Thirty
Thirty
HIM
“Are you fucking insane?” I rip the knife up as she slides it down her arm, my heart beating so damn loud that I can barely hear the words I’m screaming at her. My eyes go to where she cut, and relief hits me when I see I made it in time. The slice is barely more than a graze.
I throw the knife across the room, but she doesn’t say a word. I pick up the healing wand beside her and shove it into her other hand. “Heal yourself,” I snap, trying to get a rise out of her with the harshness of my tone because I’d rather take her fire, her fucking fury at me than seeing her like this.
Empty.
Emotionless.
Fucking suicidal.
“I told you you can’t leave me,” I snarl as I haul her to my chest. She lets me pull her without any resistance, without any of the ‘fuck yous’ she was all too happy to scream last night, and that is making me fucking panic.
Last I remember, she seemed fine. We talked in her room. I apologized for torturing her. I carried her up to my bed. She had her legs wrapped around my waist. Yeah, she was not happy with me, but she wasn’t like this. She was angry with me, ready to make me pay and beg for forgiveness, but she wanted me to fix us. And I was willing. I told her that, didn’t I?
“Talk to me,” I demand. “Tell me why the fuck you just tried to kill yourself.”
“I didn’t,” she says.
“You had a knife to your wrist!
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
I clench my jaw, force my rage down so I can talk to her without screaming. “What were you doing then?”
She shrugs.
“Micha. What were you fucking doing?”
“I was trying to remove the blood bond.”
“Remove –” I stop as I move away from her, holding her at arm’s length so I can see her face. “We’re bonded?”
“Unfortunately.”
“When?”
She blinks, and there is a bit of soul back in her eyes that I could almost weep over. “What do you mean ‘when?’”
“When did we bond?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy, and it’s the most beautiful look in the world. She’s coming back to me. Has a bit more fire in her veins. “When you asked me to bond with you,” she says.
“No, we didn’t. It didn’t work.” The words hurt like hel, but I’m fucking glad of that truth if it means she won’t try to kill herself to try to remove it.
She blinks at me. And there’s no mistaking the fire in her eyes now. “Oh, is that what you’re going for now? Pretend like you couldn’t fucking feel what I was going through as you tortured me? Or when you raped me last night? Did you not just focus on the pleasure so you could –”
My skin feels tight across my chest. “When did I rape –”
“When I said no and you didn’t stop!” she screams before she clenches her fists and gets her anger back under control, shoved down in a deep dark depth where nothing can touch her. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” she says flatly.
“Micha, I swear to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came home last night, you said no, and I stopped. Then we went to bed.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Micha,” I say, stepping closer to her, lifting her chin up to look at me. But her eyes are blank, not focused on me at all. A sickness pooling in my stomach, I look down at my chest. There’s a hole and bloodstain right over my heart, and I stagger back as the realization of what happened hits me.
She fucking killed me.
My little monster.
She’s nothing but a traitor like all the others.
My hands curl into fists as I am consumed with a need to hit something. To break it. To fucking destroy it like she’s done to me. I’ve never thrown a tantrum before, never lost control even as a child. I’ve always thought people who did were weak and pathetic, but I fucking get it now. I get why her room looked how it did last night – how she just needed to get what was inside out.
Pivoting to the side, I grab hold of the dresser full of toys that I bought for us so we could experience all the firsts together, and I launch it across the room, straight through the door of the ensuite. She doesn’t move, doesn’t react, her assassin training keeping her poised, but I can smell her fear. Hear the rapid beat of her heart.
And I hate it.
I hate that I’ve made her scared of me.
But I can’t stop the rage inside. Can’t control it this time. If she was anyone else, she’d be dead on the floor already, bleeding out for her sins.
But she is mine.
Even in her fucking betrayal, she.
Is.
Mine.
Grabbing the top of the dresser, sticking my hands where the drawer no longer is, I lift the entire thing and throw that too. Then I grab the top of her dress and rip it down the middle before she can even gasp.
“Get off me!” she screams, and there is panic there that cuts me down to my soul. Is this how she yelled at me last night? Frantic and terrified and helpless to stop me?
I can’t fucking remember.
I can’t remember an event that hurt her so deeply, and I am so pissed off at myself for that and at Mother for making that damn clause in the first place. I don’t even know if it’s me when the vampirism hits, or if I am fully consumed by a hunger I can’t contain. If I black out and a primal beast remains, a vampire who’s starving and living off the crumbs of life he gets to experience, or if I am aware the whole time. I want to believe that it’s the former, that I didn’t fucking choose to hurt what’s mine, but I can’t remember a godsdamn thing about it.
And in the end, it doesn’t matter.
Because she remembers all of it. I can see it in her eyes. I can smell it in the pheromones coming off her, and it makes me want to destroy more shit.
But I can’t right now because I need to check her over.
If I’m alive, then I must have fed from her. Micha’s a strong witch; her magic must have healed me faster than that woman in the alley did – the first person I killed when my vampirism was activated.
I tear her dress from her and step back. Her arms go up to cover herself, but I’m looking at her neck, her arms, her chest, anywhere I might have bit her or simply grabbed her too hard in my desperation to feed. There are bruises. A lot of them. In the shape of my fingers.
My jaw locked, I say, “Turn around.”
“Fuck you.”
I dart behind her, using my enhanced speed now that she already knows I’m not a witch. She tries to turn, but I’m much faster, and I glance her body over. Red hand prints mar her ass. More bruises dot along her body, but there isn’t anything outside of love bites and grabs. Whatever I did last night, at least it wasn’t overly violent.
“How many secrets are you fucking hiding?” she asks as she spins back to face me, but I don’t answer because my eyes have caught sight of her pussy.
She hasn’t just shaved it to piss me off. She’s fucking cut a patch away. And my heart breaks at the bareness of her skin, at the lack of the ink that I put there. The physical rejection of my claim.
Wails ricochet inside my skull, growing in pitch until they become banshees that wash out all other noise. My heart slams itself against its cage over and over in a desire to get out, to touch her and be certain, but she told me not to do that. So all I can do is look.
And break in utter silence.
“You cut my name off?” I rasp out, my fingers clenching into fists.
She lifts her chin stubbornly. “I’m not yours anymore.”
“The fuck you aren’t,” I snap as I reach for the back of her neck before dropping my hand and striding towards her instead. She takes a step back for every one I make until she bumps into the wall. Her pulse quickens, but she doesn’t cower, doesn’t recede back inside her walls. She lifts her chin, daring me to do my worst.
Pressing both hands on the wall beside her face, I lean in and duck my head. “Whether we’re blood bonded or not, little monster, you are mine. I will find you in the afterlife. I will find you in the next life. You will never be fucking rid of me.” And I will make you fall in love with me again. I will spend the rest of all my lives following you around until you fucking come to remember that I. Am. Yours.
My heart pounds, those words stuck in my throat, but I can’t bring myself to say them, to put them in the air for her to reject when I’m this raw.
So I turn away from her. Removing my blood-stained clothes, I pull on a pair of shorts, then head for the door so I can go find a fucking brother to spar with.
Except I stop when I catch sight of her patch of skin. A clean cut. One piece with everything on it. Bending down, I pick it up with a shaky hand, then walk over to grab the knife so she can’t cut herself again in my absence.
Striding across the room, I make my way to the door. I hesitate before stepping through it, wishing I knew how to cross the divide I’ve made between us. I turn to look at her. She isn’t looking at me. Isn’t looking at anything, back in that void inside her mind.
My knuckles tight, I step out into the hall before the sun is even up, then shut it softly behind me.