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“Tell me a memory. Something from our other life.”
His fingers stilled. “What do you want to hear about?”
I knew exactly what I wanted to hear about. “Our wedding.”
He considered for a moment. “You know I see you as your own person, right? The memories of your past life don’t change that for me. I’d never hold you to promises made in another lifetime.”
“I know.” I’d been firm that we were different people, but when flashes of memory returned, there was no Avery and Persephone—there was only me. “I’m just curious.”
For a moment, Cole looked uncomfortable. He actually ran a finger to straighten out his already immaculate collar.
I perked up, curious. “Tell me.”
“I want to preface this by saying it was a different time.”
I arched a brow.
“And I was not the patient saint of a male you know today,” he amended.
“You? Patient?” I rolled my eyes.
He grabbed my ear between his teeth and bit in warning. “Do you want to hear about it or not?”
“Oh, now Iabsolutelyhave to hear it all.”
He sighed and summoned a drink of whiskey from thin air. “We’d been meeting for some time. Stolen moments at midnight, that kind of thing. I always came to the realm of the living to see her. Persephone was… a novelty. I’d existed for a long time, but meeting her was perhaps the first time I felt alive.”
My heart ached for him. The wonder he added to her name, the nonchalance as he skimmed past what must have been a heartbreaking existence.
“You could say I became a little bit addicted. Of course, she had her own duties. She was exceptionally focused on those responsibilities, and she refused to leave the living plane to see my world. I was fixed on the idea that we were meant to be the answer to each other’s loneliness and began to take offense that she would not visit.”
Cole trailed off. I looked up at him. “And?”
He took a long-suffering sip. “So I decided to kidnap her.”
I burst out laughing. “That was your solution?”
“At the time,” he ground out, “it seemed like the most expedient solution.”
If Persephone had been anything like me, that would’ve been thefurthest thing from a solution. “And she accepted that?”
Cole chuckled. “Not exactly. She immediately shifted into a wolf and tried to bite my head off. When that didn’t work, she fled.”
“Why not just make a portal back to the realm of the living?”
A flush worked up Cole’s neck. “She… couldn’t. In order for her to stay comfortably in the underworld for any length of time, she couldn’t be among the living anymore.”
My brows shot up. “Youkilledher?”
“Not precisely,” he hedged. “My death magic shrouded her, marking her as one of the dead. She was balanced on a knife’s edge, her own lively magic countering it until she gave in and joined me.”
“You totally killed her to keep her in the realm with you.”
“As I’ve admitted, I was more reckless in my youth. Since she couldn’t return to the realm of the living, I decided to take my time, stalking her and wearing her down within my realm.”
“Oh good, kidnapping, homicide,andstalking.”
“As I said, I was impatient in my youth.” He sighed, but there was a light in his eyes as he told the story. “I chased her through every corner of Hell as my own wolf. It was the first time I’d ever changed to the shape she often favored.”
