Chapter 19

Leandro had helped extend them.

I almost broke the connection right there.

It’s one thing to be taken off-guard by the intensity of feelings I didn’t recognize. It’s another thing entirely for something I took as simple truth to be revealed as deception, even partially. My tattoos were mine. Mine. My blood, my servitude, created long before Leandro should have ever come upon the picture. Yet, here he had extensive knowledge of a ritual I had no memory of, of watching the tattoos take shape around my wrists, springing from nothing to pulse with the life force that protected me from the dervish of outside dangers.

Even more surprising was discovering these were not the immediate memories I’d asked him to focus on. These were older, buried in the annals of our first months together.

Movement distracted me from my ruminations. The arms around me tightened, almost painfully so, then withdrew as I—my Caleb self from the past—rose from the bed…

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