Chapter 6
Gabriel
Steam billowed from the sunken tub as Gabriel reclined on its window seat.
Gazing unseeingly at the night sky, he counted the number of lies he’d have to tell once Nicholas came to.
He only hoped that somewhere in between, he could also provide a meaningful truth.
Tobacco smoke filled his lungs, but did little to ease his nerves.
Nicholas groaned, hand breaching the water’s surface to cup his head.
The candlelight cast shadows along his stern jawline, and Gabriel wondered if the setting would feel too intimate. He’d only been thinking about Nicholas’s comfort when lighting them.
Nicholas blinked, slowly looking over the water and the darkened space around him. He hadn’t noticed Gabriel yet.
“You’re safe.”
He jerked upright, palms gripping the edge of the marble tub. The movement disturbed the water around him.
“We’re at my home. I didn’t know where else to take you.”
He could’ve taken him to his own place, and then claimed he’d gotten the address from Eliana. But going to those lengths would’ve only made Nicholas more apprehensive. Besides, Gabriel hadn’t wanted to let himself into Nicholas’s home. He wanted to be invited in.
The arteries in Nicholas’s neck fluttered, his breath quickening as he glanced down his chest. The soapy water hid the rest of his body.
“You undressed me.” A hint of accusation colored his tone.
“You were undressed when I found you.”
Nicholas seemed confused by that, but then he ducked his head.
“I did my best not to touch the places that matter,” Gabriel assured him. “Or to look.”
Every part of Nicholas mattered, but hopefully, he understood what Gabriel meant.
“How did you even know where to find me?” Brown eyes, still faintly clouded, narrowed on Gabriel.
“Eliana.”
The mention of her name made Gabriel’s blood boil. He bit into his tongue to tamp down the rage threatening to set him afire.
“Eliana?”
“I wanted to check in with you. See if you’d taken my proposal into consideration. She seemed concerned for you, for some reason.”
He hated having to paint her as anything other than selfish. Eliana was fully aware that she’d sent Nicholas into a viper’s nest.
“She tried calling you but got no answer,” he lied. “She couldn’t call the police, so I convinced her I could make sure you were okay.”
“She shouldn’t be giving you that type of information, or any information about me.”
“Luckily, she did,” Gabriel replied softly, and a rose petal blush spread over Nicholas’s cheeks.
“Did they…”
“No. I got there in time.”
Nicholas let loose a shuddering breath, his firm grip on the tub’s edge relaxing.
“I knew something wasn’t right, that I shouldn’t be there. I knew, but I needed—” He clamped his mouth shut, appearing sick with himself.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Nicholas. I don’t sit here in judgment of you.” He expelled a plume of smoke, holding Nicholas’s fragile gaze.
“Why not?”
“Because then I’d have to judge myself.” Which he already did.
“You mean because you want me for the type of service I provide?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I want you in spite of it, Nicholas.”
Nicholas’s eyes went wide before he looked away. Minutes passed before he spoke again.
“I don’t do this because I want to. If it were up to me, I’d be at home, curled up with my Bible, or daydreaming about my first day of seminary school.”
He lifted the cross hanging askew around his neck, bringing it to his lips before closing his hand around it.
His eyes were red-rimmed when they met Gabriel’s again, full of heartache, burdened by despair.
Gabriel wanted to aim his violence at the person who put that look there, but that person was him.
“Have you ever felt like you needed to completely break apart just so you can be put back together again?” Nicholas asked, voice raspy with unshed tears. “Like you’re trying to hold everything together, but letting go is the only answer?”
“Yes. Every single day.” Gabriel forced himself to hold his mate’s stare, to suffer right alongside him. Nicholas observed him expectantly, as though begging him to take the lead. His gaze pleaded for Gabriel to prove he could be trusted with all that Nicholas had to share.
“What happens when the past and present collide?” he’d asked Marcus.
Nicholas’s dreams concerned him, no matter how reassuring Marcus’s words about destiny were intended to be.
But he couldn’t allow that to rule his actions.
This moment was important, probably the most important of any to come.
Nicholas was asking for a companion to his pain, and Gabriel would provide him with one.
Gabriel spoke in a low, haunting tone, some of the formality he normally kept concealed coming through.
“I am from Saraad, a country bordering the Red Sea. As a whole, the people of Saraad are referred to as Saraadians. My father was a blacksmith, and my mother sold livestock. We weren’t wealthy by any means, but you didn’t need to be to employ help.
Marcus and his parents lived in our servants’ quarters.
Upon meeting, he and I became fast friends.
As close as brothers—or so we were told. We were far too young to remember.”
Nicholas frowned. “Marcus?”
“My driver,” Gabriel explained. “My only friend.”
“Is that how we got here?” Nicholas looked at the pillar candles circling the tub and the lounge area off to the left.
“Yes. He and I couldn’t be more different in temperament.
I was impulsive, explosive, never backed down from a fight.
Marcus is measured, nurturing, and blindly loyal.
My older brother had little time for our childish pursuits.
He had grand delusions of joining the council’s militia.
He believed in their political rhetoric.
My brother couldn’t see past his own idealistic beliefs to recognize the council for who they truly were. ”
Gabriel studied Nicholas for signs that his words rang familiar to him. His heart beat an uneven staccato at both having to put words to painful events and possibly striking a chord with Nicholas’s dreams.
“My father forged me a much-requested sword for my tenth birthday, and immediately regretted it once he realized he wouldn’t gain a second of respite until I was fully trained in how to wield it.”
Nicholas tilted his head, a droplet of water rolling from his jaw to his dimpled chin. “A sword? Did boys your age not climb trees and skin their knees where you’re from?”
“I had no time for such frivolous things,” Gabriel joked, surprised by his ability to do so.
Some life returned to Nicholas then, and Gabriel continued, wanting more than just a glimpse of his mate’s smile.
“No, hunting and machinations were more my expertise.”
“Sounds archaic. I’ve never heard of Saraad.”
“Not many have.” Gabriel didn’t linger there, picking up where he’d left off with his story. “One evening, Marcus went to market for his mother and returned bloodied and bruised.”
Marcus’s wounds had mostly healed by the time he’d made the long trek back, but Gabriel omitted that part.
“He’d gotten into a scuffle with a few high-bred Saraadian boys who’d thought to take his servility for weakness. They wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake,” Gabriel added darkly.
“Later that night, with my sword in hand, I snuck off in search of them with the little details Marcus had innocently provided. Of course, I got halfway there only to realize he’d followed me. He’d made a nasty habit of doing so by then.” Gabriel shook his head at the memory.
“I’d never ventured that far on my own, but Marcus had been there just hours before, yet somehow we ended up lost.” Centuries later, and he still couldn’t understand that.
He drew one leg up, flicking the flint wheel on his lighter, transfixed by the spark.
“We’d returned right before sunrise to find our home ravaged and our parents dead.”
Nicholas was stone-still in the bathwater, his scent rife with remorse. He didn’t apologize, though, as if knowing it wouldn’t ease Gabriel’s grief.
“Your brother?” He held his breath.
“He’d been sent to search for us. My mother was late into her third pregnancy by then, so my father stayed behind with her.”
Gabriel’s kind were born, not turned.
Nicholas waded through the pool of water, drawing closer to Gabriel. He eyed Gabriel’s outstretched leg before slowly resting a wet palm over it. Some of Gabriel’s pain lifted from his shoulders, but not nearly enough.
“We were forced to hunker down in the cellar of our home, with their blood pooling beneath our feet, until sunset.”
He didn’t mention that he’d lain curled in a corner cradling his mother’s severed head, or the effort it took to resist running into the sunlight just to escape the scent of blood surrounding him. It was the need for answers and vengeance that saw him through the daylight hours.
“From that day on, we were forced to fend for ourselves.” Gabriel and Marcus hadn’t yet been assigned feeding partners. They were still young and fed from their mother’s vein. They took their nourishment from Hamza, or from each other, in the early days after.
“I don’t know what my journey might have been had things not turned out the way they had.
But I was changed that day. I know what it’s like to lose yourself, Nicholas.
To wonder who you would’ve been had the worst thing that ever happened to you not occurred.
I know what it’s like to look a bad decision in the eye, knowing you’ll regret making it, but making it anyway. ”
Gabriel’s intensity stifled the air in the room, but Nicholas didn’t shy away from it. In fact, he held Gabriel tighter.
“Were they found? Whoever killed your families?”
“Yes.”
It had taken him years, and many bad deeds, to earn favors from the right people, but he’d obtained the names of the men who’d taught him a valuable lesson about what he was capable of, and he’d made them pay. He’d made them suffer.
“Good,” Nicholas said, blind to the type of fate those men met.