Page 57
“No.” The chauffeur shook his head. “My apologies, sir.”
Yoichi nodded. “This is new for the both of us. We’ll find a way for you to serve my mate, too. For now, don’t look at her. Don’t stand too close. Don’t even smell or speak to her, or I will kill you, and it will be painful.”
I parted my lips in shock.
The chauffeur kept his eyes on the stone path. “Yes, sir.”
Yoichi shifted me higher in his arms. “I’m having. . .difficulty controlling myself when another man is near her.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Perhaps it will improve in a few decades.”
I blinked. “Decades? I think you need to fix that in a few days.”
He put his attention back on me. “Time is different for me, little witch.”
“That may be true, but you can’t be growling at any man that simply looks my way.”
“I can and I will. Be lucky that I don’t kill all of them.”
“You won’t kill anyone over me.”
“We’re fated, little witch. No one will test that. No one.” His words vibrated through his chest and straight into the back of my neck, right beneath my dreadlocks and at the top of my spine.
In fact. . .this strange, tender spot at the back of my neck began to throb.
I reached up and touched it. As soon as my fingertips met that. . .bump. . .a shiver poured down my spine and made me curl my toes hard.
What the fuck is this?!
Yoichi's gaze locked on my fingers at the back of my neck. His eyes flared bright orange. His arms went rigid around me, and a low sound rumbled out of him.
I moved my hand away from the mark. “Did you fucking bite me without me knowing?”
“Not yet, but soon, little witch. Very fucking soon, so stop touching it.”
“I can touch my own body—”
“We’re fated mates. That body is mine now. Just like every part of me and every form is yours. Stop touching it. I’m getting jealous.”
He’s insane.
Still, that response. . .for whatever reason. . .it left me speechless. All I could do was swallow down hard.
Fated. . .
How did a woman know if someone was her fated mate?
Nobody had ever handed me a manual on this topic. Aunt Delphine had taught me how to read bones, bless bullets, and sing a haint into a mason jar.
However, she'd never once sat me down and said, Baby, this is how you'll know.
Yet this powerful man, this ancient creature, had looked me dead in my eyes and claimed that I was his.
And. . .I believed him and felt the truth of it all the way down to my marrow. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Especially not with any of the seven lovers now sleeping in their graves back home.
But I wasn't a fool either.
