Chapter 16 Saskia
According to Lucan, being prepared means taking a bath—his way of delaying the inevitable, I’m sure.
To be fair, though, I haven’t washed a single part of my body since the Blood Moon Palace. So when I slide into the water he boiled and poured into his own tarnished, silver tub in his bathroom, I can’t help but emit a groan of relief and sink as far as I can into the steaming warmth.
Lucan himself isn’t here to move my fingers along my body this time.
I can hear the faint grumble of his voice through the closed door to the right of me, having some kind of conversation with the few werewolves he invited into his home after the pack confrontation.
I have no idea what he’s talking about with Vivian, Merrick, and Soren downstairs, but the deep tone of their muffled words tells me it’s serious.
Maybe his friends are trying to get him to see reason with me.
Fling me back over the Wall, right into Arad’s waiting arms, and forget Xantera entirely.
It would certainly make more sense than this.
Us. A werewolf and vampire… well, I’m not even sure I can say in love.
Has that word ever crossed either one of our thoughts yet?
Maybe mine, like a whisper of a secret fluttering across my heart when I look at him, but I haven’t heard it from him. So why didn’t Lucan kill me as soon as I woke up with these fangs ripping from my gums?
I use them to gently pierce my bottom lip now, testing the sharpness and strength.
Unlike Lucan’s thick canines, these feel more like the needles I’ve used so many times to stitch up a cut in the Healing Center.
I halfway wish I could pluck them from my mouth now, so that they could only be used to help and never hurt.
I already can’t live without you, and now you can’t live without me.
That’s what Lucan told me, right before we came undone together.
As if somehow, he likes that I’m dependent on his blood now, that I can pierce his skin in the same way he can bruise mine.
I’m just not sure if he actually means it, or if he’s pretending for my sake.
Sighing, I glance around his bathroom, inspecting the details of it with renewed fascination. Unlike the plain identical ones in Xantera’s housing units or the grand, gold-lined bathroom in my private suite in the Blood Moon Palace, this is purely and utterly him.
Half-used bars of handmade soap litter a shelf jutting from the wood-paneled walls, ranging in smell from mint to cedar to charcoal.
A single bath mat that looks like it’s about three hundred years old sits beneath a lone, tattered towel that looks even older, hanging by a wooden knob that Lucan must have nailed in by hand.
A candle sits by an unused sink on the rustic wood counter, currently unlit; enough leftover light streams in through the window for me to see what I’m doing, although even that is certainly fading fast.
Before it gets too dark, I grab one of the bars of soap and begin to lather it in between my hands, massaging every inch of my new body and marveling at how strong I feel.
My skin doesn’t so much as dent under the pressure of my fingers.
And I swear, my fingernails themselves have grown longer and sharper in the span of twenty-four hours, as durable as miniature blades.
I could probably take a chunk out of the wall behind me, if I wanted to.
Of course, I don’t. There’s only one Wall I want to destroy.
At that thought, I sink under the water to soak the rest of my hair, then lather the soap onto my head and wash out every single ounce of grit and dirt. When I’m done, I rise out of the bathtub, water dripping all around me in echoing plops, and step out to wrap myself in Lucan’s tattered towel.
Only then do I allow myself to look at the bottom frame of the cracked oval mirror hanging above the sink.
“Here goes nothing,” I whisper to myself, and finally look up at my reflection.
A gasp shoots down my throat.
My eyes aren’t the deep crimson of Arad’s, exactly, but pink-tinged, like a red film slathered over the hazel and green.
My eyelashes are darker, my eyelids nearly purple, as if Vivian’s makeup from earlier is permanently stamped onto my face.
But it’s not. This is just how I look now—as ethereal and otherworldly as all the Guardians.
“I am not a Guardian,” I tell myself, repeating Lucan’s words from earlier. Trying to find conviction in them. “I am not one of them.”
Suddenly, something rattles from downstairs, and Lucan’s raised voice passes through the walls. So quickly I almost slip on the small puddle of water around me, I wrap his towel more firmly around me and race out the door, down the tight, spiral staircase, and into the kitchen.
“Is everything okay?”
Five pairs of amber eyes flick toward me.
To my surprise, it isn’t just Vivian, Merrick, and Soren in the kitchen with Lucan, but his mother, too, assessing me with both warmth and sharpness in her gaze.
She’s the only one sitting down at the moment, her arms crossed in a chipped wooden chair while the other four stand, facing each other.
“Hi, Saskia!”
The words come from Vivian. Lucan himself has his jaw hanging all the way to the floor as he stares at me, and a flush crawls up my neck when I realize I’m still naked, wrapped in just a threadbare towel, water beading on my skin and rolling off onto his floor.
Shit. If I was ever going to impress his mother, I’ve missed my chance. But I suppose gaining her approval was already a lost cause as soon as Arad’s venom activated my vampire gene.
Soren, on the other hand, looks more than impressed enough.
“Well, hello.” He rounds his lips as if to whistle, only for Merrick to slam a hand over his mouth before the first note can escape his mouth. Good thing, too, because Lucan turns to him with canines bared, claws already shooting from his fingers…
“Is everything okay?” I repeat, determined to prevent a fight that could very well demolish Lucan’s entire house.
“Saskia.” Lucan turns back toward me, his claws retracting, his jaw twitching. “I laid out some clothes for you right outside the bathroom.”
“Oh.” I glance down at my bare neckline, the swell of my breasts beneath the towel.
From my periphery, I can see Soren smirking and Merrick looking away, while Vivian and Lucan’s mother exchange glances.
“I didn’t see them,” I say firmly, lifting my chin.
“I heard shouting and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
I push out a little warning in those last words, wanting everyone in the room to know that I will not be locked outside of an important conversation. I’ve been locked away for too long. If everyone else in this ghost town wants me gone, I need to know.
Lucan rakes a hand through his hair, disheveling it.
“I was just trying to convince them…”
He trails off, glancing uncertainly at his mother, who raises a slender white eyebrow. My heart twists. Trying to convince them not to hate you. Not to kill you. Not to think of you as the enemy, I’m sure he means. Because they do. They hate me now. They want to kill me.
Vivian strides toward me, and my muscles tense in preparation for a blow. Her hand raises.
And then she lays it gently on my shoulder. “He was trying to convince one of us to fight him for the alpha position.” She shoots a glare over her own shoulder. Not at me. At Lucan. “He was just going to hand it over, as if any of us want it.”
“What?”
I crank my head toward Lucan, trying to read the stoic expression plastered over all his emotions. He hauls in a deep breath and meets my eyes.
“Better the alpha position goes to one of them than Gabriel.”
“But…” I don’t know much about the system of werewolves—or anything about it, in fact. But I haven’t seen a single other pack member who’s as strong, or as determined, or as brave as him. “You’re a perfect alpha, Lucan. Why would you want to give that away?”
Now, his eyes drop to the floor, and it’s his mother who answers from her chair. “My son here thinks that his duties as an alpha—as a king—directly contradict his feelings for you. And that he has to choose one over the other.”
The tone leaking from her words couldn’t be any clearer: she disagrees.
But I turn toward Lucan again, every promise and declaration he’s ever given me swelling in my chest, nearly bursting.
I can’t tell if my stomach flutters with soft, delicate butterflies or if those butterflies have razor-sharp wings, threatening to shred me apart from the inside-out.
“You want to choose me over your pack? That’s absurd, Lucan!”
“No.” He lifts his head, and the entire kitchen seems to drop several degrees until I’m shivering in place. “What’s absurd is that you’d think I’d choose anything besides you, little nightmare. I’ve told you over and over that I’m not leaving you, so when are you going to fucking hear me?”
When he eats the distance between us in two enormous strides and crowds into my space, everything else disappears except for the two of us. Just me and him, yellow and red pupils locked on each other.
“Do you need to hear the actual words before it gets through that beautiful mind of yours?” he continues in a softer growl.
“I love you, Saskia. I loved you before I even laid eyes on you. I fell in love with your thoughts. Your worries. Your joys. Your fears. The way you talk and observe the world and fight for what’s right, no matter what.
What runs through your blood doesn’t matter to me when I already know what runs through your heart. ”
I stare at him, unable to lock down the feelings swirling through me at his conviction. I know I should be saying something back right about now, but my jaw seems to lock up when I try to move it.
Lucan shakes his head, his eyes dusting over my face with the gentleness of a feather. “No need. I’m not expecting anything in return. I just need you to understand that yes, I do choose you over the rest of the world. You don’t have to like it. But there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
His mouth sets in a firm line, and I have half a mind to take him right here, in this very kitchen, to soften the harsh lines written all over his face. But someone clears their throat and knocks some very important sense back into me.
“Fortunately,” Lucan’s mother says, “what’s best for the pack and what’s best for Saskia aren’t mutually exclusive.
” Lucan and I both whip our heads toward her, the bubble popping around us.
She grips the live edge of the kitchen table and hoists herself to a stand.
“So you don’t need to give up your alpha title at all, son.
Not when both sides of the coin need you. ”
Lucan holds his breath, glancing between his mother, his friends, and me, his eyebrows pinched slightly.
Soren rolls his eyes. “Do you need to hear the actual words before it gets through that beautiful head of yours?” he taunts, and raps a knuckle against Lucan’s head before Lucan can fend him off. “We need you, man.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Lucan pushes Soren away, but Merrick’s clutching his stomach with suppressed laughter, and a smile twitches in the corner of Lucan’s mouth.
Vivian beams at me. “Now that that’s out of the way… come on.”
She extends her hand out to me, and I take it, finding more solace than she could ever, ever know in the fact that she’s still willing to touch me even though our skins are so different—mine as hard as marble, hers flexible enough to shift.
“Let’s get you dressed. Not to impress this time, but to kick some ass.”
I certainly feel like I could kick some ass in this garb.
Vivian managed to find some old hunting leathers that fit me perfectly, sculpting to my body with an elasticity that moves with my bones. She also gave me a special belt that I strap around my waist, fitted with various knives.
“In case you need something a little sharper than your new claws,” she says now, admiring my appearance in the doorway with her arms crossed.
I glance down at my hands, flexing my fingers and feeling the sharp points of my nails pierce my palms.
Vivian watches me carefully, her eyeline following as I repeat the motion over and over.
“Feel different?” she asks curiously.
I nod slowly before a nagging feeling tugs on my heart. “Do you view me differently?”
Vivian blinks, then a laugh bubbles out of her chest. “Human. Vampire.” She shrugs. “Same difference. You’re still not as cool as me.”
“I never will be,” I joke, but I still feel the heaviness of the moment, a seriousness that lurks just below the surface of our moods. My tone changes to match it. “Thank you for still being my friend, Viv.”
“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly, waving a hand through the air, “I’ve always wondered if vampires are inherently evil or if the ones who stole our kingdom are just assholes. Pretty sure I have my answer now. You and I aren’t actually that different. We want the same things. Love the same people.”
My cheeks heat, the embarrassment flooding for multiple reasons: what Lucan declared in the kitchen and the fact that I didn’t respond in kind.
“You love him back, don’t you?” Vivian prods.
When I don’t answer but my face reveals enough, the shadow of a smirk forms across her lips.
“What if the Guardians catch and kill me?” I whisper, a fear spreading in my belly like fire—not for myself exactly, but more for him and what my death would do to him.
Vivian cocks her head at me, her eyes pinning me with a stern look I don’t quite understand. “Would you rather experience true love and lose it or never find it at all?”
My heart squeezes, goosebumps cascading up my arms. “That’s profound.”
Vivian bursts out laughing. “God, that’s so cliche.
I forget you’ve never heard things like that.
” But her laughter fizzles out as she leans against the doorframe, her brow furrowed in thought.
“Cliches hold truth though, I guess. Lived out again and again—by everyone, even if we’re all ‘different.’ We all share something in common. Just something to think about.”
Which, of course, I do. I think long and hard.
Guilt pricks in my chest. I can’t tell Lucan I love him just to turn around, jump back down into Xantera, and then meet my demise at the Guardians’ feet. It will only destroy him further.
And if I don’t tell him I love him now, it will be even more incentive for me to survive.
More importantly, incentive for me to return.