I offer her my hand. “More like a beginning.”
With her on my back, I run us away from the neighbourhood to somewhere safer—and away from her past. I head to a rooftop of a mall and lower her to her feet, positioning us so her back is to the wind.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“You’ve been nearby since the moment I returned. It’s like I felt you, or something.”
“You felt me because you’ve already accepted me. I waited for the moment you realized mortality isn’t for you any longer.”
She blushes, melding her hands together for the briefest second before rushing into my arms—where she’ll spend eternity. “I’ve missed you so much, Lucian. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so strongly about a person after such a short time. It’s why I had to leave, to make sure I wasn’t planning forever around a few days of thrills.”
Stroking a hand down her hair, I tilt her head back. “Clearly, becoming a vampire was in your destiny. We feel emotions differently than humans, and you’re already there. More intensely, to the point they become our single-minded drive. From the second I saw you, you altered me. You became the fixation I needed, though didn’t understand.”
“Sounds like that’s a fancy way of saying ‘I love you.’”
“I don’t love you, Sawyer.” Hurt immediately flashes through her eyes but she has nothing to be harmed by. Not me, not my words. “Vampires lose the ability to love. What I feel is much deeper, much more profound. You’ve become my every waking minute, my every thought, and my new reason for existing. I can’t love you because something so minor—somortal—would be an insult to how your soul is entangled with mine. I’ll do anything to protect you, defend you, to give you the best possible life.”
She offers me her hand. “I think you’ve been doing that since the day you saved me. Make me yours, Lucian.”
“It was never a question.”
She packsa bag of the few items she cares about, hops on my back, and I run us into the nearest forest and towards home. What’d be a week-long drive for humans, we complete in a day, mainly stopping for her to rest, eat, and warm up.
Once back in Alberta, I bring her to a cabin better than even her vacation one was. Triple in size with more windows that have been sun proofed and is deeper in the mountains for more privacy. Acquiring it was my task while she was at work some days.
It’s there, I make her my mate in the final way.
When my blood is coursing through her veins, my hand to her face gently snuffs her life out. Those blue eyes I fell for—eyes that once pleaded with me from a crushed vehicle—change forever to a deep midnight black. It’s a small price to pay in exchange for having her for eternity.
She sits up in our bed, staring down at her body. Her movements are jerky, her breath nonexistent as she takes my face between her hands and whispers three words that cling from her human life—because surely, they’re impossible now.
“I love you.”
Then she sinks her fangs into my throat.
CHAPTER 17
Sawyer
Being a vampire is strangely natural.Like something inside of me just knew how to do it. The fangs take a bit to get used to, though. Controlling them sometimes goes either way, often reacting to emotions.
Except in cases like this, they’re really useful.
Crouched between Lucian’s thighs, my nails drag red lines up his thighs while my teeth sink into the side of his cock. My tongue laps the blood that’s joined with the cum I wrought from him minutes prior.
“So pretty, little mate.”
His hand scrapes through my hair until he forces my head back, dislodging my teeth to haul me backwards. He leans forward to kiss me, his fangs against mine as he takes in the taste of his own blood and cum.
He moans, and with a hand on my throat, yanks my head back to drink from me as well. He’s made it his mission to completely cover the scars on my throat with his own, though it’s now impossible for me to scar. It doesn’t stop him from trying.
Before he can, though, a rolled-up paperappears from thin-airand whacks him in the head. Snarling, he releases me to yank it from the air and reads it.
I slide onto the couch beside him to glance at the slanted writing. “Are we not going to talk about the fact that paper materialized out of thin air?”
“His mate is a witch.”
“Who’s mate?”
