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She tried to push me away, but she was still bleeding, her battered body not healed enough for her to fully recover. Only one of us was making it out of this church alive. It wouldn’t be me.
“Shh, my love. You need this. I need to give it to you. I understand now what my role in all of this was. You have been mine to save since the night you were born. You need to let me do what I was born to do. This is the reason, you see? Why He tasked me with this path. God didn’t forsake me. He knew that you would have need of me. All this time I thought I was damned, but I was destined for something greater.”
She reached a weak hand up and trailed her fingers over my face. I shivered as my limbs grew numb.
“He needed me to become a monster so I could protect you from them. A human man wouldn’t have been able to bring you back. But a vampire?” I smiled. It was getting harder to talk, my mind growing fuzzy. “It’s fitting, isn’t it? Saving you with my blood. An unholy communion. A sacrifice I willingly make. Drink this in remembrance of me.”
I laid down beside her, my wrist still pressed against her lips, my forehead resting against hers. My breaths were uneven, my voice little more than a rasp, but there was so much more I wanted to say, things I needed her to know.
“I only wish I’d had the chance to hold her. Even once. I... I never thought... You gave me a child, Sunday. You gave me everything.” I was so fecking cold. Why was I cold?
“Caleb, please. Don’t.” Somewhere in this mumbled confession, my wrist slipped to the hard floor between us. “Don’t die. Oh, God. Don’t leave me.”
Her tears splashed on my face, the salt of them washing over my lips. It brought me peace knowing I’d die with her taste on my tongue.
“Sunday?”
“Yes, Caleb?”
“I love you.”
“If you love me, then stay.”
I smiled, or tried to. I wasn’t sure my lips were obeying. “Tell me you love me, Miss Fallon.”
“I love you, Caleb.”
“Good girl.” It was barely a whisper, and it was a battle now to simply keep my eyes open. But there was still one more thing keeping me from giving in to the darkness waiting for me.
I wanted to touch her, but my arms wouldn’t move. As though she knew, she reached for me.
“A stor... will you tell her about me? Tell Eden our story, and... make sure she knows how her da loved her so. Don’t... don’t let her... forget...”
ChapterForty-Four
THORNE
“It’s time.”
Gabriel’s voice plucked me from my nightmare, ripping me away from the hellish loop of fire and death. I sat straight up, gasping and coated in sweat, to find Kingston and Alek doing the same.
An overwhelming sense of dread fisted my heart as I glanced around the living room. Sunday wasn’t here. She’d been right there on the couch with us.
“Where is she?” Alek asked, standing and wobbling slightly before righting himself. “When I get my hands on that midwife...”
“I don’t think she was a midwife.” Kingston’s voice was nothing but a low growl. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that bitch and her baked goods. You never take candy from strangers.”
“But we watched her eat them, the cocoa too. We should have been safe,” Alek pointed out.
“She must be immune to her poison, or whatever the hell it was that knocked us the fuck out.” Kingston scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Did you guys have the hallucinations too?”
“Hallucination? I thought it was a nightmare.” My relief at being free from the horror of it was short-lived. Real or not, I’d be haunted by my sister calling out for me for the rest of my life.
“Same damn thing.”
Pain and despair sliced through the bond between Sunday and me. Excruciating. I groaned and held my head in my hands, feeling as though I was about to be sick.
“Now’s not the time to get a fucking migraine, Thorne. Get it together,” Kingston spat. “We need to find our mate. That cunt took her.” He stormed into the bedroom, calling Caleb’s name. “Motherfucker.” A raging shifter returned, his body trembling with the need to fight. “He’s gone too.”
