Chapter 52 – Oliver
ONE
OLIVER
The world around us melts away. Nothing else exists.
I am her breath. I am her heartbeat. I am her love and her lust. I am her fire, her magic, her soul.
But above all else, we are one, finally complete.
We bonded through fire. We bonded with rings from the mortal world.
We bonded with the blood of vampires and the lust of Lilu.
For the first time in my life, I feel whole. There’s no emptiness anymore, no loneliness because she’s there. I reach into her, sliding over her consciousness, sharing exactly how I feel as we come down and her fire cools. I hear her echoing words in my head, I feel it too.
We’re fully bonded and neither of us could have stopped it. It was instinctual. It happened naturally without so much as a thought to urge it on. We became one there on the rooftop, under the stars and the moon she loves so much.
Our love is blessed.
“Say something else inside my head,” I tell her as I smile in awe of this woman. She’s everything.
Did the hypnosis work after all? she asks.
I laugh as I see my own face in her mind.
The way she sees me, the fuzzy, golden light that shimmers around the edges of the vision, the way it makes her heart race.
No one has ever seen me like this. She was right when she said it wasn’t my magic.
She just loves me, and this is real. It was always real, and that was why I couldn’t get her out of my head.
Her truth triggers such happiness inside me. “I love you, Vale.”
“I love you,” she says and smiles up at me.
“This is the best night of my life. We are one. I see the way you see me. I can feel your heartbeat. I can feel you breathing. I feel the hunger inside you. I can speak to you there now. It’s easy.
I didn’t know this would happen. It’s beautiful.
” She’s in awe of the bond, as am I. It feels so easy, so simple when nothing has ever been simple. It seems we can have it all.
Tears wave over her aqua eyes, but I know for sure she isn’t sad. I feel her absolute, blissful happiness in how we’re bonded. Her head is tilted as she studies my face. She sees the same in me. Her hands lift to cup my cheeks, and she takes in a deep breath.
“I always knew you were the one for me. I may not have been able to feel that attraction for others, but I knew it when I felt it for you.” Vale shows me her first memory of me.
She plays it like a movie reel in my head.
I feel how her body sung for the first time with attraction and desire.
How fast her heart beat even as her lungs seized.
I feel how hard it was for her to speak, to move.
She’d been so overwhelmed by it she hadn’t known what to do.
Then I show her what I saw. How I watched her from the shadows before I said hello.
She was lit up, unlike anything else that surrounded her.
She shone with life, with that energy. Vale takes a deep breath when she sees Nick and how different he looks from her, how muted his skin tone, his hair, and features are.
It was hard to look at him when she stood there.
I show her the night I kissed her, how I felt when she shook in my hands, intimidated by what she felt for me. I show her what I saw when she sat on that stool and looked through her telescope. In every image she shone like gold while everything else was muted in color.
“That’s how you see me? Why is everything else so dark?”
Memories of my life flash in quick succession in her mind.
“Everything is muted compared to you,” I explain.
“I didn’t live until I saw you. I’ve only been surviving.
I lived in a state of changeless apathy, Vale.
It was like living in black and white until you showed up.
Then suddenly I was blessed with vivid color. ”
Vale sobs with a devastation so great as she feels the lonely state I was in for so long. It breaks her beautiful heart. “How did you survive?” she cries as she squeezes me in tight against her chest.
“The demon inside promised you’d come back. Hope hurts, but it’s also a blessing. Have you not noticed how he thinks you were in this world before? He knew you were our mate from the beginning. It was only me who denied it. I’m sorry for that.”
Our eyes meet and she seems a bit nervous. “He does know me, Oliver. I’ve known him most of my life.”
Her bright memories flash in my head. There’s a little girl stuck in nightmares. She chokes on sobs as the darkness surrounds her. She feels like she’s being suffocated by them. The darkness wraps around her throat like large hands as she screams and thrashes.
The beast appears, looking around like he doesn’t belong in this nightmare.
It isn’t one of ours. Then he sees the little girl, the only source of light in the dream.
She glows in the shadows. She’s afraid, scared of the new monster, but he smiles at her.
He’s gentler than I would have imagined him to be.
“My fiery Princess, would you like me to kill them for you?” he asks her with a huge grin, like he’d destroy anything for her.
“Help me!” the little flame-haired girl cries. “Please!” Her cries hurt my heart.
The monster beats back the shadows that try to trap her, try to hurt her, and choke her tiny neck. When he’s finished and the sun rises over the dreamscape, she runs to him without a thought. She wraps her tiny arms around him and cries into his stomach where she hides her face.
He kneels before her. “I’ll protect you, little one. I swear it.”
Little Vale’s cheeks are red, tears streaming as she watches him. “Are you a demon?”
“I am Ashmodai,” he says proudly, a fist coming to his chest as if he speaks to a general and not a tiny girl. “And you, what’s your name now, little one.”
“I’m Vale Granger. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m six years old,” she tells him, her tears slowly stopping. “Thank you for making them go away. I don’t like them. They hurt me, Ashmodai.”
He picks her up in his arms. “Do you know who all monsters fear?”
“I don’t. I’m afraid of monsters,” she says sadly.
“They’re afraid of the biggest, baddest monster of all,” he says with a smile.
“The demon As-mo-de-us,” she says slowly, with wide eyes while she stares up at his face. It makes me laugh.
“Oh no, little one. They’re afraid of me.”
“You’re a beautiful monster, Ashmodai. Can I braid your pretty hair?” she asks as if what he’d said meant nothing to her. She isn’t afraid. She gives him her trust blindly, like any small child might a superhero.
Vale speeds the dreams up, showing me all the pretty dreams they shared. She became a brave girl in her dreams, but if she was hurting, he always comforted her.
“My fiery Queen, he calls you. I never knew why. He didn’t show me these dreams, but there have been times when he disappeared from my consciousness for long periods. It makes sense now that he was with you. I’m glad he comforted you, protected you from your nightmares.”
“I can’t wait to braid your pretty hair,” she says with a silly grin.
“It all makes sense now. You like my unfashionably long hair because you loved him. Do I get a daisy chain as well?”
“I’ll make you a daisy chain if you promise to fly our future children around, like you did with me.” Her smile is so sweet, making me think of those children we would have one day. I hope they all look like her.
“I don’t know how—” I never get the chance to finish.
The change takes me and suddenly she’s holding on tight to my neck.
We lift on wings that seem to know what they’re doing already.
I hold her tightly to my chest as we hover about six feet off the ground.
My heart is pounding. I shouldn’t be doing this, someone could see us. I could get us both hurt.
“There’s my beautiful monster.” There’s such love in her eyes when she looks at me. My mate is the most beautiful woman in all the world. I love her with all of my being, even the monster that stirs inside me.
“Always and forever,” I tell her because I know we’ll have it always, our forever, together, as one.