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“Yours or someone else’s?” I ask, pointing to his fist. He looks at me, huffs, then turns on his heel to walk out, but I get off the bed and rush after him grabbing his upper arm. “Wait!”
He stops and breathes out a sigh. “What do you want?” he asks, not looking at me.
“Why do I get the feeling that you hate me even more than Priest does?”
Shaking his head, he scoffs and pulls my arm out of his grip.
“I met my Fated fifteen years ago right here in Vegas in the middle of a suburb,” he starts. “She was beautiful; hair the color of honey, eyes bluer than a cloudless day, and a temperament that could cause even Gabe to calm down.”
I frown. “What does this have to do with me? What is a Fated?”
He turns around to face me and places the tray on the nightstand. “Ever heard of something called a ‘mate’ amongst werewolves?” I nod. “Well, we vampires have something called a Fated, and only vampires 200 years and older get to meet theirs.”
“So my family killed your Fated then? That’s why you hate me? Fuck, join the club, Valentine. I’ve heard this so many times before; hunters kill vampires and other supernatural creatures; it’s what we are trained to do.” I say, crossing my arms, but he only smiles sadly and shakes his head.
“She was a kindergarten teacher when I met her and had her little boy with her at a service station while I was filling up my bike. We got to talking while she was paying, and she got a papercut taking her receipt from the teller, but the minute I caught the scent of her blood, I knew she was mine.”
The wistful, faraway look in Valentine’s eyes catches me off guard, and I decide not to give him a cocky answer and wait for him to continue.
“After that, we kept bumping into each other in the early evenings; sometimes at the park where she would do her evening jogging, sometimes at a late art session over at Mel’s where one of my Prospects lived. We would talk about anything, but we eventually started talking more about personal things. She wished that she pursued her art after having her first child and felt trapped in her current marriage and wished her kids’ futures weren’t planned out for them by their father.” He says, looking me straight in the eyes, but something he just said makes me blanch, and I feel a whooshing in my ears.
“Valentine…”
“When we Entwined, that’s when Fated couples exchange blood, she wanted to divorce her husband and take her children along with her. I told her to wait a bit so I could plan for it, but before we could do anything, he found out about us, and a week later, she was murdered along with her son.” He says and walks towards me with his hands in his pockets and his eyes no longer green.
Honey-colored hair, blue eyes, a love for art, kindergarten teacher, and married with two kids… No, there are plenty of people like that in Las Vegas, plenty of women who are killed…alongside their sons.
My eyesight gets blurry with unshed tears, and I shake my head, refusing to believe what he has just told me.
It can’t be true! Valentine sees the disbelief in my face and backs me up against the large windows before he cages me in with his hands on either side of my head.
“Her name was Giselle Décès, and no, I don’t hate you more than Gabe does,” he growls, grabbing my face while a stuttered breath escapes my throat.
His eyes shift back to green when he senses my recoil at his touch, and a lone crimson tear slips down his cheek.
“I just can’t stand to see Giselle’s eyes filled with so much hatred when you look at me,” he says, then storms out of the room and leaves me standing there with so many more questions than I have the answers to.
KATHERINE
Ipace the room after Valentine leaves and try wrapping my brain around what Valentine just told me. My mother died fifteen years ago in our home with two gashes in her throat and a symbol for war carved on the walls in her blood. According to my father, my little brother saw the same fate.
I was thirteen at the time and hadn’t been home because my mother and I had a fight about me going to a party that night.
She forbade me from going, but Xenia and I snuck out anyway after the heated argument. I was going to apologize for how I acted and what I said, but when I found my father sobbing over their bodies, I knew I was too late.
My father said that it was the Devil’s Void vampires who had murdered them, and that was the day my childhood ended, and I swore vengeance on Gabriel Priest and his nest for what they did to my family.
I believed my father’s words, and he trained me to become the woman that I am today.
But what if it had all been a lie?
“No, it can’t be true,” I repeat while I pace the floor. “They’re lying; all of them are lying and trying to get me to crack. It’s what they do, and since I don’t have the baobab in my system anymore, they can make me believe anything they want me to believe.”
When I say this out loud, it makes so much more sense. Why should I believe them when they can twist my mind to believe things that aren’t true?
Sighing, I stop my pacing and decide to have a long bath before bed. I’m already going crazy; I might as well go crazy and feel clean while I’m at it. But the more I scrub my skin, the dirtier I feel, and by the time I slip a fluffy towel around my body, my skin feels raw.
I walk out of the bathroom, and a scream rips through the air. My heart starts pounding, and I run to the door, only for the screaming to be accompanied by the unmistakable sounds of sex.
