I wasn’t sure if it was his kind words or the way his eyes bled with adoration as he uttered them to me, but the wall I’d pulled up around my fragile emotions tonight crumbled in an instant. His hands fell away as I launched myself at him, throwing my arms around his neck tightly as I buried my face against his collarbone, breathing in his soothing scent of the woods and vanilla.
He finally felt like home, just like Lincoln and Andrei did.
I was his.
“Tell me this isn’t a facade between us,” I breathed out in a soft plea as my eyes slammed shut. My hands balled into fists, nails digging into the fleshy part of my palms as I tried to ground myself through pain once more.
I ached to hear the raw truth and vulnerability I always sensed in Drake’s words as Andrei’s vile comments rolled through my mind.
It’s pathetic, the way you crumbled at the first crumb of kindness I showed you. It was so damn easy. You are so damn easy.
Drake’s arm wrapped around my waist, pressing me against him tightly as his hand came to cup the back of my head gently. “Darling, I can say with the utmost certainty that only two people in this world have seen the part of me that isn’t a facade—and you are one of them. I’ve shown you the real me, in the hope that you could find something redeemable within me to be worthy enough of your affection, and hopefully one day, your love.”
My heart fluttered as I bit my lip, my breath hitching in my chest.
“I may not be the easiest person to care for, but what you never need to worry about is if our bond is a facade or not. It is the single most pure thing in my life that I will guard and nurture like my most prized possession because it is. You are myComoara.”
His admission was like soothing balm on my gaping emotional wounds. I felt myself relaxing within his hold as I pulled back enough to look up at him as I asked, “What does that mean?”
The way he rolled the r might have single-handedly made it sound like the most beautiful word I’ve ever heard, but I didn’t recognize it at all.
His hand brushed away the wetness from my cheeks before he pressed a kiss to my forehead. His lips grazed my skin as he whispered, “It meansmy treasurein Romanian.”
Oh, be still my fucking heart. My throat bobbed as I struggled to swallow around the thick emotion bubbling up.
“I spent much of my life there before I became…this,” he admitted and looked away, the emotion in the air palpable. He had only shared a few sentences about his life before, so surely this was harder for him to open up about.
My eyes widened. The small tidbit made me hungry to ask him a million questions to understand exactly who he was. My mind whirled with all the possibilities.
Sometimes I forgot that not all vampires were born…that they had lives before this. But he was supposedly the first vampire. How was he turned? Why did he have the ability to pull the darkness into his eyes? Was there anything else that was different about him compared to other vampires? What was his life like before this?
Did he…have a past love?
I couldn't help but ponder the possibility. A wave of uncertainty surged through me. Could I compete with someone else's memory if he had? He had no doubt shared his bed with others before me, but did he have a true connection to any? My mind raced with questions, and I tried to push away the feeling of jealousy that kept creeping in.
We were all just an accumulation of our past moments, whether good or bad, and I wanted to know every detail about each of my mates, no matter what. I stopped myself from the barrage of questions that were on the tip of my tongue, though, knowing that I needed to be ready to give him that side of myself as well. I wasn’t there yet, despite wanting to be. Somehow, telling Andrei I loved him was a hell of a lot less scary than baring my soul, jagged edges and all.
One day I’d get there. One day I’d stop fearing that the people I loved would leave me if they knew the real me.
As he pulled back, comfortable silence stretched between us, and I found my fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as we stared at each other. This was uncharted territory for us, and I was terrified of fucking it up, as if I was one misstep away from popping an illusion, despite his reassurances.
In an effort to show him the real me, I forced my mouth open to speak a question I asked myself constantly. My tongue felt like sludge, but I forced the words out, “Why do I feel like every step forward I make sends me ten steps back a moment later? I feel like I’m lost in the dark on what to do at any given moment. I’m terrified that I’ll ruin everything. ”
His thumb came up to stroke my cheek as he smiled softly, offering a flash of his dimples that made my core heat. “Even the stars need darkness to shine,Comoara. Sometimes we need the lights off and to feel lost in order to find our own path out. That path can never be wrong when it’s the path your soul leads you down.”
I shook my head, in complete awe of his words.
This man...vampire…manpire? How was he mine?
Thank the Fates I couldn’t actually kill him back when I tried. What a shame that would have been.
A strangled laugh bubbled out of me as I stared up at him with an incredulous, wide-eyed look. “How do you always manage to say the right thing? Do you have a handbook on how to navigate Alina Van Helsing, because if so, I would really like to borrow it from you.”
The way Drake seemed to navigate every hurdle with me—and there were plentiful—truly left me in awe. I had been hellbent on thinking the way he treated me was an act this entire time, because truly, how could someone bethatgreat?
I swear I could hear Fate whispering to me,“That’s why we made you soulmates, you dumb bitch. Do you believe us now?”
Truly, I was becoming a believer.
