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Those around me weep. The sorrowful cries of every vampire can be heard for miles as they feel her connection wane, and then nothing. She’s gone. My love is not here.
Throwing my head back, I let out a deafening roar that shakes the ground we stand on. A few windows shatter, and those around me whimper and cower in fear while I crumble as her man.
“Is there anything we can do?” I ask Meera, the sound of my voice sounding foreign. Lifeless.
“I can bind her here; she showed me how to in the past.”
“But…” I pull Gabriella a little tighter against me, my face buried against my mark on her neck. Kissing it with reverence because she’ll always be my gift. Mine.
“I can’t predict when she’d be back. Her soul will belong to this world, but not her body until death decides otherwise.” I can smell Meera’s tears, and if I could, I’d be bawling like a child myself. My heart feels broken, although it doesn’t beat. My soul feels ruptured, and existing in a world where she no longer exists isn’t something I can do. We either walk side by side, or leave together. My life has been in her pretty little hands since the day we met.“I’m so sorry, My King. Only she can take and give life.”
My face snaps to hers, my chest heaving harshly as the beast within rattles the cage and thirst for vengeance. To kill. “Do it.” Standing from the ground, I lay my beauty down and then place a tiny kiss across the cupid’s bow of her lips. “Do whatever you must. No matter the cost.”
“We don’t know when she'll be back and in what form, Theodore. The payment will be steep.”
She’s not trying to put me off, I know, but I react and grab her by the throat. “Do it, Meera. Fuck the consequences.”
“Yes, My King.” She doesn’t fight me, and her husband watches calmly. They know I won’t hurt her—that if alive, Gabriella would kill me if I did. Moreover, it’s someone else I’m aiming for. The blonde cunt that took off like the roach she is—like father, like daughter. “This is the one thing Gabriella taught me before she brought me here as her assistant. Before I met my Tero.”
“Go on.” I can barely get the words out. My chest is tight, and limbs feel heavy: dead.
“The price is something you both coveted. Something personal.”
“I’ll pay with my life if it brings her back.” I can live without offspring, but not without her. “She’s all I need.”
“We all want her back.”
“I know.” Gently, I let Meera go and then kiss her forehead. It’s the most I can offer as an apology right now. “And I don’t care what it takes. I’d wait a lifetime for her.
39
Theodore Astor
Vampire King
Her eyes flutter open five hours later.
Five agonizing hours after I reclaimed her and she fell into a peaceful sleep, her body frozen—unmoving—while I brought her home. To the house I bought for her when she aged out of the system and had nowhere to go. Those years waiting for her were hell. The memory of watching her grow and struggle still eats me alive because my hands were tied.
To bring her back, I couldn’t interfere.
Meera couldn’t adopt her.
I couldn’t mess with her fate until the night of her twenty-first birthday: a condition signed in her blood and my name to satisfy the God of Death amongst his other requests. I gave up something we both wanted. I would’ve given everything to be with her.
“Open those eyes for me, pretty girl.”
The last word hasn’t passed my lips when her eyes snap open, meeting mine. They’re a bit darker than her natural green eyes, the outside of the iris a blood red, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful thing.
My pretty girl is now a vampire.
Mine.
“Theo.” My name on her lips is a soft caress. So lovely. So sweet. “My King.”
“Happy real birthday, pretty girl.” That spark I’ve missed is in her eyes, the one she got every time I used my name for her. Because she will always be that: my pretty girl. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I love you.” She’s in front of me in an instant, a little surprised by her speed, yet I’m her focus. Her hand comes to my cheek, cupping the side of my face. “Thank you.”
