(Kieran POV)
I found her in the library at half past midnight, curled in the leather chair by the fireplace like she belonged there. The sight stopped me cold in the doorway—Catherine Montgomery bathed in golden light, a book open across her knees, her dark hair escaping its pins to frame her face in ways that made my chest tight with longing.
She looked up when I entered, and I caught the flash of something in her eyes—not fear, exactly, but awareness. The kind of recognition that suggested she was finally putting pieces together in that brilliant mind of hers.
"Lord MacAllister." Her voice carried none of the careful formality I'd grown accustomed to. If anything, it held challenge, as if she was daring me to keep pretending we were simply lord and unwilling guest rather than somethin
