When she announced she was going back to her room on the 87th floor to shower and change, the wolf's protest rose immediately, a possessive snarl that I barely managed to swallow back.
"Why?" The question came out sharper than intended, and I saw her eyebrow arch at my tone. "There's a perfectly functional bathroom here. Multiple bathrooms, in fact."
"I need my own space." Her voice carried that edge that meant she was prepared to dig in and fight if I pushed. "My own things. I've been living in your pocket for weeks, Sebastian. Surely you can spare me a few hours of privacy."
The reasonable part of my brain—the part that understood concepts like boundaries and personal autonomy—knew she was right, that I was being possessive to the point of absurdity. But the wolf didn't give a shit about reason, didn't understand why its mate would want to be anywhere except within arm's reach, and the compromise I'd reached with that part of myself was tenuous at best.
"Twenty-four-hour monitoring," I mused aloud, watching her expression shift from irritation to alarm with a satisfaction I probably shouldn't have felt. "That's actually not a bad idea. I could have Marcus install cameras in your room, set up a live feed to my tablet. That way you'd have your privacy, and I'd have peace of mind."
"That's not privacy, that's surveillance." But I could see the calculation in her eyes, the assessment of whether I was serious or just fucking with her. "And it's creepy as hell, even by your standards."