Chapter 47
LEAH
Iwake to Karina shaking me. “Leah.” Her voice cracks. My lids flutter.
“Thank the Goddess.” Her head whips up. She growls. “Move again, vampire, and I will gut you, brother or no.”
I feel for my throat. The skin is new but whole.
I sit up, aching inside and out and heavy with magic. The he in question is nowhere to be found, and the bond—I reach inside me—its golden light is dim, like Marcus himself is dimmed.
Dread crawls at the edges of my mind.
Julian is pinned to one of the porch columns, straining against the magic I can feel tethering us. It survived my injuries somehow. Karina’s eyes blaze with power, ready to provide backup.
She’s in her underwear, hands clenched at her sides, standing over me like a protective mother bear. And Julian—I squint—he’s very much alive and looking very much sane and interested in my friend.
“Where is he?” I rasp.
Karina shakes her head. “I don’t know. I just got here. Apparently the guardian spell you activated with your blood is designed to summon the nearest member of my family.”
That explains the underwear, I guess.
“He’s dying.” Julian snarls the words, but his eyes stay fastened on my friend.
“What do you mean?” My voice sounds like it’s been put through a meat grinder.
Finally the vampire turns his silver gaze on me. He looks so much like Marcus that my chest aches anew.
“He completed the mating bond, that idiot, even injured as you were.” Julian shakes his head.
“You should have died. Now your body is pulling life force from him to survive. He cannot heal his injuries and he will not wake. This is why we don’t bond with mortals.
He will die. Slowly.” His gaze goes cold. “For a slayer, no less.”
“For me?” I manage the words. It is—unfathomable.
Julian scoffs. “Of course it was for you. You’re his mate.
” The word is rasped. “He completed the mate bond to save your life and now he will die. My foolish, brave, good brother.” The words are both insults and compliments, and they make pressure gather at the back of my nose.
He will die for me. Like my parents did. I would have loved you.
That pressure threatens to burst, and I blink furiously. He did love me. Does love me. I felt it.
I can’t let anyone else die for me. Not Marcus. Brave, foolish, good vampire.
I still need to yell at him for lying to me.
“Give me the apple,” I blurt. My insides feel pulped, sick and twisting every which way. Marcus can’t be dying. He cannot.
Karina sucks in air.
Julian’s head tilts. “Why should I?”
I rise to my feet, injuries forgotten and brimming with magic.
It is heady and intoxicating. It wings upward at least ten feet in the air in a swirl of silver.
I can sense that it won’t last forever, but for now I feel electric and strange, like I’m floating as I stalk toward him.
I can feel the tether between us. Julian can’t move unless I will it.
“I should kill you.”
Julian, for once, is silent.
“You killed my parents,” I rasp, my throat burning. “You slaughtered them, actually. I watched them die.”
His face is blank.
“I hate you,” I say quietly, “But you are still Marcus’s brother, and if there is even a shred of a chance for redemption, I know he would want it for you, even if he claims not to. So I will let you live in exchange for his life. Give me the apple.”
“Do not,” Karina says sharply.
“Quiet, witch,” Julian snaps. “I’m about to make the deal of a lifetime.” The vampire’s eyes silver. “You think you can survive getting your heart’s desire? I’ve tried, you know. It drove me mad. I have nothing to show for it.”
“Don’t forget I can stake you and take the apple by force.”
He smirks. “Have at it.” He reaches into his coat pocket and comes up with the apple. He tosses it, and I catch, stretching my wounds painfully.
The apple is impossibly light for something so powerful. My hand trembles. I once wanted nothing more than to eat one of these and bring my parents back.
“Leah, don’t. We talked about this. You cannot bring back the dead.” Karina’s gaze is stark. “They’re a reason the apples are named for a man. Because men are fools.”
My fingers tighten around the tiny ruby-red fruit. “I have to try. Not for them.” My voice cracks.
Karina’s eyes flare. She watched me hunt for one of these for years. “For him? He’s your heart’s desire?”
I nod. “He can’t die like this. Not when we have unfinished business.”
The apple seems to throb in agreement.
“Hold Julian, Karina. Take him with you and contain him, please.” I manage the words before I reach inside and feel for the bond.
My attempts to follow it are fumbling, like the first time I drove a car or tried to write left-handed.
It doesn’t sing for me like it did just minutes ago.
It reminds me of a dying tree limb, gnarled and blackened.
Marcus. I pinch my eyes shut and stumble in the direction the bond tugs me. My feet meet the porch.
Inside. The vampire went inside.
I feel like a newborn deer as I make my way inside on shaky legs. I lean briefly against the wall of the dining room, my breath sawing in my new lungs. The bond tugs insistently.
I know, I tell it. I just need a minute.
The little black cat leaps onto the dining room table and meows at me. Her eyes are a bright green, and under them, a little gold tag on a green collar dangles. I grasp it and read.
Luna is inscribed in swooping script.
He named the cat. My vision blurs with unshed tears. “Foolish vampire,” I mutter. He named the fucking cat for a children’s cartoon that I had no idea he even knew about. One I used to watch when I was nine. I still have the comics, and he must have seen them.
Luna noses at a mug on the dining room table.
My shaking fingers trace the letters on the paper under it.
Leah,
You have shown me more kindness in one week than I have received in my entire life. I promise that this coffee will be the first of many I share with you. You are incredible, my little mate.
All my love,
Marcus
I think back to our conversation earlier.
His reassurance that it wouldn’t hurt when he left.
I think back farther, to his quiet rescue of me, to the food he made, and the coffee machine, and the way he told me he wanted a lifetime of Costco trips.
The confessions he made and his promises not to hurt me.
The tender way he cared for me, the anguish any time I was injured. The sheer volume of his affection.
Even if he could lie, I’d believe he didn’t know about the past. Because the vampire I know would have confessed to me. He’d never knowingly hurt me. Not like that.
In the face of his actions, does the past matter?
Isn’t the full life I have with Marcus what my parents wanted for me? It’s what I’ve been searching for. Am I willing to let it go?
Isn’t a chance at happiness worth far more than vengeance?
Of course it is. I deserve happiness, and Marcus does too.
My tears splash onto the paper. My fingers spasm around the fruit. Without thinking, I bite it and chew.
It tastes like no apple I’ve ever had. A burst of flavor like mango, then bitter like an orange peel. I force it down. The whole thing. I have to eat the whole thing. The magic is most potent in the seeds.
He never meant to leave me.
He meant to make this work, just like I did.
We both went into tonight hoping for a future together, and I can feel it slipping away.
I chew viciously, shoving pieces into my mouth, and stumble for the stairs, where I know he’s waiting, the note clenched in my fist the entire time.