Chapter 16 Lucian
Lucian
Originally, I never intended to let her go. No, that pesky strange emotion called obsession—the alternate feeling to love—won’t allow me to release her.
But it’s obvious what’s running through Sawyer’s head. She’s restrained by the should and shouldn’ts because I’m someone she’s recently met, and in this century, relationships progress agonizingly slower.
Letting her return home is the best course. She’ll realizes she misses me. She’ll want me to come after her, and then she’ll choose immortality and me. It’s only a question of when, considering she’s essentially confirmed this is the future she desires.
Sawyer has been spending her entire life taking care of herself. Her mother doesn’t care, and working numerous jobs pays her bills while she’ll never live the life she truly dreams of.
With me, she’ll have it all. Affection and adventure.
If I could find that moose and thank him, I would. Because of him, I gained a mate. She’s halfway to loving me, so fucking that up will be the last thing I do.
After leaving her on the edge of Jasper, I linger, stalking her from afar should I need to step in. She sources a small car rental place with only three vehicles available, gets in the tiny car, and starts out of town.
I, of course, observe all this from afar and then trail her back to Manitoba.
I follow her to her apartment, studying the run-down building and which precise window shows light a few minutes after she drags her suitcases inside.
Hours pass in which I do nothing but take it all in—who comes and goes.
When the other lights turn off. I listen, observe, and defend her for as long as it’ll take.
All while I consider the planned hunt I partially lied to her about.
It’s not one person I’m after, but two. The other man who littered her with lasting marks won’t be drawing breath for much longer, but given her turbulent relationship with her mother, both she and Corey are bound to slip up and try to rein Sawyer back in.
That’s when I’ll get him. When Sawyer understands what little mortality and her human connections do for her. For now, he continues living because he’ll serve my purpose.
He’s the lure for my second hunt.
Her.
On New Year’s Eve, when half of Winnipeg is out partying, Sawyer trudges home from her waitressing job with a purse full of tips she soon won’t need when it happens.
When her phone ringing draws her to a stop on the corner of the street and she answers it, all while her head roves and never stops checking.
It’s been her nightly ritual when she walks home. Always searching for me, clearly sensing me nearby. I’ve chosen her as mine, and she’s accepted, being as inside me as I am her. Her knowledge of my proximity only makes the rest obvious.
Standing on the rooftop above, all she’d have to do is tip her head and she’d see me. Her sigh travels up to me on the blustering winds as she answers her phone, warily greeting the other person.
A shrill feminine voice echoes through the speaker and even Sawyer pulls the phone backwards a few inches, grimacing at the stream of pointless pleading. “Money…rent…holidays…help…”
Sawyer’s bleeding fucking heart, the very one I anticipate stopping soon, takes her the opposite direction, presumably to help her mother.
It was bound to happen at some point, and with Sawyer’s vacation over with, it wouldn’t surprise me if that purse full of tips end up in her mother’s greedy hands shortly.
She reaches an even worse area of the city, stepping around large cracks in the cement and keeping her head down against the rowdy noises coming from all around. I keep pace atop the roofs, ready to act the moment she needs help.
She enters a grungy building with more spray paint than original brick, shucks her purse a bit closer to her body, and enters. After checking the area, I jump down between the buildings and trail behind her, always keeping one floor below on the staircase and relying on my speed if necessary.
At the very top, she knocks on the first door that’s barely held up on the hinges.
It’s yanked open to an older, uglier version of Sawyer.
Their hair may have once been the same, but whereas Sawyer’s is glossy, her mother’s is limp and in bad need of a cut.
Dirty teeth sneer down at her daughter as she yanks her inside, yellowed fingers staining my mate’s arm.
Letting her walk into the infested apartment with people who’ve only ever harmed her is the exact thing I vowed to protect her from, but this should serve my needs.
So, I remain outside the thin door, my nose assaulted with the wretched combined scents from their apartment and those nearby: sweat, mildew, alcohol, smoke of every kind, sex, and even blood. For now, I listen.
“Sawyer, it’s the holidays, be nice. You know what I did to give you a life? You owe me.”
Sawyer sighs. “Mom, I told you months ago, I’m done. I can’t help you anymore. I can’t afford it. I’ve come to give you what I have in my purse and after that, you’re on your own.”
That’s my girl. Though handing over the tips is still too generous.
The third person speaks. The one who’ll die first. The one whose blood already fills my mouth.
“If it’s more money you’re needing, I know a few friends who’d love to pay for your ass.
Or maybe, skip the middleman. I’m sure our dealer could do with a sweet thing like you in his bed in exchange for a few grams.”
“Corey, shut up,” Sawyer grinds out. Whatever his response is gets cut off with her mom’s whimper.
“You don’t love me.”
“Not really, no. It’s not like you love me. You really need rehab, Mom. You need help, to get out of this, to get away from him. I’ll help you with that.”
“Oh, so you’d pay for people who think they know better than me, but not to help me continue on as I am? You’re saying you don’t trust me to know what’s best for myself? I see how it is.”
Another sigh. Sawyer, just leave.
“Getting you help and handing you money to buy drugs is not the same!”
“How dare you assume—”
“Oh, knock it the fuck off, Mom. You and I know very well that’s what you do with my money. It’s what you’ve always done, from the day I was born. I wish I never was born. I wish you gave me up to people who actually cared. I wish—”
Slap. Skin meets skin, blistering my mate’s cheek; even without seeing it, I know. My fangs shed, ready to tear apart those who fucking touched her.
As the thin door splinters around me with a shrill shriek, I don’t bother taking in the scene, heading immediately for the asshole sprawled in the recliner, cigarette in one hand, beer bottle in the other—and my hand through his chest before he blinks.
He chokes, eyes wide at the sight of me—or his death—as I yank out his heart and drop it to the floor. Dead, his body slumps in the chair, the noise covered by her mother’s incessant scream as she yanks Sawyer in front of her for protection.
Even when faced with death, she uses Sawyer.
Sawyer, who doesn’t seem surprised to see me.
Whose slight curve to her lips and relief sprinkled in her eyes pauses my own need for revenge as I take her in.
It’s not the best place for a reunion, but for me, it’s less of a reunion anyway.
After all, I’ve been not only following her but sneaking into her apartment when she’s asleep.
Her mother continues screaming, cursing, and then shoves Sawyer my way as she lunges for the door.
I cut her off, slamming a hand to the thin wood as I glare at the woman who’s done my mate wrong for years, my fangs unhidden.
A thing of nightmares for the person deserving nothing less. Hell itself will be too good for her.
“Wait!” Sawyer runs across the room and intercepts my revenge, a hand to the place my heart used to beat. “Don’t kill her.”
“Thank you, Sawyer. See, I knew you loved me!” Her mother paws at her shoulders and hair but Sawyer steps away with a sneer.
“Why shouldn’t I? All she’s ever done is hurt you.”
“I know, but she’s my mom.” Blood from that bleeding heart of hers seeps into her expression as she cups my face, the softness of her hand a direct contrast to the grime of our settings. “I don’t think I could spend immortality knowing I was directly at fault for her death.”
“You wouldn’t be. I will.”
She shakes her head. “You know what I mean. Please, for me. We’ll leave her alive, and she’ll call the police raving about a vampire murdering him.
They’ll think she’s on something. She’ll be locked away in a psych ward and kept from all her addictions, hopefully getting the help she needs.
Or maybe even tried for murder and still kept away from it all. ”
My bloodthirsty mate. Fuck, I couldn’t be more obsessed with her than this instance.
“Living will be her punishment,” she adds softly. “She doesn’t want the help, so it’ll be torture. And I’ll be able to go on without the guilt of her death. A fitting end, I think.”
I offer her my hand. “More like a beginning.”
With her on my back, I run us away from the neighbourhood to somewhere safer—and away from her past. I head to a rooftop of a mall and lower her to her feet, positioning us so her back is to the wind.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“You’ve been nearby since the moment I returned. It’s like I felt you, or something.”
“You felt me because you’ve already accepted me. I waited for the moment you realized mortality isn’t for you any longer.”
She blushes, melding her hands together for the briefest second before rushing into my arms—where she’ll spend eternity.
“I’ve missed you so much, Lucian. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so strongly about a person after such a short time.
It’s why I had to leave, to make sure I wasn’t planning forever around a few days of thrills. ”
Stroking a hand down her hair, I tilt her head back.
“Clearly, becoming a vampire was in your destiny. We feel emotions differently than humans, and you’re already there.
More intensely, to the point they become our single-minded drive.
From the second I saw you, you altered me.
You became the fixation I needed, though didn’t understand. ”
“Sounds like that’s a fancy way of saying ‘I love you.’”
“I don’t love you, Sawyer.” Hurt immediately flashes through her eyes but she has nothing to be harmed by.
Not me, not my words. “Vampires lose the ability to love. What I feel is much deeper, much more profound. You’ve become my every waking minute, my every thought, and my new reason for existing.
I can’t love you because something so minor—so mortal—would be an insult to how your soul is entangled with mine.
I’ll do anything to protect you, defend you, to give you the best possible life. ”
She offers me her hand. “I think you’ve been doing that since the day you saved me. Make me yours, Lucian.”
“It was never a question.”
She packs a bag of the few items she cares about, hops on my back, and I run us into the nearest forest and towards home. What’d be a week-long drive for humans, we complete in a day, mainly stopping for her to rest, eat, and warm up.
Once back in Alberta, I bring her to a cabin better than even her vacation one was. Triple in size with more windows that have been sun proofed and is deeper in the mountains for more privacy. Acquiring it was my task while she was at work some days.
It’s there, I make her my mate in the final way.
When my blood is coursing through her veins, my hand to her face gently snuffs her life out. Those blue eyes I fell for—eyes that once pleaded with me from a crushed vehicle—change forever to a deep midnight black. It’s a small price to pay in exchange for having her for eternity.
She sits up in our bed, staring down at her body. Her movements are jerky, her breath nonexistent as she takes my face between her hands and whispers three words that cling from her human life—because surely, they’re impossible now.
“I love you.”
Then she sinks her fangs into my throat.