16. Vasile
Chapter sixteen
Vasile
I remain at the sidelines, watching as the pack bustles around Quinn, Kieran glancing at Deacon every so often as though he expects an order.
Or advice, maybe.
No matter the fae blood he supposedly has, I cannot fathom how Tamesis has taken control of an entire pack. No, I can. I cannot fathom the depths of his anger, perhaps. This whole plan… There is so much work involved. So many potential loose ends.
“Quinn can take the flat I’ve been staying in,” I say, though I have nowhere else to go. Kieran shakes his head sharply even as Lucien does the same.
“He’ll stay here,” Kieran says. Drew immediately relaxes. I do not know if he will sit out with his friend all night, but if he does, he will have plenty of company to choose from, I am certain.
“I’ll stay, too, if Pris has gone home,” Ophelia adds. “Just in case.”
Kieran nods, though he seems reluctant, and Sam pulls Ophelia aside to discuss Quinn’s care. Deacon leans a little closer, his fingers brushing mine.
“Everything okay?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
He grimaces. I do not truly worry that he fought those wolves tonight; he is more than capable of keeping an unruly pack in line. But every time he has to intervene is another chance for Tamesis to take him from me all over again.
Would I survive that, were it to happen again?
“I need to—” I need to leave this flat all of a sudden. “I must call Njáll. He needs to be aware of what has happened.”
Kieran nods almost absently, but Lucien watches me go and Deacon follows me out and down the hall. I pull my phone from my pocket, fiddling with it because I really should call Njáll and let him know everything we’ve learnt tonight. Let him know we’re certain of who the wolves are and that there is likely a limit to how much Tamesis can control them.
Deacon follows me into the flat, so close I can feel the heat of him through my suit. When I pause just inside, he closes the door and stops too, his breathing even with mine.
We both stand there for a moment. I put my phone back in my pocket and close my eyes, basking in the relative peace of the silence between us.
It will not last. It does not last.
“Please don’t do anything you can’t take back.” Deacon’s voice is quiet, urgent, and at first I do not understand, but then I think of the bond that could be ignited between me and Tamesis, and I sigh.
I have to do something. And the idea that Tamesis could control me is a concern, of course, because I have no way to defend against that, but if we move quickly…
Deacon puts his hand on my shoulder and turns me around to face him. “Don’t reignite the bond,” he says, and his wolf lurks just behind his eyes, as serious as he is. “If he’s got control over those wolves, he could—”
He cuts himself off, and I frown until I feel a pulse of warmth in my chest. Our kiss… I felt it earlier, didn’t I? Our bond may well be starting to heal.
Is that what I want?
Is that what Deacon wants?
“I’m not going to,” I say. “I know better than that.”
Deacon nods. He moves in closer, shoulders slumping forward, and I reach for him instinctively, wrapping my arms around his waist. He sighs into my hair and holds me tight, a faint tremor travelling through him.
“You felt it, didn’t you?” he asks, and I don’t ask him to explain. There’s no point.
“Yes.”
“And you… Do you want it?”
I swallow, glad that I’ve buried my face in his shoulder because I don’t know what my expression might betray. “I don’t know.”
He stiffens but relaxes when I don’t let go. “Yeah. Okay, yeah.”
There’s so much defeat in his voice. I lift my head and lean back, looking up into his face. I don’t want to let him go, but I don’t want to pretend I know what I want, either. What if I change my mind? I won’t be unfair to either of us.
“Deacon, I—”
He kisses me. It’s soft, tentative, and I immediately press into it, moulding my lips to his, swiping my tongue into his mouth to tease his own.
Deacon groans, hands falling to grasp my hips. His heart hammers—even if I couldn’t hear it, I feel the echo of it in my chest—and when I bite his lower lip, he groans. “Vas,” he murmurs against my mouth.
For a moment, it is as though no time has passed at all. A few steps and I have him pushed up against the wall, and he melts against me, letting me move him where I want. Maybe none of it happened. Maybe Tamesis never came back, and Deacon and I lived our lives together, discovering everything about each other in our small, cosy house, and I never had to become crai, and—
“I want it to heal,” Deacon says against my mouth, and the disappointment that floods me has nothing to do with him at all. I squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught of it, and Deacon grips me tighter. “Vas, I want you but only if you’ll forgive me.”
My eyes shoot open again and I lean back slightly so that I can take in the entirety of Deacon’s expression. “Forgive you? Forgive you for what?”
“I-I failed.”
“Failed?” I don’t understand. Deacon left . He left, and I can admit to myself that I still hold a kernel of anger for that, but I don’t know if I would call his leaving a failure.
It was more… a disappointment. I’d tried so hard to fit in, to be more than the monster Tamesis had shaped me to be, and he left anyway.
“I don’t understand,” I say eventually, when it’s clear Deacon doesn’t know how to respond. “You didn’t fail me.”
“I hurt you.”
“When?”
Deacon makes a frustrated sound, silver bleeding into his irises. He won’t shift, not with me this close, and even if he did… Well, I think the wolf has always liked me more than the man has.
“That night. I hurt you. I should have never—I shouldn’t have been able to do it, but he got into our bond, into me , and I did—”
“That’s not your fault,” I say instinctively, wanting to soothe his distress away, but follow it up with, “Besides, you didn’t hurt me that night. Not in any way that mattered. Not until you left.”
He swallows hard and shakes his head like I still don’t understand. I feel I am beginning to.
“A wolf should never be able to hurt their mate.”
I snort. “Then what the hell have we been doing for the last hundred years?”
The pain that hits him is strong enough that I am certain I feel the ghost of it shudder down our tentative bond. I don’t take the words back. I won’t. I don’t mean to hurt Deacon, but I know I can, the same way I know he can hurt me.
“If we can’t hurt each other, then we mean nothing to each other at all,” I say, crowding him against the wall again. “I would rather you hurt me a thousand times over than look at you and feel nothing.”
Deacon’s heart, already racing, skips a beat. His breath catches in his throat. “Vasile.”
I grin, pressing my lips to the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. “Yes, lupul meu?” My wolf. Always my wolf.
He growls and spins us, and now I’m the one pressed against the wall, but when I’m expecting him to kiss me, he doesn’t. He simply studies my face, the lines in his forehead deeper than I remember.
“I’m the one who failed,” I say, then snap my mouth shut. Did I mean to say that? I don’t think so.
The words are already out there. Deacon shakes his head. “You?”
“I broke the bond,” I say. “I left you without a mate, and I wasn’t even dead. I was here, within reach, the entire time.”
“I could’ve chosen someone else,” Deacon says, and the growl that rips from my throat surprises even me. “They wouldn’t have been my mate the way you would, but I could have taken a lover.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Did you?”
Heat creeps into my cheeks and I force myself to hold his gaze. “No.”
His answering grin is triumphant. He kisses me slowly, thoroughly, and my fangs itch with the urge to bite, but I hold myself back.
“Why didn’t you?” I ask. I know why I didn’t. Guilt. Fear. Anger.
“I don’t know,” Deacon says. He’s breathing harder, and I’m certain that if I pressed my hips forward, I’d feel how interested he is in this conversation being over. “Vas, I don’t know, I just know that you were—”
“It,” I say. It’s something I’ve known the entire time. Something I’ve never been able to escape.
Vampires might not form their own mating bonds, but I can never escape the one I have.
With Deacon in my arms, I’m not sure I want to.
I kiss him again, kiss him harder, and when I take a step forward, he moves back, letting me walk him through into the bedroom.
When I pull away, his eyes are hazy, lips swollen and spit-slick, and if I don’t have him now, I think I might die. I kiss him again, the move so hard as to be bruising, then take his face in my hands.
“Deacon,” I say, and his breath hitches, eyes fluttering.
“Yes?”
“Do as I tell you and get on the bed.”