Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Trapped, in the narrow alley, Summer had almost nothing to say to the vampire lord of New Orleans.
“You’re still calling it love, Fabian?” She folded her arms, noting how the flaming on her palms was now extinguished. No more cards to play.
She glanced up at the brick walls rising on either side of her. If she were a vampire, no doubt she’d be able to scramble up the walls to escape. But despite her powers she was simply a human.
Fabian remained silhouetted against the mouth of the passage. He brushed dust from the sleeve of his black jacket with his pocket square. Then he folded the handkerchief and replaced it in the pocket, tweaking it slightly so the perfect half inch of white square peeked out.
“You look terrible, ma chérie,” he murmured. A hint of concern coloring his voice as he took in Summer’s torn clothes and exhausted posture. “What have you done to yourself?”
“What have I done?” Summer stepped forward, feeling the flames arise again. “You’ve destroyed everything I cared about. You pretended to offer me sanctuary while destroying my mate and make me believe he chose to abandon me.”
“I offered you everything.” Fabian’s composure cracked. An expression of confusion flickered across his face. “Safety, knowledge, power beyond imagining. A world where you would never be hurt or abandoned again.”
Summer scoffed. “A world where I would never be free to choose for myself.”
“Freedom.” Fabian laughed bitterly. “You call this freedom? Running through the streets like hunted animals, your mate poisoned by silver, your own power burning through you like fever? This is what you chose over everything I could give you?”
Behind Summer, Rowan shifted against the wall, he stayed on high alert despite his weakened condition. But he remained silent. This confrontation belonged to Summer.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I chose this.”
For a moment, Fabian looked confused, as if he couldn’t comprehend how anyone would choose uncertainty over security, struggle over comfort.
“Do you know what it’s like to live for four hundred years and never feel for anyone what I feel for you?
To watch empires rise and fall while remaining untouched by genuine emotion?
” His hand moved to the ornate sword at his side, but the gesture was unconscious, desperate.
“You are the first person to make me understand what it means to love someone more than existence itself.”
“You once told me you loved my mother, my grandmother, even my great-grandmother. Was it all lies, vampire?”
Fabian shook his head. “I have loved no one as I love you.”
“Then why couldn’t you trust me?”
“Because love makes us vulnerable, ma chérie.” Fabian’s pale eyes held pain that echoed through the centuries. “Because the thought of losing you to your own choices, to circumstances beyond my control, to the simple chaos of existence—it was unbearable.”
Summer bent forward, pressing her hands to her knees.
Her heart squeezed. Despite all he’d done, the anguish in his voice sounded real, loneliness drove his actions and it was heartbreaking.
She saw past the elegant manipulator to the terrified creature beneath—someone who’d loved so rarely, he didn’t know how to do it without destroying what he treasured.
Fabian had known this moment would come from the night he first saw her in the hospital chapel.
Not the specific circumstances—the underground facility, the chase through Halloween chaos, the final confrontation in this narrow alley. But the essential choice would define everything between them: her freedom or his need to protect her from a world which had shown him nothing but loss.
He’d told himself he was saving her. From the Vatican hunters who wanted to dissect her abilities, from the supernatural community wanting to exploit her heritage, from her own naivety about the dangers surrounding anyone with real power.
But standing here, seeing the way she looked at him—not with hatred but with pity—he finally understood what he’d become.
The monster he’d claimed to protect her from.
Every kindness had been manipulation. Every gesture of care designed to increase her dependence.
Every moment of connection was poisoned by his ultimate goal of possession over partnership.
He’d taken something beautiful—her trust, her grief, her desperate need for sanctuary—and used it as a weapon against her agency.
Four centuries of existence, and he’d finally found something worth living for. Only to destroy it with the very love that made it precious.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Fabian said, his voice breaking. “Everything I did, every choice I made—it was to keep you safe.”
“You kept me safe from nothing, vampire. You ignored my decisions. You hypnotized me into…” Summer’s voice halted. She didn’t want to reveal what Fabian had done to her without telling Rowan in private first. “I am growing into my own strength and not accepting yours as a substitute.”
“I could have kept you safe from the pain you’re feeling right now.” Fabian gestured toward her torn clothes, her exhausted posture, the way she swayed on her feet from power depletion. “Look at yourself, Summer. Look at what choosing him has cost you.”
“Choosing you would have cost me so much more.” Summer’s eyes blazed with determination despite her physical weakness. “My agency. My growth. My right to make mistakes and learn from them. The chance to discover what I’m capable of when I’m not being managed and controlled.”
“I would have cherished you?—”
“You agreed to let me go, Fabian. What changed?”
Fabian’s hand tightened on his sword hilt and pulled out his rapier.
Summer knew he had kept the name Goumbeau de l’Ail her ancestor had suggested to him; even after discovering a rough translation named the sword Garlic Gumbo.
The blade sang as it cleared its sheath, but it trembled in his grip.
Centuries of combat training battled with his intention to harm the woman he loved.
“You don’t understand,” he hissed. “The wolf left you. He chose exile over fighting for you.”
“Because he trusted me to make my own choice about following him. Because he loved me enough to try to protect me even when it meant sacrificing his own happiness.” Summer’s voice grew stronger with each word.
“Because when I found him in your torture chamber, he was more concerned about my safety than his own freedom.”
“And I wasn’t?” Fabian’s voice cracked with anguish. “Every decision I made was to protect you.”
“No.” Summer held out her hand, palm up, power crackling visibly in the air above her skin. “There’s no protection in what you did to me. I can never forgive you.”
Her words hit him with force. He finally saw himself as he truly was; not the protective lover of his imagination, but a creature so desperate to possess her he’d destroyed everything that made her love worth having.
“You’re right,” he whispered, the sword dropping to his side. “God help me, you’re right. I’ve become exactly what I claimed to protect you from.”
For a moment, Summer’s expression softened. “You don’t have to keep making bad choices, Fabian. You can choose differently. Let us go, call off the Vatican hunters, and you could start over with someone who?—”
“No.” Fabian raised the sword again, but his heart wasn’t in the threat. “They’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. Both of you. There will never be safety, never be peace.”
“Then kill me.” Summer stepped close enough that the blade could have pierced her heart with a simple thrust. “Or let me go to someone who truly loves me.”
Fabian stared into her face. She was magnificent, and his love had nearly destroyed what made her extraordinary.
When he moved, it was to make a final, irrevocable choice. But instead of striking at Summer, he turned the blade toward his own chest, preferring death to the knowledge of what his love had made him.
Summer was faster.
Her hand closed around the sword’s hilt just above his own, power flowing through her fingers as she redirected the blade’s path. Instead of piercing his heart, Garlic Gumbo sliced across his ribs, drawing blood but avoiding his heart.
“No,” she said fiercely, her enhanced strength forcing the weapon from his grip. “You don’t get to take the easy way out. You don’t get to die peacefully. I want you to live with the consequences of everything you’ve done.”
Fabian staggered backward, pressing a hand to the wound; blood seeped between his fingers. But his expression held relief.
“I told you, ma chérie,” he said softly. “Love truly makes monsters of us all.”
Summer stood holding Fabian’s sword while he bled against the brick wall. She’d won, but victory felt hollow in the face of tragedy. His love was real, at least it had been at one time, and his desire to protect her was rooted in care.
Fabian closed his eyes and slid down the wall, his composure shattered. “Go,” he whispered. “Before I change my mind about letting you choose your own destruction.”
Summer looked at him one last time, the claiming mark from her mate pulsed hotly on her neck. She turned to Rowan, helping him toward the alley’s exit while Fabian’s words echoed in her mind: Love makes monsters of us all.
The question was whether they could learn to rebuild their love for each other without the secret she was keeping from him destroying them.
Behind them, Fabian watched them disappear into the Halloween night.
He’d finally learned the difference between loving someone and owning them.
The lesson was only four hundred years too late.