Chapter 4
Talin
I couldn't stop shaking.
Not from the cold—New Orleans rarely got that kind of cold—but from the aftershocks of the power that had ripped through me when Elias touched me.
My hands trembled as I pressed them against the brick wall of the alley outside The Purple Fang, trying to ground myself in something solid. Something real. Something that wasn't the frightening, electrifying storm that vampire had unleashed within me.
"You okay?" His voice suddenly came from behind me, careful and measured, like he was approaching a spooked animal.
Which actually wasn't far from the truth.
"Fine," I lied, not turning around. "Just needed some air."
"Talin—"
"I said I was fine," I snapped, but I couldn't help it.
Every nerve ending in my body still sparked with awareness of him.
Of his presence three feet behind me. Of the way his breathing had changed when our skin touched.
Of the silver thread between us that still pulsed like a living thing, invisible, but definitely there.
Gods, what had been wrong with me? I'd come here to find Alex, to use whatever weird ability I'd developed to help save my cousin. Not to... whatever this had been. To feel like my entire world had tilted on its axis because some vampire bartender held my hand.
"You're not fine," Elias said quietly. "Your magic nearly took out half my bar."
I winced, remembering the exploding bottles that'd sent glass and expensive liquor everywhere. My power had surged so violently that even Killian had looked concerned when he'd walked in, and there wasn't much I'd seen that rattled that vampire.
"I'll pay for the damage," I told him, although I had absolutely no idea how I'd come up with the money. I hadn't been able to work since this all started, and I'd just been living off my small savings.
"I don't give a shit about the damage."
The anger in his voice made me turn. He stood closer than I'd expected, close enough that I could see the dark hairs and tattoos on his chest above the buttons of his black shirt and I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Dark, intense eyes that stared right through every wall I'd built.
"Then what do you give a shit about?" The question came out breathless, not nearly as challenging as I'd intended.
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I give a shit about you."
My heart stuttered to a stop, then started pounding again entirely too fast.
He looked away, scrubbing a hand over the short, dark beard that covered his strong jawline. "What I mean is, I can't just leave you to try to figure this out by yourself. You could hurt yourself."
"I know what uncontrolled magic can do." My hand went instinctively to my vest, pressing against the fabric that hid my scars. "Trust me, I've already paid that price once."
A flash of confusion made my stomach drop. But before he could ask the questions I saw forming, I pushed away from the wall. "I need to go."
"No." He moved faster than I could track, suddenly between me and the street. "Look. Why don't you hang out a while."
"Move."
"No."
The challenge in his voice sent heat spiraling through my chest. My power responded instantly, threads lighting up around us in a web of connections I'd never seen so clearly. His silver thread blazed brightest, wrapping around me in ways that should have been impossible.
"Don't." My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard. "Please don't do this."
"Do what? Care whether you make it home in one piece? Or wonder why you're so determined to handle this alone when you clearly need—"
"I don't need anyone." I insisted, but the lie tasted bitter. "Especially not some damn vampire who thinks a few pretty words and concerned looks mean anything."
His eyes flashed with something intense and dangerous. "Is that what you think this is?"
"I don't know what this is!" The admission burst out before I could stop it. "Okay? I don't know why being near you makes everything clearer and more out of control at the same time. I don't know why my magic responds to you like you're... like you're..."
I couldn't say it. Wouldn't say it.
But I didn't have to. Because he knew. I saw it in the way his eyes darkened, in the way his entire body went completely still.
"We're not that," he said flatly. "We can't be. It's not possible."
The rejection shouldn't have hurt. I mean, I'd just been thinking the same thing. But hearing him say it, seeing the denial in his eyes, made the tight ball in the center of my chest suddenly crack open.
"Obviously." I forced a laugh, fighting back a sudden rush of tears. "Even if it were possible, which it's not, someone like you would never..."
I trailed off, unable to finish. Unable to voice the truth that had lived in my bones since I was fourteen.
Someone like him—perfect, powerful, whole—would never want someone like me.
Someone broken. Someone missing pieces that couldn't be fixed.
I mean, I guess it could. Now that I was grown and finished developing, I could go find a surgeon to give me a fake breast. But having one perfect fake breast that didn't match the other one or age the same seemed like it would be even worse than not having one at all.
"Someone like me would never what?" His voice had gone deadly quiet.
"Forget it." I tried to step around him, but he caught my arm. The contact sent electricity shooting through my limbs and out my fingertips, threads of power only I could see spiraling out in every direction.
"Someone like me would never what, Talin?"
The way he said my name made my knees weak. Made me want things I had no business wanting.
"Let go."
"Answer the question."
"Why? So you can pretend to disagree? Save the pity, Elias. I've had enough of that to last several lifetimes."
His grip tightened fractionally and his dark eyebrows came together in a frown. "You think I pity you? Why the hell would I do that?"
"I think you feel this thing between us and you're too decent to just walk away, even though we both know—"
He yanked me against him so fast the words died in my throat. My hands came up instinctively, pressing against his hard chest, and the world exploded into light.
Every thread in New Orleans suddenly became visible.
Thousands upon thousands of connections, a tapestry of fate and choice and possibility.
But at the center of it all, burning brighter than the sun, was the thread between us.
Not silver anymore, but pure white, pulsing with a power that made my bones ache.
And through that thread, I felt him. Elias.
Really felt him. The carefully controlled hunger.
The decades of loneliness hidden behind order and routine.
The way his entire being had reorganized itself around my presence in the space of a single evening.
The want that consumed him as thoroughly as it consumed me.
"This is the only thing I feel," he growled against my ear.
"This is what happens when you're near me.
Everything I use to keep myself together, it all goes to shit the second you walk in.
And the worst part, little witch? I don't even care.
I would let you destroy everything I've built if it meant. .."
He pulled back enough to meet my eyes, and the raw need I saw there stole my breath.
"If it meant what?" I whispered.
His hand came up, fingers ghosting along my jaw, and his voice was both harsh and full of longing as he said, "If it meant I could taste you. Just once."
The threads around us pulled taut, power building between us like a storm. I felt his hunger like a physical thing—for both my blood and my body—animalistic vampire instincts clawing at his control. Could feel my body and my magic responding, reaching for him with desperate fingers of light.
"This is insane," I breathed.
"Yes."
"We can't—"
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because I can't help it." His thumb brushed my bottom lip, and I felt the shudder that ran through his hard body at the contact. "Neither can you."
He was right. Gods help me, he was right. Every cell in my body screamed for him and this connection that defied everything I understood about magic and fate and the walls that used to exist between our species.
My eyes fell to his mouth, slightly parted, the tips of his fangs barely showing. I rose up on my toes, drawn by forces I couldn't name. His head lowered, dark eyes black with hunger. Our lips were an inch apart when the power between us detonated.
The magical backlash threw us apart, sending me stumbling into the wall and him sliding back ten feet.
His angry growl raised the little hairs all over my body as every streetlight on the block shattered.
Car alarms shrieked. People screamed in the distance.
The threads around us went supernova, then vanished completely, leaving me gasping in the sudden darkness.
"Talin!" Kenya's voice cut through the chaos. She appeared at the back door, fangs extended, ready for a fight. When she saw us—me pressed against the wall, Elias standing in the middle of the alley with his fists clenched—her expression shifted to something cautious.
"Am I interrupting?" she asked carefully.
"No," I said quickly, pushing off the wall on unsteady legs. "We were just... I was just leaving."
Pointedly ignoring the possessive sound that reverberated through the narrow alley, she reached toward me. "Are you okay?"
I heard what she was asking without saying it. Glancing toward Elias, who was still as stone, his eyes locked on her hand that hung in midair inches from my arm, I tried to reassure her. "I'm good."