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He hadn’t meant to see them, it had just been a coincidence. He would swear on his life that he hadn’t meant to see them. But he did, he could also smell them.
He could smell her arousal, as she had her meeting with the Shadowsinger. He felt a rage, deep within. Those primal instincts that came with the mating bond. He closed his eyes, and pushed down on that rage. Efficiently stamping it out, before he left the way he had come, before he could be seen, heard, or have them smell him.
He made it back to the room he was staying in, and he realized how much of them was even in the guest rooms. It made sense, this was their home, in their court. But he hadn’t realized until now, just how suffocating it felt.
Of all the places he had been, he had never had the feeling of being suffocated. Maybe it was because the fact that he didn’t fit in here. Maybe it was too dark. Maybe it had been that everywhere he had called home in his life, there had been something of him there at least. Something familiar.
There was nothing familiar in the Night Court. The only thing that he could consider a feeling of home here was his mate. Was Elain.
He wasn’t going to stop Elain from exploring her options. If she truly wanted to be with the Shadowsinger, he- he would find a way to cope. He had no idea how, but he would find a way. If Elain truly wanted to be with the Shadowsinger, he wouldn’t stop her.
That didn’t give her the right to string him along though. Accepting his gifts, whether she used them or not, she accepted them. Running away from the topic of their bond any chance she got, not looking at him, barely acknowledging his existence.
If she didn’t want the bond- if she didn’t want him, he had a right to know. She owed him as much as an explanation. He would back off, and let her live her life.
He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t like Tamlin. But he didn’t want to look like a fool. He didn’t want to appear as a sad puppy who would come running any time someone mentioned Elains name.
Elain may look as delicate and harmless as a butterfly, but Lucien shouldn’t be so surprised that, with sisters like Feyre and the viper- and Nesta, that Elain could produce a powerfully venomous bite herself.
Just like that, the second he thought it, a wave of guilt and shame crashed over him, so much so he had to take a seat before his legs refused to hold the weight of it. He couldn’t fault Elain for being hesitant and wary of the bond, of him. She was still new to this Fae life, and the traditions and instincts. It had only barely been two years.
The guilt, coming so soon after his anger, the emotions must have been more powerful than he thought, since before long, he felt a tug through his rib cage.
A hand going to rest on his chest above the spot he felt the incredibly strange sensation, Lucien looked down. He was certain he had never felt anything like that before.
It hadn’t taken long, perhaps just a minute, before he felt it again, and it was then that Lucien realized what it was.
It was the piece of the very thread that had tied his soul to Elains. The mating bond. The very thing that had been causing him so much turmoil just now, and Elain had just tugged on it. Elain had gone out of her way to find the bond and tug on it.
Perhaps the anger he felt at seeing her with the Shadowsinger hadn’t been fully stamped out like he had thought, because as soon as the awe of realizing that Elain had acknowledged their bond had passed he was growing angry again.
She didn’t tug on that bond to see how he was doing, or see if he was alright. She had tugged on that small golden thread because he was causing her discomfort through it.
There was a knock on his door, and Lucien didn’t have to answer it to know who it was. He hadn’t even stood up to go open the door before she had let herself in, and he just watched her come in, feeling utterly defeated.
Every time he looked at her, he swore she was even more beautiful than the last. He didn’t know how it was possible, but Elain Archeron was always immensely more beautiful every time he laid eyes on her. The fact that he stood there in her night dress and- and his jacket didn’t help.
“Are you okay, because you keep pushing intense, conflicting emotions on me, and-”
She had taken a few steps closer to him, probably without knowing it. Lucien had shot up from his sitting position, stepping away from her. He was terrified, especially with the anger rising in him again, of being near her.
He didn’t want to be near her, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself. He didn’t want to touch her. He didn’t want to touch her and risk hurting her, or making her uncomfortable. He didn’t want to touch her, because she didn’t want him to touch her. If he were to touch her right now, whether in anger, or tenderness, or comfort, he would be no better than his father was to his mother.
So with every step closer she took, Lucien took two steps away from her, while also trying to control the anger in him.
He hadn’t been listening to her. She was talking and he hadn’t been paying attention. He knew this, because suddenly, there was a very determined pull on that thread, through his ribs. His had rose his hand to his chest as his anger flared.
“Oh, you have some nerve doing that.” Lucien ground out, looking down at his mate. “Do you even know what that feels like?” He asked her, before taking hold of that little gold thread in his ribs, and pulling on it himself. He saw as Elain had gasped at the sensation, looking up at him. Her own frustrations clear on her face.
He didn’t give her a chance to talk. He had had enough, he needed to say something. She had willingly sought him out, so he was going to talk.
“Nearly two years. Nearly two years that thread has tied us together, and you have done nothing to acknowledge it, yet tonight with the first hint of discomfort you get from me, and you tug on it,” Lucien says, pulling again on that small thread, causing Elain to stumble forward as if he had actually pulled her closer to him. “To let me know that you’re uncomfortable. That you’re displeased with the feeling?”
Lucien kept slowly moving backward, as he kept speaking. “You came here tonight, not to see if I was okay. You came here tonight because, for the first time, you got something from my end of this bond, and you didn’t like it. Nearly two years of you dragging me along with that pretty little golden thread, and tonight is the first time you touch it because you’re uncomfortable?”
Lucien couldn’t back up any more, he was against the wall, but he still kept speaking. “I have been patient, I have given you space, I have not pushed down on this bond, or intentionally touched that thread because I know you aren’t ready. Maybe you’ll never be ready, and that’s fine. But I don’t deserve to be strung along.”
He didn’t think Elain knew she was walking closer to him, but he’d wish she stopped. He didn’t want to cross a line he would regret.
“And to top it off, you come in here, for your comfort. Make me stop sending stress down that bond, for your comfort. You come in here, and I can still smell him on you. His scent clings to you, his arousal. You truly don’t know how much more difficult that makes it to keep myself in check. If you don’t want this bond, if you don’t want me, than you need to tell me. You owe me that much at the very least.”
Elain was now standing a few feet in front of him, as he continued his speech. “You didn’t ask for this bond, I understand that. But you need to understand that I didn’t ask for it either. I thought I had a mate. We were waiting for the bond to snap into place. I thought I had a mate, and I lost that when Jes- when she was murdered in front of me, while I was powerless to save her.” Luciens voice broke, and he couldn’t finish saying Jesmindas name. Her loss still to painful, and the guilt he felt at even daring to mention her to Elain was overwhelming.
He saw something shift in her eyes. She was standing right in front of him, looking as if she was weighing everything he had said. But she saw a look of compassion in her eyes, of sorrow.
Suddenly Elain was hugging Lucien. He knew better than to hope it meant she was accepting him. He had expressed a variety of emotions, and she was helping him in a way she thought would work best.
Elain was delicate like a butterfly, and he saw that she could have an incredibly venomous bite. He knew she would always set his emotions ablaze and at war within him. But standing here, with her hugging him, Lucien had to admit that it was the closest feeling to being home he had possibly ever felt.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as if afraid she would back away within seconds, Lucien raised his arms to hug his mate back, and allowed himself this feeling of familiarity, and coming home. Even if it would only last for a few seconds.