Page 95 of Sight of Fate

Gritting my teeth, I carefully mark the page I’m reading and toss my phone onto the nightstand. AI law and its complexities is typically a fascinating read, but tonight it holds zero appeal.

Merde. If only Teague hadn’t given me that file on her. Reading about her past twisted something inside me I long thought dead, squeezed it until I could almost swear the damn thing was beating for her. With every thud, it whispered to me. Made me hope that maybe, because of her past, she wouldn’t look at me like the monster I am. That alone is a temptation I’m not sure I can resist. Yet it’s not what held me in its thrall.

It was the juxtaposition between us. Her refusal to stop fighting or using the gift that led to him burning her. Instead, she adapted. Carved out an existence and kept going. Hurdle after hurdle, she lived.

After moving back home on Sunday, I spent most of Monday ignoring the work piling up on my desk to search for every scrap of information I could find on her. Doctor’s notes documenting her long road to recovery. The countless surgeries and hospital stays. Therapy. Near isolation, with her mother her only visitor.

Next, I moved on to the police reports. On the original incident. The statements from her stepfather and mother. Police speculation that it was likely an accident until her mother dropped off a copy of the video from the camera on the house, which conveniently disappeared weeks before the trial. Good thing her lawyer had copies.

Legal transcripts from the trial. The investigation into the death of her roommate. Hank’s prison records. Bank statements recording the amount of money he’s spent trying to find her.

With my contacts, nothing was out of my reach. All night I read, obsessed with my need to know all the details and the answer to my questions. How did she find the strength to heal and recover? To love and lose again and again? To get up after every hit? To dare to dream of more?

Teague swallows her cries as she reaches her peak, and for the first time in all my existence, I want something more than this existence, and I don’t know how to fucking cope with it.

I reach into my nightstand and pull out her sketch. This isn’t a photo taken in a singular moment in time. A fake glimpse into someone’s life. It’s how she sees me. Stern and serious. Intelligent and focused. Yet, there’s a softness in the lines of my lips and the thickness of my hair. And my eyes, the same ones I’ve looked at in the mirror for centuries and thought cold and dead, blaze with emotion in her sketch.

I hate it. And yet, I can’t stop staring at the damn thing, wondering what else she sees when she looks at me.

Carefully storing it back in the drawer, I pick up my phone.

“You do realize it’s three o’clock in the morning?” Ronan drawls when he answers.

“Not like you’re sleeping,” I mock, knowing he avoids sleep like the plague. Too many nightmares. “Did you find Kian?”

“Not yet. Although we found a few new leads. And a name. I sent the info over to Macklin.”

“He’s running a personal errand. Probably hasn’t read it yet. What did you find?”

“Organization of fanatics. Call themselves the Human Rights Coalition, or HRC for short. Their only interest is eradicating supernaturals.”

Something clicks in the back of my mind, and I search my photographic memory for the information.

“Still there?”

“Give me a minute.”

He chuckles. “Take all the time you need.”

There. “Hank Coalfield, Charli’s mentally deranged but very wealthy stepfather, writes checks to HRC every month. He has since she was thirteen, which coincidentally is the year he found out she was a witch.”

He curses. “Shoot me the info. I’ll look into him.”

“Macklin’s meeting with Kinji for that very same reason. Give him a call.”

“Will do.”

Silence.

“Looking for answers or an escape?” he probes, proving he knows me well.

“Answers.” Very few vampires have a mate, nor do we know much about them, but Ronan served as an advisor to the vampire king and his mate for a couple hundred years.

There’s a beat of silence. “Interesting. What do you want to know?”

“Once bonded, will she be able to see my memories? Feel my emotions? Hear me?”

“Memories, yes. Emotions, maybe. It varies between mates. Telepathy, no. But you’ll know her exact location at all times,” he says, then stops for a second. And I know what he’s going to ask. “Have you started craving her yet?”