Chapter 43

His hand moved to her throat, his fingers stroking her skin and feeling for any trace of the leech’s bite. “Last night I,” he said hesitantly, “I could have seriously hurt you, Avery.”

“You didn’t,” she replied.

“But I could have,” he said.

“But you didn’t,” she repeated.

“Why did you ask me to bite you?”

When she didn’t reply, he tugged gently on her long hair until she looked up at him.

“Why?”

She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to tell him that a part of her—a surprisingly large part of her—had hoped that his bite would turn her. That if she became a Lycan, perhaps she could stay with him forever.

But there was such a look of pain and misery on his face that she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, and so she only shook her head and gave him a small and melancholy smile.

“I do not know.”

“Never ask me that again.” He gripped her chin and gave her a heartbreaking look of desperation. “Promise me, Avery.”