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I had to.
I didn’t have a choice.
2.
Liam
I STOOD LEANING AGAINST a tree across from her house, watching her through the window. She was sly. I’d give her that. I’d been looking for the human for years. I never should have let her go. Allowing her to escape had been a horrible choice. There had been no real reason to allow her to run away from me in the Grove, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill her.
I hadn’t wanted her to die.
Despite every instinct within me telling me otherwise, I’d wanted something other than death from Kimberly. I’d wanted something that only she could give me, and it didn’t involve murdering her. I’d wanted her to be my mate.
For five years, I’d been searching for her, trying to find her again. She’d been sad about the deaths of her companions, but she hadn’t let it hold her back. She’d made new friends, and she’d dated, and she’d pushed herself out into the world.
And she’d been looking for me.
Raven had been wildly insightful in my quest to find Kimberly. Without her, I likely never would have relocated the woman I’d let escape. Raven didn’t know I was looking for her friend, specifically. Rather, Raven liked to talk, and I’d been told I was a good listener, so she’d talked.
And I’d listened.
And I’d learned quite a few things about the woman called Kimberly. I’d learned that she was funny and quirky and that she had a cat named Victor. Of all the silly things you could name a cat, she had chosen Victor. It was a little ironic, and slightly funny. Her cat had passed away unexpectedly, and she’d been sad about that, Raven told me. Still, she hadn’t stopped hunting. She hadn’t stopped searching.
Now, as I stood in my quiet little spot, I watched her through her apartment window. She was staring out at the sky, but I didn’t know what she was looking at. What was worse was that I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
Being the Lord of the Vampires was supposed to have some perks. As the Vampire of Garnetia, I ruled over the vampires in this land. It was my job to take care of them, to keep them safe, and to make sure they didn’t do anything so horribly awful that it would attract the attention of the Vampire Council. Sometimes I had to kill a vampire to save the rest of our kind. I didn’t enjoy doing that, but I did what I had to in order to keep our kind safe.
With Kimberly, though, I didn’t know what to do. Logically, I should probably kill her. I should have killed her five years ago. She was, after all, something of a threat. She was tenacious, and she was smart, and according to Raven, she was looking for me. Me? I felt honored by the fact that she was obsessed. She had been, even at the time, but over the years her desire to find me had only grown.
She knew I was in the Grove, but she was scared to come in and look for me. She’d tracked me to other places, though: parties, events. She’d tried to casually show up at places where I was. Anytime I saw her, I always left immediately. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself, and I hadn’t been ready for her. Now? Well, now things were different. Now I had Raven, and Raven had given me a deeper understanding of who Kimberly was, and what she wanted from life.
“You just can’t get me out of your head, can you?” I asked quietly as I looked at her. For a second, I thought that she might have heard me because she stopped staring up and her eyes moved down, toward me. Before she could spot my hiding place, though, I’d already turned and started walking.
The sun was coming up, anyway.
It was time for me to take my leave.
“IT HAS TO HAPPEN TONIGHT,” I told Raven. She looked over at me and frowned. I knew what she was thinking. It was too soon, and taking her like this was going to be sloppy. I’d been waiting so long to take Kimberly. What was one more night? Only, I wanted her. I craved her. There were few things I desired more than I desired that particular human.
“Tonight?” She scratched her neck, cocking her head. It was one of her nervous ticks. Although Raven was usually very well-behaved and wildly put-together, every so often she seemed to grow nervous and tired.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Why?”
“Time is of the essence,” I said simply, but this was a lie.
It wasn’t.
I was immortal.
I had all of the time in the damn world.
I was the kind of person who had nothing but time, and yet I couldn’t stand the thought of wasting another second without her in my mansion. I wanted her locked away: safe and isolated and completely mine.
That was what I wanted.
It was a fucked-up thing to want, but I was a fucked-up sort of person. Most vampires were. We spent all of this time chasing forever, and after so many years, we all seemed to lose whatever it was that made us human once upon a time.
