AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Church runs in behind me and inhales sharply; his breathing getting labored at the scent of the human’s blood. Since he’s still fairly young, he still struggles with his bloodlust, where I’ve just recently learned to control it.
I use my fangs to cut a vein and hold it to the woman’s lips. After a while, her heart starts beating normally and the wounds on her neck have closed up. I look up at Church, who is standing next to me, and hand the woman over to him.
“Make her forget and take her home,” I instructed him before I turned my attention back to Gabriel.
This is the man who made me recognize and come to terms with my past sins. He helped me get through my bloodlust and the need to murder when I just turned. He saved my life by giving me a new one and he’s someone I consider a brother.
So watching him self-destruct like this is killing me.
“Gabe,” I say, getting down on my haunches in front of him. “Why are you doing this? Why risk becoming a Devoid and losing everything?”
He scoffs and grumbles, “I’ve already lost everything.”
I hang my head and sigh. “No, you haven’t. You’re just in a bad spot right now—”
“She left me, Cezar. She’s left me and she isn’t coming back. I fucked up and lost my Fated, thinking I was doing the right thing, and now look at me.”
“Blood drunk and strung out,” I say, getting to my feet. “What would you have done if it was Kat walking through those doors and not me?”
He scoffs again. “She won’t come back.”
“Yeah, if I were her looking at you now, I wouldn’t come back either,” I say and he turns his head to glare at me.
“You’re asking for a swift death,” he says with no heart behind the threat.
I’m not used to dealing with a helpless Gabriel; even when his family died one by one, he kept a calm head. Katherine’s absence is definitely seen and felt here.
I sit down on the sofa next to him and breathe out a sigh. “What did she say when she left?”
“That she can’t be with me because I lie too much and disguise it as love,” he says, then takes something from the pocket of his jeans and holds it up. “She also gave this back and said I gave it to her to placate her.”
The Preutescu Ruby glitters on the ring which used to belong to Ileana Preutescu, Gabriel’s mother. I take it from him and look at it, recalling how Ileana made him promise to give the ring to his Fated, even if it looks old-fashioned.
“That bad, huh?”
He nods. “So much fucking worse, seeing as she blames me for the death of our child.”
If I had a beating heart, it would have stilled at those words. It’s one thing to leave because Gabriel lied about something, but another thing to blame him for the loss of their child.
Fuck, Katherine must be so much more than angry.
“Gabe, have you thought about the fact that Katherine might only be in pain and those words came from a place of hurt? There’s no way she would outwardly blame you for something like that,” I say, trying to make sense of these two and getting nowhere.
He shakes his head. “You don’t come back from something like this, Valentine; you don’t come back as if nothing happened.”
“No, you don’t come back as if nothing happened; you fucking work through it,” I say, turning his shoulder so he can face me. “You and Katherine are Fated. The Goddess chose you two to be together and now you’re going to throw it all away because of a disagreement?”
He jumps to his feet. “It’s easier said than done –!”
“The Gabriel I knew would never simply let this go!” I exclaim. “The Gabriel I knew would fight for what’s his, not give up because a few words hurt him. How the fuck did you fall so far, Pres? How did you let a woman stifle your fire?”
The wrong words at the wrong time earns me a fist to the jaw. Gabriel gets on top of me and unleashes his anger through violence, punching me until my vision eventually goes dark.
* * *
I wake up just as I feel a crack in my skull healing and groan when I sit up, noticing the guilty figure of my Maker sitting on the sofa opposite me. His elbows braced on his knees and his fingers steepled together in front of his lips.
“I’m so sorry, Valentine,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “I don’t know what came over me, I—”
