“Is there anything we can do?” I ask Meera, the sound of my voice sounding foreign. Lifeless.
“I can bind her here; she showed me how to in the past.”
“But…” I pull Gabriella a little tighter against me, my face buried against my mark on her neck. Kissing it with reverence because she’ll always be my gift. Mine.
“I can’t predict when she’d be back. Her soul will belong to this world, but not her body until death decides otherwise.” I can smell Meera’s tears, and if I could, I’d be bawling like a child myself. My heart feels broken, although it doesn’t beat. My soul feels ruptured, and existing in a world where she no longer exists isn’t something I can do. We either walk side by side, or leave together. My life has been in her pretty little hands since the day we met. “I’m so sorry, My King. Only she can take and give life.”
My face snaps to hers, my chest heaving harshly as the beast within rattles the cage and thirst for vengeance. To kill. “Do it.” Standing from the ground, I lay my beauty down and then place a tiny kiss across the cupid’s bow of her lips. “Do whatever you must. No matter the cost.”
“We don’t know when she'll be back and in what form, Theodore. The payment will be steep.”
She’s not trying to put me off, I know, but I react and grab her by the throat. “Do it, Meera. Fuck the consequences.”
“Yes, My King.” She doesn’t fight me, and her husband watches calmly. They know I won’t hurt her—that if alive, Gabriella would kill me if I did. Moreover, it’s someone else I’m aiming for. The blonde cunt that took off like the roach she is—like father, like daughter. “This is the one thing Gabriella taught me before she brought me here as her assistant. Before I met my Tero.”
“Go on.” I can barely get the words out. My chest is tight, and limbs feel heavy: dead.
“The price is something you both coveted. Something personal.”
“I’ll pay with my life if it brings her back.” I can live without offspring, but not without her. “She’s all I need.”
“We all want her back.”
“I know.” Gently, I let Meera go and then kiss her forehead. It’s the most I can offer as an apology right now. “And I don’t care what it takes. I’d wait a lifetime for her.
39
Theodore Astor
Vampire King
H
er eyes flutter open five hours later.
Five agonizing hours after I reclaimed her and she fell into a peaceful sleep, her body frozen—unmoving—while I brought her home. To the house I bought for her when she aged out of the system and had nowhere to go. Those years waiting for her were hell. The memory of watching her grow and struggle still eats me alive because my hands were tied.
To bring her back, I couldn’t interfere.
Meera couldn’t adopt her.
I couldn’t mess with her fate until the night of her twenty-first birthday: a condition signed in her blood and my name to satisfy the God of Death amongst his other requests. I gave up something we both wanted. I would’ve given everything to be with her.
“Open those eyes for me, pretty girl.”
The last word hasn’t passed my lips when her eyes snap open, meeting mine. They’re a bit darker than her natural green eyes, the outside of the iris a blood red, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful thing.
My pretty girl is now a vampire.
Mine.
“Theo.” My name on her lips is a soft caress. So lovely. So sweet. “My King.”
“Happy real birthday, pretty girl.” That spark I’ve missed is in her eyes, the one she got every time I used my name for her. Because she will always be that: my pretty girl. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I love you.” She’s in front of me in an instant, a little surprised by her speed, yet I’m her focus. Her hand comes to my cheek, cupping the side of my face. “Thank you.”
“I’d do anything for you. Even if it means breaking you, to bring you back to me.”
They stripped her of everything. Her emotions. Her memories. My pretty girl was left naked and vulnerable which others took advantage of, while my hands were bound by blood to not interfere. Because doing so could mean losing her all over again.
This was her journey—her fight back to me—and I had to hurt her to bring those repressed feelings to the surface. Gabriella’s emotions and powers go hand in hand.
“I know.” Her nostrils flare a bit, scenting me. I’ll smell a little different to her. My scent is stronger than her witch senses remember. “I’d never be angry over what you did to bring me back. Never judge you, because I’d do worse if it meant being in your arms again.” Gabriella’s eyes leave mine for a second to survey the room. She’s still as adorable as ever. Still as nosy. “Why are we here, though?”
“Because I’ve hidden two gifts in this house.”
“Two gifts?” Her lips curl into a smirk, her left hand—her ring finger twitching. “Is one of them the heartbeat, I hear?”
“Possibly, but not until after.”
“After...?”
At that moment, everything hits me. Slams into her. The years apart. The loneliness.
Our needs explode. It’s violent, a palpable volcanic rush that consumes and breaks and when my arms encircle her back, I breathe for the very first time in a hundred years.
