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"You're not throwing me," I tell him. "You're going to be there with me. On my arm as my date, and—" I flutter my eyelashes "—as my betrothed."

He pales slightly, looking uncomfortable, and I realize maybe I've pushed him too far.

"Right?" I say as brightly as I can. "Lead on, let's go to dinner."

He holds out his elbow to me and I take it, my hand mechanically touching, curling around his bicep. I swallow hard. He's even more cut than I realized. And for a fleeting second, I wish that this was a real date, and that we were dressed up because he wanted to take me out, because he wanted me—not to make sure I was fed before I put myself, both of us, in serious danger.

The door to the Midnight House opens of its own accord, and a crisp fall breeze blows through the foyer, a few brown leaves skittering in across the black-and-white marble floor.

And we head out the door, arm in arm.

I hope like hell we make it home in one piece.

Twenty-Five

Lachlan

Ifeel selfish for even doing the gentlemanly thing of extending my arm to her. Selfish at the way my blood pounds every time her delicate fingertips brush the heavy wool of my sleeve as we walk down the quiet, tree-lined streets toward Center City.

The little Italian restaurant hasn't changed in forty years. Tucked into a brownstone basement three blocks off the avenue, it’s one of the few neutral dining rooms in Philadelphia that quietly caters to immortals, rogue shifters, and high-end mortals who know better than to ask why the gentleman in the corner booth doesn't have a pulse.

"Are we overdressed for this place?" Vivienne asks nervously, her heels clicking against the damp brick sidewalk. She tugs at the velvet slit of her skirt, trying to make sure the leather dagger harness strapped to her thigh isn't flashing under the streetlights. "I feel like I look like an extra from The Godfather, and you look like you’re about to sack an English garrison."

"Lass, there’s not a restaurant in this hemisphere that would turn you away looking like that," the truth slips out before I can bite it back.

A deep, rosy flush creeps up her neck, warming the pale expanse of her collarbones in the dusk. My cock tightens in response, my beast growling low in my gut. For fourteen days, I’ve managed to keep my hands to myself in that echoing house—barely. But walking beside her in the open night air, smelling of lavender soap, clean rain, and that intoxicating heather that belongs only to her, the restraint feels paper-thin.

"I still can't believe you're taking me to dinner," she says, her breath misting faintly in the October chill. "Given that in about an hour, we're supposed to be crashing a vampire blood-ball in Louisiana."

"That’s precisely why we’re having dinner," I tell her, keeping my stride measured to match her heels. "Going into House Sanguine on an empty stomach is suicide. And besides..." I pause, swallowing down the sudden roughness in my throat. "If we’re going to play the part of a betrothed couple, we might as well play it properly."

"Play the part?" She arches an eyebrow, glancing down at the living Celtic knot branded into her bare wrist. "Lachlan, we have matching glowing smoke tattoos beneath our epidermis. I think the part is fairly well cast."

"Tattoos aren't enough for the leeches," I say.

I stop beneath the amber glow of a wrought-iron streetlamp. The autumn wind catches loose tendrils of her dark hair, blowing them across her cheek.

I reach into the pocket of my black doublet.

My fingers close around the cold, heavy platinum band nestled in the velvet pouch. It’s been hidden beneath the floorboards of my quarters for three hundred years—an ancient MacTavish heirloom, forged by clan smiths and set with a flawless, emerald-cut Ceylon sapphire flanked by two trillion-cut diamonds.

It was forged for a mate. For the only woman my beast would ever bow to.

She thinks it’s theater. She has to think it’s theater, or she’ll run.

"Give me your hand," I tell her.

Vivienne blinks, her brown eyes wide in the lamplight, but she lifts her left hand. Her fingers are cool.

I slide the ring out of the pouch. The sapphire catches the streetlamp, burning with a deep, midnight-cyan fire that matches the exact shade of her unmaking magic.

Her breath hitches in a sharp, audible gasp. "Lachlan... what is that?"

"House Midnight jewelry," I lie smoothly, though the deceit leaves an ache behind my ribs. "Found it in the vault. If Julian St. George is looking for cracks in our story, a bare finger is an invitation to test us."

I slide the heavy band over her knuckle.

It fits like it was measured to the millimeter. The moment the platinum touches her skin, the sapphire pulses once, a warm, resonant thrum of magic sinking straight into her marrow.