37. Chapter Thirty-Seven - Sen
Chapter Thirty-Seven - Sen
‘At least it’s not Teagan.’ An awful thought.
But at least he was safe, whole, alive.
Then I watched my brave boy break from Summer’s spell and fall into the shining end of her dagger.
Felt the snap of our connection breaking. Of Teagan…going away.
Worse than a broken nose, leg, or every bone in my body.
Summer screams in agony.
There’s a sudden bright light. She drops the Blood Mage Tome, her spells with it as the demon doorway flares like a bonfire—bright red and ugly—before she’s sucked in. Vanishing. The doorway burning out of existence.
Gone.
Gone.
Oh my god, Teagan. Our bond.
Gone.
The animalistic, guttural noise that splinters from Kai sounds like he’s dying.
I sprint to Teagan’s fallen body, collapse beside him, reaching for our bond—Oh god, it’s gone—to find his chest is now just a broken, empty cavity.
“No, no, nononono.” Desperately, I rip out a chunk of flesh at my wrist, spit it on the ground, and cup his soft cheek to pour my blood into his slack mouth. “Come back to me. Teagan. C’mon, sweetheart. C’mon. Please. Please. Please.”
I wait for him to call me slick. To make fun of my stamp collection. He should be bobbing along to ABBA, eyes sparkling.
“Teagan,” I say his name like a stern, desperate order. “C—” My voice cracks. “Come back!”
Kai won’t stop screaming. He clings to Teagan, clawing at him like he’s willing to rip Teagan open further if it means he’ll find his soul to bring him back.
But nothing we’re doing is working.
The bond is gone.
Snapped clean when everything about this is anything but. Teagan can’t be taken from this world that he loves so much while Summer dares to live.
“TEAGAN!” I cry, my tears dropping on his cheeks, his forehead, his mouth. “Come back to me. You have to come back to me. We have so much life to live. Come back. COME BACK!”
But a vampire can’t bring back the dead.
I’m pushed away hard enough that I fall. Bran kneels beside Teagan, holding onto the First Blood Mage Tome that Summer dropped, a spellbook that burns anyone who touches it, but for some reason leaves him unharmed.
“You will not deny me my destiny,” Bran tells Teagan, voice as sharp as the dagger that pierced his chest. “Elio, over here. Now.”
“What are you doing?” I demand. “Bran!” I shout when he says nothing as he quickly flips through the spellbook pages that should be eating away at his fingers like acid.
Elio scrambles over, dropping down as Bran sets the large tome in front of him. “I can’t fix this.”
Bran levels him with a look that could peel skin from bone. “Only an untainted blood mage can heal, and that is a healing spell.” Bran stops searching through pages, apparently finding the one he was looking for and jabs his finger between swirling red runes. “And you will perform it, Elio.”
“B-but he’s dead—”
“If you do not, I will make you suffer in unimaginable ways.” Bran’s voice leaves no room for argument.
Elio trembles.
“Read the fucking spell!” he orders, his fangs dropped, his eyes two burning points.
Trembling, Elio does.
“Bran,” I beg. “Explain to me—”
Before I can finish, Bran punches through his own chest. I startle, mouth agaped as Bran rips past muscle and bone, splattering blood over Teagan and Elio and the wrinkled pages of the spellbook.
Then Bran, an immortal older than any other supernatural, rips out a piece of his own heart, the sliver wet with darker-than-normal blood.
“I. Will. Not. Be. Denied!” Bran bites out, his eyes bright with feral determination as blood gushes from the hole in his chest over Teagan, as Elio’s voice rises above all the madness.
And through it all, I reach for our bond. No matter what happens, I’ll never stop reaching for Teagan.
Bran shoves that piece of heart into Teagan’s empty chest.
“Come back…” I whisper, clutching Teagan’s limp hand. Tears stream down my cheeks to splatter against Teagan’s. “I can’t survive without you.”
He is more than my destiny, more than a curious man who sees the world in a way I’ll never understand, and for some amazing reason, he invites me to witness it.
Bran’s chest begins knitting itself back together. And impossibly, so does Teagan’s.
I grab hold of our broken bond.
Elio’s voice becomes a shout.
“Come back to me, sweetheart.”
Elio stops abruptly, and the page he was reading from shrivels into dust.
“Please…”
Vidar clings to a sobbing Kai. Luc holds Golden to his chest. The tips of Rurik’s fingers brush Apollo’s neck as the small vampire watches on, hiccuping as he weeps.
It isn’t fair.
I deserve the same.
Then…
The connection knits back together.
Thump.
Teagan’s eyes shoot open.
He sucks in a deep, pained breath, his mouth opening wide to reveal two fangs.
The relief is almost as painful as when our connection was broken. I shove Bran aside to grab hold of Teagan and press my face into his neck as I cry, gulping down his scent. “Oh god, you’re back. I love you so fucking much!”
Kai hugs him from the side, weeping just as hard and muttering ‘I love you’ and ‘never do that again’ and ‘how could you do that to me’.
“I…” Teagan coughs in his little rasp. “I love you, too.”
I think he’s talking to both of us, but as long as he’s alive, I don’t mind sharing my soulmate.