“Penny—”
“No, listen to me.” My laugh came out broken. “Just listen, okay? We’ll do the tests. We’ll let Luka and Aunt Kat and Sekhmet and whoever else wants to stare into my soul like it’s public property figure out if they’re right. We’ll see if there really is a mate bond between us.”
His face changed.
I hated that I did not know how to read it.
I hated that I had always known how to read Liam until this moment, and now the one thing I needed most was gone.
“And if there is,” I said, forcing the words out even as they tore something open on the way, “I won’t fight your rejection.”
The lake went silent.
Or maybe my ears did.
Liam stared at me.
I nodded, because if I stopped moving, stopped speaking, stopped pretending I was capable of being reasonable about this, I was going to
