I slammed hard into the floor in Judy's circle, Alex with me. His body convulsing as his spirit reconnected to this dimension, gasping and choking as life flooded back into him.
Judy called my name, but her voice was drowned out by Kenya's anguished cry as she flew into Alex's arms, knocking him back onto the floor. I looked over to see his arms come around her as she latched onto his throat and began to drink with apologetic sounds.
"Kenya…" I gently touched her shoulder, knowing she needed to feed, but worried about my cousin. Alex lifted one hand just long enough to brush me away.
"It's okay," he said. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to his mate, but I let them be, watching as Kenya clung to Alex with desperation, her trembling hands fisting in his shirt like she was terrified he might disappear again.
Every fiber of my being screamed to do the same. To reach for Elias through our bond, to feel that familiar connection thrumming between us. I found the thread that connected us and pulled with all of my might, but there was only silence where he should have been. A hollow, aching void that made my chest tighten until I couldn't breathe.
He was still in that collapsing dimension.
Alone.
"It's okay," Alex murmured again against Kenya's hair, his large hand cradling the back of her head as she fed. His voice was rough, exhausted, but alive. So impossibly alive. His words felt like a knife twisting in my gut.
Because nothing was okay.
Elias wasn't here. He wasn't safe. And I'd left him behind.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the burning tears, my fingers curling into fists against the floor. I should have held on tighter. Should have reached back for him instead of just screaming his name like some helpless damsel. Should have?—
A loud screeching sound tore through the air above our heads, shattering my spiraling thoughts.
Then a body hit the floor hard beside me with a bone-jarring thud that made everyone in the room jump.
Elias?
His body was still. Too still. His chest rose and fell with labored breathing, but it was wrong. Everything about him was wrong.
"Elias!" I scrambled to him, pressing my hands to his chest. His heart beat beneath my palms. Not the slow, measured rhythm of a vampire, but the frantic, failing rhythm of a dying human.
What the hell was I looking at? "Elias?"
His eyes opened, dark and intense, but missing that otherworldly gleam. When he tried to speak, blood bubbled from his lips. Human blood. Mortal blood.
"You absolute fucking idiot," I sobbed, cradling his head in my lap. "You beautiful, reckless, impossible idiot. What did you do?"
"Saved... you." His voice was barely a whisper, so terrifyingly human. "Lost everything else... but saved you."
"Not everything," I pressed my forehead to his, our bond still humming between us, changed but unbroken. "Stay with me. Please. Don't you dare leave me now."
"Trying..." His hand found mine, warm and trembling. "But turns out... being human again... really fucking hurts."
Chapter 22
Elias
The silver fire consumed me from the inside out.
I'd been turned into a vampire in 1864, Killian's fangs tearing through my throat as mortar fire rained down around us. I remembered that pain vividly. The venom rewriting my DNA, killing the man I'd been to birth something else.
This was worse. This was burning in reverse, feeling every century of immortality being stripped away, layer by excruciating layer.
Marcus's binding thread scalded my palms, but my vampire strength kept my hands locked around it even as my flesh blistered, even as the void pressed closer, trying to swallow me whole.
I watched Talin escaping with Alex, and relief flooded me despite the agony. She'd made it. She'd live. That was all that mattered.
The binding thread pulsed again in my grip, and with a roar of agony, I channeled what remained of my supernatural power into it and pulled.
