LUCIAN’S POV
My spine instinctively stiffened.
There was a roaring in my ears. A thundering in my chest. The two sensations crashed together, loud, relentless. I could barely think around the noise.
I could feel the faint vibration of the car’s idle hum, see the low beam of the headlights spilling across the driveway, but my thoughts were nowhere near the present.
They’d splintered backward—years backward—to a time when the world made sense. When my heart was whole.
“H-how did you know?”
I didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, until Sera’s voice—quiet, almost trembling—came again.
“I… suspected,” she said. “The way you got when we talked about mates, and again when you told me about your ‘friend’ who gave you the formula for the Moon Dew Nectar. And then I heard it, plain and simple, from…mouths at OTS.”
I closed my eyes. A long, steady exhale left me.
I should have known it would be inevitable. I should have told her first. I should have never hidden it from her.
