31. Amy
Chapter 31
Amy
U nder the crushing weight of depression was a familiar place I never hoped to be again. But really, what did I expect? This was me after all.
The only difference was that I had Tavia to lean on again. Instead of pushing her away, I rested my head in her lap while sobbing over Novak. She didn’t hold back on the wine or the disparaging words toward him, although she pulled back on the insults when I requested it. For some reason, I still felt the urge to defend him and never wanted to hear anyone speak of him badly.
That was only for me to do, privately. Under my breath, drunk off my ass, or while sobbing into a pillow.
The anger was new and unexpected. It wasn’t the first time a guy had hurt me, but before, I had always put the blame entirely on myself. It was my fault for falling short of what Tom Harrison had wanted, my fault for being so agreeable, gullible and naive.
With Novak, something in me had shifted. Maybe I held onto some of the confidence he gave me in the beginning, or maybe it had to do with my turning. But I knew, as well as I knew my own name, that I was not at fault for this outcome. He was.
Sure, I had the bad luck of trusting the wrong people. But trusting in itself wasn’t a shortcoming. He chose to discard me, chose to build me up with lies before tearing it all down. He was the only person to blame for this hurt in my heart, not me.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
It didn’t make any of his sudden change in behavior less confusing. And it definitely didn’t stop my head from replaying that sight of him tasting the naked woman’s blood, over and over again.
Days and nights blurred into each other. I barely ate, sticking to a steady diet of wine instead. The mere thought of tasting someone else’s blood made me physically ill.
Tavia was around frequently, but Cyan less so. She said he was dealing with clan politics whenever I asked.
She was a true friend, almost like old times but not quite. She never pushed me to move on or talk about it, just offered support, a listening ear, and gently encouraged me to eat. If we were still simple humans living in Sapien, she would have hunted Novak down with a baseball bat over her shoulder, but she kept that violent side in check now.
I was trying to make myself useful one day, tidying up the apartment instead of rotting away in bed, when a knock came to the door. When I answered, it was Laith, Des, and Rhain each carrying large black plastic totes.
“Hey, Ames.” Laith invited himself inside first, followed by the other two. Each vampire set their containers down on the coffee table in front of the couches.
“Hi, guys.” I eyed the large totes and the men who brought them in. “What’s this?”
“Delivery for you.” The three of them were already heading out of the apartment, their task efficiently done.
“Delivery of what? From who?”
“No idea, we’re just the messengers. But hey,” Des shot me a heartfelt grin with that chipped fang, “you’re looking better. You should come out with us tonight. Hit the clubs, get some drinks and let loose. We’re good bodyguards; we won’t let anyone bother you.”
“Rhain will even dance with you.” Laith patted the big vampire’s shoulder, who looked at him incredulously.
“I will?”
“Thank you guys, but maybe another night.” I gave them the best smile I could muster, which still felt strained.
“For sure. Whenever you’re feeling up to it. See ya, Ames.” Laith waved before closing the door after them.
I spun to face the totes the moment they were gone, feeling incredibly wary of this random delivery. Was it a prank? Some kind of taunt?
I ran a finger along the lidded edge of one container, circling all the way around, and found nothing suspicious. Gripping one edge, I lifted to find the tote surprisingly heavy.
“What the hell are you?” I checked the lids and weights of the other two to find them similarly heavy and most likely not sprung with booby traps.
The safest option was to wait for Tavia or Cyan to come home, but my curiosity was too great. I popped the lid off of one container and held my breath while I peered inside.
It was full of books, all stacked neatly with care. Not just any books, but romance paperbacks. The kinds I’d been obsessed with and would read cover to cover late into the night. Some of the titles looked familiar, but I had never read most of these. They definitely weren’t my old collection from Sapien.
I picked up one pristine paperback and opened it to the title page. Fire of a Lady’s Dragon by M.J. Nance, but the title wasn’t the most interesting part. There was some kind of mark or seal embossed into the paper. I brought the book directly under a lamp and angled the page to see better.
The embossed seal was of three intersecting swords circled with the words, From the library of Dienna, Rathka’s Order.
I almost dropped the book with how hard the realization struck me. This had belonged to Novak’s mother. It was from the glass case in the library at his house.
I ran to the opened tote and pulled out another book, which had the same embossing on the title page. My hands were a shaking blur, grabbing paperback after paperback to find the same thing on every single title page. I ripped the lids off of the other two totes and handled the books as carefully as I could to confirm what I already knew.
Novak had sent me his mother’s entire romance collection.
But why? Was this his cruel way of mocking me? I wanted to believe he had kinder intentions, perhaps an apology, but his callous, uncaring words at the very end remained stuck in me like splinters.
While flipping through one of the books, I spotted one of those sticky, colored annotation tabs and paused to read the marked sentence.
Her laughter is the sweetest music, her smile the force that drives my icy heart to beat.
It was from the hero’s point of view in a passage of him expressing his feelings for the heroine. Flipping through more pages, I found another sentence marked with a tab.
She cannot be caged, nor reduced to a mere accessory on my arm. Her beauty shines brightest when she is free and wild.
I picked up another novel and found similar excerpts marked with the same tabs. Every single one was of the hero confessing his love, or thinking of the heroine in an admiring way, whether about her beauty, her spirit, or whatever it was that drew him to her and made her unique.
After going through no less than twenty books and finding multiple tabbed sections in all of them, I sat abruptly on the floor and tried to make sense of it all.
There was no way Novak read through all of these books and marked all of these passages for me to find, was there?
His mother could have tabbed the books. She embossed her collection, after all. Marking her favorite parts with colored flags wasn’t that far-fetched. But Novak had said she died a long time ago, when he was still a juvenile. Had sticky tabs even been invented at that point?
I grabbed a novel at random and opened it, flipping to the closest tab between the pages.
To be loved by her would be the greatest privilege of my life.
With a frustrated groan, I slammed the paperback closed and let it drop to the floor.
“What the fuck do you want?” I asked the empty totes and stacks of books, fresh tears brimming my eyes.
Hours later, there was a gentle knock at my bedroom door, almost whisper-quiet. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and said, “Yes?” in the most normal voice I could muster.
“Hey Amy, it’s Cy,” came the voice from the other side. “Tavi’s doing something in the kitchen and she wants you as a taster.”
Oh, there had been a lot of wine tasting over the past few days. Tavia was certainly letting me indulge in drowning my sorrows.
If I was being honest, it was getting to be too much. I craved the emotional numbing from a full bottle after flipping through all those books, but stopped myself. It would only make me feel worse later.
“Thanks, Cy, but can you let her know I’m not feeling up to it today?”
A long pause preceded his answer. “It’s not wine this time. She’s… cooking. And she really wants your opinion. It won’t take long, promise.”
I heaved out a sigh. It really didn’t take much for me to cave to Tavia. Especially when I knew she was trying to get me out of my room and eat something. To live life and stop wallowing.
Being alive isn’t the same as living. Novak’s words when we first met came back to me in a cruel sense of irony. I hated that, even now, he wasn’t wrong.
“Fine. I’ll be right out,” I called.
“Sounds good. I’ll let her know.”
I rolled out of bed, feeling about as lively as a sack of potatoes, and did my best to make sure my face and clothes were decent. There wasn’t much to be done about my puffy eyes, but Tavia wouldn’t hold them against me.
Cyan leaned against the wall next to the front door of the apartment, typing something on his phone. “Hey, I’ll walk up with you,” he said, barely looking up as he held the door open.
“Um, okay.”
He shoved his phone into a pocket and met my eyes, his gaze sympathetic. “How’ve you been holding up?”
I shrugged, and he acknowledged the gesture with a nod.
“What’s Tavia making?” Anything to get the subject off of me as I walked past him into the corridor.
“I don’t know.” Cyan closed the apartment door behind us. “Something to do with uh, goldfish crackers, I think.”
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs going up to the main level, turned and stared at him. “What?”
He grinned sheepishly. “No idea. It’s an adventure.” Gesturing to the stairs, he added, “After you.”
The seed of suspicion had been planted when he waited and offered to escort me up to the kitchen. It was growing even more now as I climbed the stairs.
Cyan opened the door for me at the top landing, and I walked into a mostly empty great room.
Empty except for Novak.
My breath got stuck in my chest and did not seem to remember the right way out.
Novak looked as fucking dapper and handsome as ever, in gray slacks, a waistcoat, and those goddamned shirt sleeves rolled messily past his elbows. His hands were shoved in his pants pockets, making the blood vessels and lean muscles of his forearms pop.
One of those hands revealed themselves, extending toward me with long fingers that I once loved to feel running over my skin.
“Please, Amy. Just give me ten minutes to speak with you. That’s it. If you want me gone afterward, I’ll never reach out to you again. But please. I have never needed anything more than these few moments right now.”
Shocked and dazed, I looked over my shoulder at Cyan, who hovered near the door.
“You can tell him no, and we’ll kick him out,” my friend’s mate said. “Or if you do want to hear him out, we’ll give you the room. No one will eavesdrop or interrupt.”
Looking back at Novak, the desperation was plain on his face. Now that his presence had sunk in, I realized he did not look his best. He looked thinner, paler, and like he hadn’t been sleeping.
Had he been suffering this last week as well? Did he miss me, and regret what he’d said that night? What was the point of sending me those books? Those were only a few of the questions that had been running on a loop in my mind.
I was done being foolish and reckless with my feelings. But if he had any answers, I wanted to hear them.
“Yes,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “We can talk.”
With my focus entirely on Novak, Cyan’s voice registered behind me. “We’ll be nearby if you need anything.”
Then the door closed and we were alone.
“Why?” I said after the first beat of silence.
“Amy.” Novak’s face contorted with agony, his shoulders slumping forward. “I am so fucking sorry.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. Why? ”
“None of what I said in front of Carpe Noctem was true. I swear to you, I didn’t mean any of it.”
“I will yell for Cyan to come back in here if you don’t stop making fucking excuses and tell me why–”
“To protect you!” he cut in. “I needed you to leave. I needed Baros to believe that you meant nothing to me, so he wouldn’t use you to manipulate me. That’s why I lied and said those terrible things. I had no time to think of anything else, or a way to tell you what was happening.”
I stared at him, genuinely not expecting that response. My confusion only heightened. “That doesn’t explain why his daughter was standing naked right in front of you. They said you were going to make an heir, and you… ” I couldn’t even choke out the rest, that he looked at her flawless, perfect body like he wanted her. And that he took her blood.
Novak lowered his gaze, unable to look at me directly. “I did make an arrangement with Carpe Noctem to produce an heir with her, but after developing feelings for you, I tried to end it. I knew they would cause trouble for me when I wanted to go back on it. They’re a dangerous, powerful clan. But I still should have tried harder. That’s completely my fault. I should have told you, so you wouldn’t have been blindsided. I regret so, so much, Amy.”
“Why was she naked?” For some reason, that was the detail I was hung up on. “Did they expect you to see her and just drop trou immediately?”
He winced. “Yeah, pretty much. She did a fertility ritual to increase the chances of pregnancy and her scent was… overpowering.” His eyes snapped up to mine, serious and intense. “I responded to her physically only because of biology. I did not want her, and I still don’t. You are the only woman I’ve wanted more than I want air to breathe.”
“But you touched her,” I hissed through hot, angry tears. “You drank her blood! I saw you.”
“You’re right, I did.” Novak’s jaw clenched. “And her blood tasted disgusting. It cleared my head of her scent and I was no longer physically aroused. Because I found you, my blood mate, and my body is only yours to command.”
“So what happened after I left?”
“Nothing. I swear to Temkra, you saw the worst of it. What I said to you, and tasting her blood. I kicked them both out not long after you left. I just had to make sure Baros forgot about you and wouldn’t go after you to retaliate against me.”
He looked at me again, eyes full of sorrow. “But there are no excuses for the hurt I caused you. I will always regret that, because my sole priority has been to make you feel safe. I broke your trust and I will never regret anything more.”
Emotions swirled through me so fast, I could hardly grasp any of them. But somehow I was able to wipe my tears and keep my composure.
“You made… an arrangement for an heir? What, like you were going to donate sperm or something?”
“Or something,” he echoed bitterly. “Humans call it an arranged marriage. It would have been a loveless union to cement allyship between our clans. Outside of producing an heir, there was no relationship expected between her and me.”
I shook my head in disbelief. That sounded nothing like the affectionate, romantic Novak I’d gotten to know.
“Why would you do something like that?”
“Because I thought it was my only option at the time,” he said. “The whole idea made me uncomfortable from the start, but Baros had been pushing it on me for months. Because of my clan’s name and all the speculation about Rathka’s Curse, I thought it was my only chance at some kind of family. A future.” Novak’s gaze held mine. “Until I started falling for you, and realized I could have something real.”
I broke eye contact, forcing myself to stay strong against the sadness in his eyes. “You never said a word to me about any of that.”
“I know. I should have. You deserved to know the truth. I just… thought I could handle it. Make it go away like it never existed so it wouldn’t affect our happiness.” He crossed his feet at the ankles, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “I also didn’t want you to worry about Inessa. I was never interested in her like I was with you, and I didn’t want you to think I was somehow… conflicted between two women. There was never any comparison in my mind. I only ever wanted you.” His head fell back, his gaze focused toward the ceiling. “I realize keeping this from you only made it so much worse. It’s my fault you walked in and saw that with no prior context. I wish more than anything that I could undo the whole stupid arrangement just so I could prevent the hurt I caused you.”
On a small level, I almost felt insulted. He thought I was so fragile and insecure that he couldn’t tell me about a loveless, political marriage he hadn’t wanted or even sought to consummate? At the same time, I had to acknowledge he was probably right. My crush on him was nearly all-consuming before we’d ever gotten physical. I would have been jealous if there was even a whiff of another woman in the picture. And if I had known what Inessa looked like? Yeah, I definitely would have been concerned.
“Have you slept with her before?” I asked.
“No,” he answered quickly, then got a hesitant look. “But?—”
“Oh, do go on.” I crossed my arms, facing him squarely.
“No, I didn’t mean… Nothing like that!” Novak brought his hands together and huffed out a quick breath. “Nothing romantic or sexual has ever occurred between Inessa and me. But she is working with Blood ‘til Dawn and me, indirectly, to dismantle Carpe Noctem. We’re trying to free a prisoner, among other things, but she and I are communicating through our household staff, strictly about these plans. She wants to escape her father, so Thorne and I have agreed to help her if she’ll help us.” Novak spread his hands. “That’s all. I’m never hiding anything from you again, so I’m just letting you know that she and I are in contact. Nothing more.”
“Okay, that’s good to know, I guess.” I rubbed my forehead, as if that would make all my feelings and thoughts make sense. “Why did you want to tell me all this?”
“So that you would know the truth,” he said. “So that you would know that my feelings for you never changed, even though I made terrible choices that made you believe otherwise. Whether you believe me or not, you are my blood mate and I will love you until my last breath.”
“The books,” I said, suddenly remembering. “What’s the deal with the books?”
He shrugged. “You love them. I thought you should have them.”
“Did you mark all of those excerpts with the tabs?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There was another shrug as he looked down at his hands. “I’m not a writer. I only have so many words to express how much you mean to me. Each one of those marked passages is a description of love that I never could have come up with.” A mirthless huff escaped him. “And still, none of it compares to the bliss of waking next to you before I fucked it all up.” He glanced quickly at his watch. “I’ve said my piece and taken more than ten minutes of your time, so I’ll leave you be.”
“Wait,” I said, my chest tightening in despair at the thought of him leaving.
Novak paused on his way to the door. “Yes?”
I forced the words out through a tight throat and a thundering heart. “Do you… do you want us to be together again?”
“More than anything,” he answered quickly. “But I’m not arrogant enough to ask for a second chance. I’ve already hurt you enough, and I will never put that pressure on you. You know my feelings and where I stand. If you’d like to try again”—a shadow of his playful smirk emerged as he turned to leave—“you know where I live.”