My Fiancé Erased Our Nine-Year Mark For His Blood Servant Chapter 10
This Time, I Choose
Three weeks later, Adrian signs over nearly everything he owns to House Blackwood.
His estates. His private accounts. His investments. His shares in every company under his name.
The Blackwood jewels have already been recovered by Lucien. Adrian is not returning what he stole from my family.
He is surrendering his own fortune as compensation for what he did to me and our child.
It doesn’t matter.
My strength has fully returned. Only pale scars remain where the silver burned me. I can sit through council meetings again. I can walk across the estate without someone watching my every step.
But Lucien still treats me as if one wrong touch might break me.
He sleeps in the room across the hall.
He takes my arm on the stairs, then releases me the second I am steady.
Even the Eternal Mark between us has become a line he refuses to cross.
Tonight, I find him alone in the library.
He stands by the window with an open file in his hand. He looks up when I close the door.
“Evelyn.”
“We need to talk.”
Lucien sets the file down immediately.
“Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Did the physician find something?”
“No.”
His shoulders relax, but only slightly.
I walk toward him.
“Do you regret it?”
His eyes darken.
“The mark?”
I touch the warm silver pattern beneath my collarbone.
“Us.”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
“Then why have you spent three weeks avoiding me?”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“You sleep across the hall.”
“You needed rest.”
“You leave every time we’re alone.”
“You needed space.”
“You barely touch me.”
His jaw tightens.
“Because you needed a choice.”
I stare at him.
Lucien steps closer, but stops before our bodies meet.
“You lost your child. You nearly died. Adrian had just destroyed everything you believed about your future.”
His voice turns rough.
“Then I gave you an Eternal Mark while you were lying in my bed, too weak to stand. I will never use that night to claim the rest of your life.”
“You saved me.”
“That does not mean you owe me your body.”
“And the marriage?”
“If you want it, we will marry. If you don’t, I will tell the council the bond was necessary to keep you alive.”
“You would let me leave?”
Pain flashes across his face.
“If that is what you choose.”
For nine years, I begged a man to choose me.
Lucien is standing in front of me, offering to let me go even though it is the last thing he wants.
I take another step.
“Why did you agree to the mark?”
He is silent for a moment.
Then he looks directly at me.
“Because I wanted you long before you ever needed me.”
The mark beneath my collarbone grows warm.
His gaze drops to it.
“I wanted you when wanting you gave me nothing,” he says. “I wanted you when you belonged to someone else. But I would rather spend eternity beside you as a stranger than have you touch me because you think you owe me.”
Something inside me finally breaks open.
Not grief.
Not fear.
Want.
I reach up, grip his shoulder, and sink my fangs into the side of his neck.
Lucien’s body goes rigid.
A faint groan escapes him as my teeth break his skin. His fingers tighten around my waist, but he does not pull me away.
Instead, he tilts his head back, giving me more access.
His blood fills my mouth, rich on my tongue. Through the Eternal Mark, I feel the sharp sting of my bite—and the pleasure he takes in enduring it for me.
“Evelyn,” he breathes.
I slowly withdraw my fangs and look up at him.
“I spent nine years waiting for someone to choose me.”
A drop of his blood remains on my lips.
“I’m done waiting.”
His eyes darken.
“Tonight, I’m choosing you.”
That is all it takes.
Lucien pulls me against him and kisses me.
All the control he has held onto for three weeks snaps at once.
He lifts me onto the edge of the desk, his mouth moving over mine as the Eternal Mark flares between us.
Pleasure surges through me.
I feel his hunger through the bond. Deep. Violent. Carefully restrained for far too long.
His lips move to my throat.
His fangs brush my skin.
He stops.
“Tell me to stop, and I will.”
Instead, I guide his hand beneath the edge of my robe.
“Don’t stop.”
A low sound leaves his chest.
He carries me upstairs without taking his mouth from mine.
When he lays me on his bed, he gives me one final chance to pull away.
I don’t.
I unfasten his shirt myself.
Then I pull him down to me.
His hands are slow at first, almost painfully careful. He kisses every pale scar the silver left behind. He touches me as if my body belongs to me, not to the mark and not to him.
When his mouth closes over the mark beneath my collarbone, pleasure shoots through both of us.
I feel his control break through the bond.
“Mine,” he whispers, then immediately lifts his head. “Only if you want to be.”
I hold his gaze.
“Yours because I choose to be.”
His fangs sink gently into my skin.
The mark blazes.
Pleasure rolls through me, sharp and hot, and my hands tighten against his back. Every touch echoes through the bond until I can no longer tell where his hunger ends and mine begins.
For the first time, eternity does not feel like a promise someone else made for me.
It feels like something I chose.
When I wake, morning light covers the bed.
Lucien is beside me, one arm around my waist.
My head rests against his chest.
The Eternal Mark is warm, quiet, and steady.
I do not feel trapped.
I feel safe.
Lucien’s eyes open.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
He brushes his thumb over my mark.
“Your mother made your succession official this morning.”
I lift my head.
“She’s stepping down?”
“Yes. By sunset, you’ll formally take your place as head of House Blackwood.”
By sunset, before the assembled members of House Blackwood, I take my place as its head.
Lucien stands beside me as the household prepares for our wedding.
For nine years, I waited for someone else to choose me.
Now the family, the future, and the man beside me are all mine.
Not because they were given to me.
Because I chose them.