And her power was the one of the most potent. The same power that would one day curse us both.
When I pulled her closer, the room filled with the sound of her heartbeat. Fast. Sweet.Mine.
But there was something else that night, a tension in her body she couldn’t mask. Fear disguised as desire.
“Elara,” I said against her throat, “what are you keeping from me?”
She stilled. “Nothing.”
“Liar.” I lifted her chin until she met my gaze. “You smell of salt. Of wards. And while your arousal and our mingled spend is still the sweetest scent I ever want in my senses, I can’t dismiss the others. Tell me,” I insisted.
Her eyes shimmered, grew troubled. “They’re watching us,” she whispered. “The coven. They know what you are. What I’ve done.”
Our forbidden union—vampire and witch. Outlawed by a bunch of old crones cowering in caves.
“Then let them come,” I growled. “Let them try to take you from me.”
Her fingers trembled as they touched my face. “If they do, they’ll use me to destroy you.”
“Impossible. Need I remind you that I’m over three thousand years old? That I possess tricks many have forgotten about?”
My reassurance failed.
Her eyes grew more troubled, her small fingers stroking my chest. “Nothing is impossible where blood magic is concerned,” she said softly. “They think if they bind my soul, they can chain yours. They’ve seen our bond.”
I remember how I laughed then, arrogance born of immortality. “They can try.”
But she didn’t laugh.
That was the last night I ever saw her smile without sorrow.
I woke the next evening in the abbey, surrounded by chanting witches. Andher.
Elara.
The red mouth I’d bruised with my kisses and my cock, chanting right beside them.
With the black as night stake in her hand.
The memory fades,leaving only the bottomless obsidian ache it carved deep into my unbeating heart.
I stare at the photograph again.
Her face is exactly as I remember it from that last night. Ethereal, breathtaking and magnificent in its treachery.
And somewhere in the dark recesses of my chest, something long-dead begins to stir.
Love turned to hate turned to something infinitely worse, simple in its inevitability.
The promise of sweet, blessed annihilation steeped in the reckoning that will turn us both to ash.
Because Elara doesn’t deserve to exist in the world after her treachery.
And I don’t deserve to exist in it without her.
2
THE REUNION
