Sixty
Antonio
I barge into Eduardo’s lab. He has Timothy strapped to a table, his dick hooked up to a pumping machine, jerking him off and collecting his seed. Normally, the witch would have his subject opened up in some horrific experiment or another too, but he’s used too much magic recently. I can smell the onset of loka building up in his blood. He’ll die a terrible, agonizing death if he uses much more, so he’s only been carving shallow cuts into the chimera’s skin.
He turns to me as I enter with Micha in my arms. “Heal her.”
“I ca–”
He cuts himself off. Either he dies trying, or he dies now. Micha’s injuries aren’t fatal; he has nothing to barter with.
“Put her down,” he says.
“Not here.”
I don’t want her touching the filth of his lab. She isn’t the same as Timothy. She isn’t even the same as me. She’s so much fucking more. Better. Purer.
He follows me out and to my room. He’s normally not allowed inside it, but I don’t want my mate anywhere else. I lay her down gently on my bed. The blood crusted on her face stands out sharply even amongst the swollen bruises. She moans, and I grab her hand to comfort her.
How could I have been so stupid as to not have seen the signs? She has Siome’s fire, her stubbornness, and her fierce protective nature of those she loves.
Siome jumped into my fight with Declan Shadow to save me. Despite that choice ending in her death, I know she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. She loved her pups, as did I, but we loved each other more.
Eduardo steps up to study her face – the injuries I put there in my idiocy. “I’ll grab some healing –”
“If I wanted a wand or potions, I would have grabbed them,”
I growl. I don’t want mediocre. I want the absolute best for her.
“I’ve used a lot, and her injuries aren’t ser–”
“Heal her,”
I snap. They’re fucking serious to me. I laid my hands on her. I fucking hurt her. And I’m so fucking close to killing him for taking his time.
His lips tighten. He nods. But there’s a flash of defiance in his eyes. If he thinks he’s going to die anyway, he could kill her. Or permanently disfigure her. Give her a chronic pain or a lifelong illness.
“If you hurt her,”
I say slowly, “death will be a blessing. And when it comes, I will drag you back from the dead to start it all over again.”
He gulps.
Resting his hands on her, he calls on his magic. White light bathes her, reducing the swelling in her cheeks and stitching up her split lip and busted skin. The bruises fade, and she opens her eyeless sockets. The sight rams into me. Suffocating me. I kiss her hand, then rise to my feet. “Get out,”
I hiss at Eduardo before gathering her in my arms. He leaves, and she tenses against me.
“I’m so sorry, Micha. I’m so fucking sorry. I know better now. I’ll never hurt you again.”
“Why did you hit me?”
I wince. My heart screams.
“Did I not please you? I’m so sorry for –”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
I kiss the top of her head and squeeze her tight. “You never need to apologize.”
She trembles in my arms. Silence. Then, “Why did you ask me about my daughter’s name?”
My chest tightens. She doesn’t remember what she lost. What we lost. When people are resurrected, they don’t get their old memories.
I want to tell her about all she’s lost – not just them but us. All the memories. All the laughter and joy. And the pain. So much pain as we fought to stay together. As we cleared hurdle after hurdle, spurred on only by each other. We were each other’s strengths, each other’s change, each other’s push to be better.
She was my life, and I was hers, but now I am the only one who remembers.
Trying to get her to recall her past life could fracture her mind; there is a reason the gods wipe them clean.
But all that means is I’ll just have to get her to fall in love with me again. My heart pinches at the thought of courting her all over again. A bittersweet opportunity.
“You – Siome,”
I say, knowing I need to keep the two of them separate. As much as she’s the same woman to me, she does not remember that life. I don’t want to confuse her, make her panic if she doesn’t think she is who I know she is. “Siome and I had three pups. A boy and two girls on the way. We named them Raphello, Fiana, and Kimmy.”
I don’t explain further. I want to see if she gets it, if her soul just knows and can put the pieces together. It takes her a fraction of a second. She gasps, and I know she knows.
“Their names make up Rafiki,” she says.
She remembers them. Subconsciously. In her heart and soul. She remembers them.
I squeeze her tight. Kiss the crown of her head. I could cry with how happy I am to have her back in my arms. But I don’t because I can’t linger here despite how much I want to. Varius has only recently hit his ascension, and given he is strong enough to have walked through the teleportation circle on his own and survived, I know he’s strong enough to pulse. Eduardo is too weak to contain him, which means I need to go see Terra.
She’s been creating a disease to target the Shadow line. I can get her to tweak it so it isn’t as deadly. So it’ll keep him alive but too weak to use his magic. I would prefer if he was lucid for all his torturing, but this is the only choice I have. I might be strong enough to resist his magic should he pulse, but I don’t know if Micha is.
And I will still take pleasure in torturing him.
“I need to go,” I say.
“Will you be back soon?”
The fact that she wants me here warms my heart. But she should be more angry with me. I don’t like how much I’ve broken her. The guilt rams into me, just like it did when I learned I was the reason she took the V the first time. I need to build her back up. Make her comfortable enough to yell at me again. Gods, I’ve missed hearing her yell at me, hearing all that fire and spirit and beauty.
“I’ll be back before bed.”
“Will you eat with me?”
I smile. Siome always pushed for what she wanted. “As you wish.”
Kissing her on her head one last time, I leave her in my bed.
She looks too small in it. Too broken.
For now.
But she is a fighter.
And when I build her back up, we’ll destroy the Shadow family together for what they did to her.
When I step into Varius’ room, I am barely able to stop myself from killing him. He is blood bonded to my fucking mate. I might’ve stolen her from him in this life, but he will have all the lifetimes with her I will not.
My shoulders tight but my hands loose, not clenched into the fists I want them to be, I stride over to him. He is awake and wary and pleasantly pale. The big scary boss half of the US is terrified of, struck down like a little lamb. Soon he’ll be butchered like one too.
“Well, don’t you just feel like a fool?”
I mock as I stand in front of him. “Gave yourself up only for her to leave you for a better man.”
“She won’t leave me,”
he says. “I have a part of her you’ll never have.”
My eyes narrow. “I already have it.”
I had it first.
But I will not have it last. She will end up with him in the next life.
And that infuriates me.
Pulling out the needle I picked up from Terra on the way over, I hold it up. “I was around for the war between Terra Harrison and Cara Jervis. The humans called it the Spanish flu.”
His eyes dart to the needle, then back to me. There is a flicker of fear there, a knowledge that he can train as much as he wants, but he can’t learn to fight a fucking disease.
“A fifth of the world’s population killed off because of a lover’s tat. In just four months, the disease they made took the lives of twenty-one million people. Not the young or the old either but the healthy.”
I shake my head. Then smile. “How crazy do we get over the people we love, huh? All the terrible things in the world because of it.” I pop the lid off the needle. Take a step forward.
He laughs, and there isn’t a single trace of fear in his eyes. “Even if you kill me, you won’t have her in this life.”
Just utter fucking conviction.
I grab the arm he yanked free earlier, pressing my fingers over the piece of metal nailed through his wrist. He grits his teeth, his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring. Sweat beads across his brow as he struggles to stay conscious despite the pain. Jabbing the needle into the swollen, tender area around the nail, I look him in the eyes and say, “I already have her.”
I push the disease into him, and I take delight in the light tremors running down his arm. The fear he’s trying to hide.
“This won’t kill you,”
I assure him. “You don’t deserve to go that quick, but you’ll run a fever, and you’ll shit yourself in this bed. Every part of you will ache, from your toes to your wayward thoughts, and the entire time you will know that your wife is riding my cock and shouting my name.”
He smiles wolfishly. Leans forward. “But she will still be my wife.”
My jaw tics.
I break the needle in his arm.
He laughs even as he falls back, sweat already starting to break out across his skin. Terra’s disease is working quickly. “Go ahead and torture me. Whatever you do to me, she’ll be able to feel through the blood bond. And my brothers won’t even have to save her then. You’ll lose her all on your own.”
He chuckles. “Just like you did Siome.”
My hand shifts into that of my wolf, and I lift my arm to rake my claws across his chest. But I stop myself before I cut him open and rip out his fucking heart. Death will not be that easy for him.
My jaw clenched, I drop my hand and storm from the room. He might’ve won this round, but I’ll figure out a way to make her hate him. A hatred so deep that it sears itself into her very soul so she loathes him across all the lifetimes they might have together.
I will not get her in the next life but neither will fucking he.