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I reach out to smooth it, but he backs away from me. “We can’t touch.”
“What?”
He starts pacing, and his voice cracks when he states, “You’re sick. Don’t even try to tell me you’re not.”
“You’ve taken a lot of blood from me recently,” I suggest optimistically. “Maybe it was too much.”
“That wouldn’t cause a fever. Besides, you drank just as much from me. My blood should replenish you.”
“It could be heat stroke,” I try again. “Weak humans are prone to that.”
“Hannah, stop. Denying this is senseless,” he growls as he rakes a hand through his hair. “I thought I’d changed your fate, but I was wrong.”
Deep inside, I know he’s speaking the truth. I woke up feeling off today. This illness has a way of ringing internal alarm bells. When it claims you, you sense your own doom.
I’d shrugged off the notion earlier, dismissing it as PMS or something. Just like Ellister said, I was supposed to be safe here.
“Is it because we visited the future?” I ask, wondering if my stubborn desire to see my parents one more time will be my downfall.
“No,” Ellister dismisses the idea. “The illness takes longer than a day to start causing trouble.”
“Then how is this happening?”
“I’m such an imbecile,” he goes on with his self-loathing. “It’s me. The bargain is attached tome. I’m the one causing you to die. I may have altered the future, but I didn’t change your outcome.”
“What can we do?” I sit up and reach for him again.
He recoils from me, and the action is like a physical slap. When I flinch, he notices, and his eyes are pools of pain. “No more physical contact, Hannah.”
“At all?”
“At all.”
“You’re not serious.” The thought of being separated now, after we’ve just completed the soul mate bond, is unfathomable.
“For days, we’ve been touching constantly. Do you understand what that means? All that physical contact has been speeding up the process. There’s no way you’re going to survive for weeks this time.”
I rub at my aching chest. “But the mate bond—”
“I know. It hurts.”
“You can’t stay away from me, Ellister. You just can’t. If I understand our connection correctly, I’ll be hurting from being apart. On top of that, I’ll feel like shit because of the illness. So it will be double bad for me. Am I right?”
“It will be just as awful for me.”
“Can you feel my symptoms?” I study his cheeks for the flush of a fever, but he’s paler than usual.
“No. The bargain is bypassing the bond. That’s probably why I couldn’t predict your blackout.”
“Then I highly doubt your suffering will be equal to mine,” I quip, salty about his determination to keep his distance.
“It’ll be worse. After you die, I’ll have to live with myself, live with the pain of knowing I killed my own wife while I go insane from mate separation.”
I hadn’t thought of that. As a fated pair, my death means his, too. Only his won’t be quick.
A tear streaks down his cheek, but he swipes it away quickly as his anger surges, replacing the devastation.
“There’s no reality where you and I could be together—nowhere you and I could coexist and not succumb to this fate. Why?” He suddenly punches the wall, cracking the plaster. “Why would fate do this to you? Why would destiny bring us together only to tear us apart?”
