by Watson, Rhea
So, with a shake of my head, I slipped inside lightning fast, silent as a shadow and determined to get to my room with as minimal a disruption to her television-watching as possible.
Usually I’d join her.
Throw my stuff aside and plop down on the couch, in my corner, then demand a play-by-play for what I had missed.
But that wasn’t the way with us lately, and as I crossed toward my bedroom without a word, barely glancing in her direction, I feared it never would be again.
I’d fucked it up.
Six years without a flatmate, and I went and ruined it by acting like child who hadn’t gotten his way. The Yule weirdness had extended into January, made worse by Cedar’s declaration that he and Alecto would share a midnight kiss on the thirty-first. I hadn’t asked. She hadn’t told me. In fact, we barely spoke at all lately, both of us busy with work, sure, but it didn’t help that I holed up in my room anytime we were in the flat together.
Fucking it up. Again and again. Day after day, sulking.
She wasn’t mine.
I had no right to mourn the loss.
A part of me thought that by giving her space, we could hit the refresh button and start over again in a few weeks.
But that was just an excuse—a temporary reprieve from the guilt I felt for how utterly and terribly and royally I had fucked this all straight to hell.
The music swelled, reaching a crescendo before Ramsay laid down his verdict about which poor chef was about to have his dreams shattered. Blue Team defeat again, apparently.
Maybe this was for the best. If a few choice words from another man had shattered our friendship, ruined what could have been, and turned me into the most insecure prat on the planet, then maybe space was what we needed. Maybe I ought to foster my connection with Gavriel instead, two miserable souls drinking on the Root Rot rooftops, purposefully alienating ourselves from everyone else.
It didn’t matter that I missed her.
That I hated myself for what I was doing.
If it spared us heartache down the road, our bond clearly fragile, then maybe it was a good thing this had happened now rather than later.
I glanced over my shoulder and found Alecto exactly where I’d imagined: bundled up on the far end of the couch, hair an absolute beehive, her sweatshirt’s hood half-up in a sad attempt to contain all those angry curls. Drowning in blankets, the tiny, miserable, surly little witch was coming to the end of the first week of her yearly potion’s side effects.
A pizza box sat on the coffee table, and from the excessive scent of melted cheese in the air, she hadn’t touched a slice.
Troubling, that.
My traitorous heart demanded I swoop in and fix it—feed her slice after slice like a lowly servant plying his divine mistress with grapes.
Instead, I went for my bedroom with enough work in hand to keep me busy until midnight.
“Hey…” I stilled, dead heart pounding at the sound of her croaky rasp, anxiety’s cruel talons stroking my rib cage, up and down, up and down. Behind me, Alecto shuffled around, perhaps to face me, her arm on the back of the couch for support, hand gripping the fabric. She cleared her throat. I closed my eyes, dreading her next few words, knowing what was about to come out of that beautiful mouth before she even said it.
“Bjorn, are we okay?”
I offered her my profile over my shoulder and a thin smile. “Yeah, of course.”
Alecto muted the TV as I pushed my bedroom door open.
“Liar.”
I stiffened, aflame with her scrutiny—with her ability to see right through me.
“Can you just talk to me already?” she demanded, her words all wobbly and thick. “I hate it when you don’t… Did I do something wrong?”
Fuck. The way she choked out the question destroyed me.
“No.” I dumped my bag in the doorway, followed by the massive tome I had read to my very disinterested fifth years this evening. “No, not at all.” This time I gave her all of me, wheeling around and motioning to myself—to the guilty party in all this. “It’s… It’s my fault. It’s me.”
Every past fight with a woman—lover or otherwise—suggested an explosion was imminent. Let the countdown begin to shrieking and accusations and contempt. I braced for the inevitable, but she surprised me, as always, by sitting up and pushing the coffee table out in front of her. She set the still very full pizza box on the floor, then patted the table for me to sit.
Strange woman.
That’s why you’re such a fool for her, you ancient bastard.
True.
Scratching the back of my neck, eyes down almost sheepishly, I crossed the space and perched on the table before her, elbows on my knees and hands hanging between us. Only then did I get a true, proper look at the witch I had gone out of my way to avoid for almost a month now.
And she was exhausted.
Dark circles surrounded her eyes, those amber pools somehow heavy and hollow at the same time. Her skin creased and crinkled with lack of sleep, and her aura reminded me of a laptop battery display with only a dwindling percentage left.
Here I was, a centuries-old vampire who had banked a hundred lifetimes of experience, behaving like a moody schoolboy. Pouting in my room. Miserable and pathetic.
There she was, suffering for real reasons—and I had just left her to it. Time and time again, Alecto had been there for me: Fiona’s death, my crucifixion… She had stepped up for all of it, warm and helpful, keeping my head above water in her own way—the only way that made sense to me in the fog—and I had abandoned her.
Disloyal fucker. That wasn’t me. Even the bloodthirsty monster who had haunted the English countryside stayed true to his friends.
I had so much to atone for—and that journey started with the ugly truth.
“The night of the Yule ball—”
“When fucking Ash Cedar was waiting at our door?”
My eyebrows shot up at her venom. “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Alecto muttered, shifting about under her mountain of tawny blankets as if to cross, then recross her legs. Huh. Hardly the tone to take with one’s lover. Gaze slightly narrowed, I cleared my throat and scratched at the back of my neck again, humiliated to even admit to any of this, let alone experience it for the last month.
“I… I got it in my head that you were just humoring me.”
Alecto stilled with a sharp breath. “What?”
“I thought he… was the one you wanted to see. That I was just in the way. And I…” Out with it. No sense in telling only half-truths tonight, not when she looked so aghast that I’d never be able to lie to her again. “I regretted trying to change things between us. I felt like a fool, and I… I’ve acted like one ever since.”
Again I braced for the fallout, and again Alecto cut me off at the knees. She cocked her head to the side and frowned, dragging the topmost blanket up to her chin. “Is that it?”
Her tone insisted this was a nonissue, but it wasn’t just that, of course.
“Cedar told me on New Year’s that you two have been getting…” I could barely stand to say it, never mind think it. “That you two are close, and that he planned to kiss you at midnight like some public declaration, and I… I couldn’t…”
Words had never fallen like molasses before, everything a sticky, tedious effort. Quiet blanketed the room, the TV ongoing behind me, occasionally splashing the dimly lit space with color. Alecto’s gaze drifted toward it over my shoulder, allowing me the time to find what I needed to say.
“I’ve been an ass,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “And I’m sorry. I’m not usually… With women in the past, I…” Fuck. What was wrong with me? My whole profession this century revolved around talking. I could chat up a storm if necessary, with anyone about anything, my mind a vault of experience. All who came before Alecto fucking Clarke—I could sweet-talk. Charm. Be blunt and honest, not caring whether they stayed or left once I had said my piece.
Well, no. Of course I
cared, but they had a choice: accept me or not. Should their free will guide them out of my life, my heart ached for a few days…
But then it was on to the next. The next lover, the next city, the next victim, the next adventure.
I never feared the breakdown.
Words came easy before her.
Feelings came easy before her.
With her, it was all one earth-shattering storm, calamitous and unrepentant.
“I’m not usually like this, I swear,” I managed at long last, my halfhearted grin met with her deep, damning frown. Shit. “I’m so sorry, Alecto, for ruining everything—”
I had enough sense to shut up when she dug her hand out from under the blankets and reached for me. Alecto went for my dangling fingers, her hand dwarfed by mine but her grip like steel. She held hard, our hands dangling between us, the tether finally physical again.
“I hate Ash Cedar,” she growled, and I blinked back a wave of icy shock at the sound. Alecto had always struck me as a strong woman—shieldmaiden, a warrior worthy of standing by my side in the shield wall—but here, now, she was a wild thing, her ferocity a siren song to the beast inside.
But seconds later, her heartbeat quickened with panic, not rage, and I twisted my hand around so I could hold hers, easily engulfing her fingers and finding my strength again. What the fuck had the bastard done now? I’d always suspected nonsense went on behind the scenes with the warlock, but no one had ever come forward to prove it.
Until now.
Until Alecto’s fear mingled with fury—and I swallowed the urge to ask if she’d like me to rip his head from his shoulders.
It would be easy. Warlock bones were sturdier than humans, but he wouldn’t be the first magical fuck I’d torn apart over the centuries.
And if he hurt her somehow, I would take great pleasure in hearing him beg for mercy before the telltale pop of his skull dislocating from his spine.
“Ow, Bjorn…”
I loosened my grip, unsure of when I had gone from supportive to bone-crushing, and Alecto flexed her too-white fingers, blood slowly circulating again.
“Ash Cedar is a liar and a bigot,” she said shakily, all the color draining from her cheeks. Even still, her eyes narrowed; maybe Alecto would prefer to tear his head off herself. “He’s so much more than that. He’s been hitting on me for ages, and it’s like he’s in this delusion that I’m… flirting back? Like if he aggressively compliments me enough, I’ll just get with the program one day, but I barely talk to him.”
Red mist settled over my vision at her forced chuckle, and I concentrated on my grip, on not crushing her bones to dust at the thought of that fucker making her feel so obviously uncomfortable in such an uncouth manner…
For making her cry in front of me.
Alecto’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, and she retreated, once again taking her hand from mine because of Ash Cedar, to wipe under her eyelids before any of those glistening diamonds fell.
A stake to the heart, the sight of her tears.
Twisted in deeper at the sound of her uncomfortable laughter.
Wedged in permanently—because I had been the unbelievable asshole who left her to deal with this alone, lost in my own trauma, in my own delusional world where I had thought distance was what we needed.
“He’s, like, a legit psychopath,” she insisted, her giggle more genuine, her eye roll coaxing a smirk out of me. “And no one seems to see it, which is fucking infuriating.”
I see it. Never liked the bastard—never would now.
“Alecto, I—”
“But that doesn’t excuse you freezing me out like you did—over nothing,” she added fiercely, pink flaring in her cheeks like the snap of wildfire. Alecto wove her hands together on her lap and glared me down, making me feel about two inches tall—and rightly so. “This has been such a crappy month with, you know…” She gestured to herself, up and down, a wordless reminder of the potion’s less than subtle impact. “And I kept thinking I’d done something—”
“I’m sorry—for all of it. Truly.” What else was there to say? No excuses. No stories. No charm, no jokes, no diversion. I had fucked up—let jealousy take me down dark and stupid roads—and there was no getting around it.
Lips pursed, Alecto looked me over, then lifted her chin with a sniff, spine ramrod straight and head tilted to the side as she drawled, “You’d better be.”
Seconds later, the snobby façade shattered with another giggle, her eyes glossy again, cheeks an exquisite rose.
“I swear it.” I pressed a hand to my chest and dove headlong into those beautiful amber pools, smitten with the sound of her quickening pulse. “My sincerest apologies for my boorish, ridiculous behavior, Alecto Clarke. It will never happen again as long as I live.”
“Bit dramatic,” the delectable little witch muttered, suddenly fussing with her hair, eyes everywhere but me as her blush sharpened, “but okay. I accept.”
“My dead heart beats easier, then.”
She snorted. “Gross.”
Our gazes collided almost accidentally, and bathed in the television’s glow, we both grinned, the tension that had strangled us for weeks finally gone. Briefly, it felt good to revel in the cozy quiet that followed, the flat home again. Alecto’s gaze even drifted to the TV behind me, watching the next episode on mute over my shoulder, and I let her, content to just be with her again.
My own curiosity ruined it a few minutes later.
“Alecto,” I started, jolting her out of that intense way she scrutinized the show’s ridiculous intro, “what are we?” She blinked back at me, and I shuffled to the very edge of the coffee table to block out the screen. “Friends?”
She swallowed thickly, the dance of her throat as noticeable as the skip of her heart, and she drew her knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around them beneath the blankets.
“More than friends, I think,” she admitted in an adorably small voice, and if it wouldn’t totally destroy the moment, I would have leapt onto the coffee table and done my best Chandler-dance impression to make her howl with laughter—again. Instead, I played it cool, waiting, watching her lips part and press as she muddled through her thoughts, sinking deeper into the couch. “But I don’t want to lose our friendship, either, you know? You’re like… my best friend, which is so cheesy, but you kind of came out of nowhere.”
Throat suddenly too raw with emotion to risk speaking, I just nodded. Of course I understood that: Alecto had come out of nowhere as well. I valued her above everyone, and she had stolen my heart without either of us noticing.
Little thief.
“But if we’re more than friends, you need to know…” Alecto tucked her chin on her knees, nuzzling into the blanket. “I don’t do jealous men.”
And just like that, I was two inches tall again.
Smaller, even.
Justifiably gnat-sized.
“I’ve never really been a monogamy kind of witch,” she told me with an unapologetic shrug, “and I know that’s acceptable in some circles but not in others—”
“I see the way you look at Jack.” She needed to know—immediately—that I didn’t care if she took other lovers, if she shared her heart around. So long as I had an uncompromised piece of it, as long as what we had belonged to each other, so be it. Alecto went beet red at the statement, mouth hanging open and heart roaring, and I leaned closer with a smirk. “And Gavriel, naughty girl.” Cue an even louder drumbeat as Alecto dragged the blanket up to cover her face. Chuckling, I grabbed at the fuzzy material and tugged it down, infatuated with her blushes. “I only ever cared when I thought it was Cedar.”
Because he was a prick who was no good for her.
She and Jack shared an obvious passion for their jobs, obsessive in similar ways, dedicated to the work.
Gavriel could be a scoundrel, sure, but all our rooftop drinking and bitching had proven there was more to him than I’d ever known. Layers upon layers—and at the core, a wounded warrior
who was capable of doing the right thing when the stakes were high.
Same as Alecto—wounded deep down but masking it well.
Ash Cedar had no redeeming qualities, nothing to offer but the chance to make a full-blooded witch or warlock baby, along with all the traditional bullshit values that entailed.
Alecto crinkled her nose at the mention of him. “I’d literally rather die.”
My snort made her giggle, and she tucked the blanket up to her chin, sobering somewhat as she said, “For real though, jealousy in a relationship doesn’t make me feel safe.” She nibbled her lower lip, looking briefly worried—like I’d bolt at any moment. “I don’t put up with it from the men in my life.”
“And you shouldn’t have to.” Never again. I swear it. “I don’t… I’m not that man. I’ve never been before, but you…” I shook my head, quashing that train of thought before it derailed everything. “No, that sounds like you’re to blame. You’re not. It’s me. It’s my issue. Consider it dead and buried.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Alecto said, poking me from beneath the blanket, jabbing her toes at my knee. “Next time just talk to me. We’re pretty good at talking, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I had.” A rare thing: open, honest communication. The level of trust it necessitated made my chest painfully tight, and I stabbed my knuckles into its center, massaging away the ache. “I like that about us.”
Alecto grinned and nodded. “Me too.”
We left it at that, one door closed and another wide open.
“Movie night?” Alecto offered, and the thought of cuddling crossed my mind until I remembered she might prefer not to be touched right now. Still, more than friends implied some closeness, at the very least, even if it was just an arm along the back of the couch.
“Sounds perfect.”
Her belly celebrated our first movie night of the new year with a victorious gurgle, and Alecto eyed the pizza box on the ground beside the coffee table like she had suddenly found her appetite again.
“Give me a moment to unpack,” I told her, jerking my chin toward my room. “Go pick some options—your choice tonight.”
And probably every Friday night for the next few months after the stunt I had pulled; I predicated a great deal of melodramatic B-grade horror in the near future.