She had wed Hudson.
He bumped into the gentleman who stood before him.
“Mind your step.”
How could she? He continued forward without pause. After five hundred years of frustration and loneliness, he had found his lifemate, and Cupid had poisoned the arrow.
She had married another, and tonight would bed her husband.
Not him.
His feet moved as if he glided, pulled by a rope to her. This was wretched! His vision streaked, danced and swirled in blue and gold ripples, making his stomach flip.
Yet he’d found her!
The room hummed and dropped away. He stepped in front of her, shaking. He stared down at eyes so green they reminded him of a serene, moss-covered pond. A shiver raced from the tip of his toes to the white streak in his hair.
“You survived.” His deep and raspy words barely left his mouth.
Her eyes widened, and her skin paled, accentuating the freckles across her nose. “Pardon? Do I know you, sir?”
She had freckles… His lips turned up into a genuine smile. Freckles. He wanted to know every tiny detail about her.
A weighty force pressed upon his shoulders, buckling his knees.
Hell.
He knelt before her, bent low, and stared up at her like a peasant in awe before a goddess.
The image of her as he had dragged her from the water—blood and seawater trailing over him and staining his clothes—slid through him.
Now this distortion stained his soul.
He had left her…
Left his mate for dead.
How could he not have known? He licked his lips with a tongue that held no moisture. The scent of orange blossoms and cherries filled his flaring nostrils. Her scent. The scent of her blood.
She’d had no wedding ring on her finger that night. He opened his mouth and grasped her hand. She needed to know she was his mate, a love for all time…
Thick-gloved fingers wrapped about his forearm, and his scales prickled in familiar warning. Ilmir.
“Please excuse him, Your Grace. He is truly in his cups.” Ilmir’s calm, deep voice slashed through his beautiful rainbow fog.
The censure of the room came crashing back to Jordan’s senses.
Ilmir’s breath pressed to his ear. “You are making a dangerous spectacle.”
Jordan turned his head toward Ilmir and narrowed his eyes. How dare he? The man had done everything against all mores his entire life.
“Jordan.” Ilmir glanced at the woman before them. “Is this…” His gray eyebrows rose over his pale, ice-blue eyes in question.
Jordan remained silent and continued to glare at his brother. Beyond his grayish-white hair, his well-tailored evening attire made him appear the perfect, elegant young gentleman. Appear… Jordan frowned and ground his teeth together. How dare he act noble? Here. Now. He wanted to grab Ilmir by the ear and drag him outside, but nothing was as it should be tonight, and this act too had strings.
Hudson stepped before them, blocking his new duchess from view. A deep frown scarred his face. “I suggest you listen to your brother. Your family is in enough of a public tumble, which I will help you out of, but this…” His brow arched, and dreaminess glazed his eyes. An odd smile flashed across his lips, then disappeared.
Ilmir wrapped his arm under Jordan’s and pulled him to his feet. His breath warmed Jordan’s ear. “Don’t fret. If she is yours, no one can deny the fact. Not even her.” Ilmir slowly turned him from his beauty.
Jordan wobbled and swayed, his shaking legs unable to support him. He floated as if he was a bloody cork in water…water so unfamiliar and deadly. Deadly? He mentally jarred himself. He was water. Water could never kill him. He’d found her, and he would not leave her here for Hudson’s use.
“Act inebriated.” Ilmir gripped him hard and almost dragged him through the crowd.
Like the devil he would! Jordan glanced back. Her eyes, huge emerald pools that spoke of a deep soul, watched him as she talked to an older woman at her side. He pulled against Ilmir’s grasp. “Release me.”
Ilmir’s fingers tightened. “No, brother. This is not how we untangle this.”
“This is not yours to untangle.” He could not leave without saying more to her.
She needed to know. Know what had happened.
She needed to know she was his mate.
Not Hudson’s.
“Release your fingers,” he ground out, and the sacs in his mouth swelled. He jerked his head back—that was not supposed to happen unless he prepared to bite—and clenched his teeth, holding his lips closed on the poisons that swelled in his glands.
He glanced around the room. Bloody hell! His body changed against his will, and he did not know what those changes encompassed. The room watched them. What was happening to him? He firmly planted the soles of his shoes on the marble floor.