Chapter 23 #2
He was weak and in need of replenishment; his skin pruned as dehydration set in.
But he couldn’t bear letting go of Nicholas to tend to his own needs.
It was as if letting go physically would somehow make his death final, as though Nicholas would somehow feel the loss of his tether to this world from wherever he may have been.
Gabriel alternated between rocking with him in his arms to spending hours with his ear pressed to Nicholas’s disfigured chest, before wrapping himself around his fractured body again.
They were caked in dried blood, rigor mortis embedding itself deeper with every hour, and the sickly sweet smell of death enveloped the room.
Gabriel couldn’t give up, would not allow himself to believe Nicholas would be taken from him. He held him into day three, whispering the same five words into his ear as blood-tears trailed past his trembling lips.
“Please, come back to me…”
Day 3
The sense of urgency coursing through Gabriel wasn’t his own, and he knew Marcus would appear at any moment if he didn’t take sustenance. Gabriel was in his most feral, primitive state. Killing whoever walked through his door would’ve been instinctual, not logical.
It was his need to protect Nicholas that ultimately got him to let go, and he groaned as he dragged his shriveled body over to one of the trunks.
A cloud of cool mist formed when he unsealed the lid, his fangs lowering at the sight of all the bagged blood. He reached a skeletal hand inside, removing the port on two of the bags before bringing them to his gaunt lips.
His kidney pain eased immediately, the curve at the top of his spine straightening, and the wrinkles in his skin smoothed away. Gabriel’s primal urges took over, holding him hostage until he’d gotten through a whole trunk.
He caught a look at himself in the corner mirror, and the proof of his vitality threatened to take him back to his knees.
Behind him, the man he loved had withered away, clumps of his hair sticking to the dried patches of blood covering the bed.
Yet underneath the grime, Gabriel didn’t look a day older than thirty.
He didn’t think his grief could reach new depths, but as his legs trembled, barely keeping him upright, he realized he’d been mistaken.
He crawled back onto the bed, ignoring the cracking sounds Nicholas’s stiff ligaments made as he gathered him to his chest.
“You are not my mate,” he whispered into what remained of Nicholas’s once lustrous hair. “You were never mine, regardless of what had been done to get you here. I had no right to you, and I should’ve honored you with the truth.”
Gabriel ached with his desire to do things differently, to have Nicholas fall in love with the truth of him from the start. He’d made a mess of things, and now it seemed it would be too late.
“If I had the power to keep you human, to give you everything your heart desired, I would do it. Right now, without a second thought, I would make it so you never lay eyes on me, my love.”
He spent the rest of the day confessing many things to Nicholas inside their bloody shrine, admitting to all his failings, to all areas where he fell short.
“I am nothing, and I fear I’ve always known that.
But you made me want to be something better than what I may be capable of.
I hid behind violence to mask the guilt I feel for my parents’ deaths.
If I were there, maybe I could have saved them.
My well is poisoned, Nicholas, and it infects everything good.
I will never forgive myself for infecting you. ”
Regret and exhaustion beat heavily at Gabriel, and he couldn’t say which of the two won the fight. Massasu dimae didn’t require much sleep, although going completely without it dulled their senses. Even fully hydrated, Gabriel couldn’t outrun slumber’s warm embrace as it tugged him down to the bed.
Vengeance had consumed him after Zayn died. Murder and retaliation had become his purpose. It fueled him, sustained his inflated ego, and led to every bad decision he’d made.
Now what preoccupied him were thoughts of finding Nicholas in the afterlife. He hadn’t believed in one until meeting him. Nicholas’s heart was too good, his soul too pure for there not to be one, for this ugly death to be the last of him.
Gabriel knew he was unworthy of stepping foot through whatever door beyond death welcomed Nicholas in, but it didn’t stop him from drifting off to plans of joining him there.
Day 4
Gabriel roused to the muted thumping of a heart that wasn’t his own. Above him, two neon orbs of sapphire watched him without any sign of recognition in them.
Nicholas wheezed, two pearly white fangs sparkling behind his mangled lips.
Gabriel’s own heart rocketed as fresh blood-tears scalded the backs of his eyes. He hadn’t cried in centuries, and now it seemed he couldn’t stop.
“Nicholas.”
His smile faltered at the look of sheer hunger gazing back at him.
He didn’t have time to bare his neck, to tell Nicholas to take whatever he wanted, leaving nothing behind, if he so wished.
With a strength Gabriel hadn’t expected, Nicholas wrenched his head to the side with a snarl before tearing into him.
Nicholas drifted in and out of consciousness over the next twenty-four hours, waking long enough to drain Gabriel before falling back into a restorative sleep. Gabriel used the time to replenish his body and to take stock of Nicholas’s healing injuries.
The gruesome gashes along his abdomen were now nothing more than thin, pale scars, and would soon vanish altogether. The broken ribs, once protruding through his diaphragm, had reset themselves, the surrounding organ damage now fully repaired—Gabriel hoped.
The swelling of his lips had reduced significantly, and their usual pink coloring had returned.
He removed the makeshift tourniquet from around Nicholas’s thigh, and while the cut to his femoral artery had healed, a few layers of skin remained flayed.
Gabriel sighed, a symbol of his relief. For the first time, he allowed himself to obsess over how much Nicholas would hate him once this was said and done.
Still, while he regretted every other decision he’d made in his life, he couldn’t bring himself to regret saving him—even though Nicholas wouldn’t see it that way.
Nicholas was no longer mortal, but hopefully, in time, he’d see that he could still live a good life. Gabriel couldn’t just stand by and watch him succumb to a forever-death, knowing that Nicholas’s dreams for himself were still possible.
He’d let Nicholas go if that was what he wanted. He’d already come to terms with that outcome. Better that than burying him, even if it seemed permanent death would’ve been his preferred option.
Blood matted Nicholas’s hair, and the strips of clothing clinging to him were melded to his skin.
Both Gabriel and the bedroom were a hellacious sight, and the pungent scent had gone beyond atrocious.
When Nicholas did become aware, Gabriel didn’t want him surrounded by the aftermath of his human demise.
He moved him to the guest bedroom, resting him on the corner chaise while he ran them a warm bath.
Carefully peeling Nicholas out of the strips of clothing, then removing his own, Gabriel descended the steps into the marble tub with Nicholas draped over his arms. He settled into the soapy water, then gently sponged the crimson flakes from Nicholas’s face and body, kissing the purple bruises below his eyelids.
He took his time combing his fingers through Nicholas’s tangled hair, watching the dark strands coil tightly from the bath water and steam. The missing patches had grown in again; his full mane now shone like it’d been kissed by the sun.