“I just can’t,” she says, unfolding her arms and moving away from the window altogether. “We are the same. To be together would mean that one of us would ultimately kill the other.” She walks toward the restroom and says, “It is the way things are—now get some sleep.”
24
A LOUD POUNDING WAKES me from my sleep. “Housekeeping!” For a long moment, still with a series of blows on the door, I don’t realize where I am. But the louder the knocks, the faster my head comes together. I’m almost used to time being stripped from my mind, so when I rise up from the hotel bed and realize that it’s a new day and that Genna is gone, I just shake my head at all of it and walk over to open the door.
“Sorry, I’m just getting up,” I say looking through the half-open door out at the housekeeper who scowls back at me. “I don’t need any service, though. Thanks.”
“Honey,” she says in a slightly irritated voice, “it’s past check-out and I need to get this room ready for the next inconsiderate over-sleeper who thinks that this is a luxury hotel.” She blinks her eyes rapidly at me.
Somehow, I don’t feel so bad anymore about how filthy I left the bedspread.
“Fine,” I say. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be right out.” I shut the door before giving her a chance to respond.
I stand in the center of the room for a moment, thinking about what I’m going to do, but my emotions are too conflicted right now to give in to what my heart is telling me.
I run my hands over my face and the top of my head. As I go to grab my bags, I notice something out of place sitting on the little round table by the window. A vial of blood, just like the ones they use to draw blood in the hospital, lies on its cylindrical side in the center of the table. Next to it lays a note, scribbled in Genna’s handwriting that reads:
I take the vial into my hand and just stare at it before crushing my fingers around it. Grabbing my purse from the chair, I tuck the vial safely into an inside pocket and then shoulder it and my duffle bag before heading out the door.
The housekeeper, with her cart parked outside the room next to mine, sneers at me as I pass by.
“Thanks for giving me a minute,” I say, regardless of her attitude. “Have a nice day.”
“Umm hmm,” she says, “you too.”
I don’t even know where I’m going and when I leave the hotel, I leave on foot. I check my cell phone once, noticing eleven voicemails, twenty-two missed calls and sixteen text messages, but I don’t check any of them. I walk forever it feels like, with no destination until I eventually find myself in the park, staring across the pond and at the giant tree that used to be my thinking spot. I can almost see me and Alex sitting there underneath it the night our lives changed forever, as if I’m a ghost and watching my past unfold over and over again in some kind of lost soul loop.
A blue and red polka dot ball rolling across the grass in front of me pulls me out of my thoughts.
“Sorry, lady,” I hear a tiny voice say and find it feels awkward to be called lady at seventeen.
I smile at the boy who crouches low against the ground to lift the ball into his hands. Absently, I watch him as he waddles back over to where a few other children play on the playground equipment.
And then I see Alex and me on the giant red slide. I’m at the top getting ready to go down and Alex is waiting at the bottom to catch me.
“Come on, Dria!” she shouts, banging her small hands on the hard slide plastic. “Don’t be a chicken!”
I was always nervous going down that slide because it seemed so high. But Alex was always there to catch me, to stop me before I flew off the end and landed on my butt in the hot bed of pebbles.
I look away, wanting to forget.
All this time, since I left the hotel, I’ve been seeing Isaac’s face in my mind. I’ve just been wanting to shut it out, to replace it with other things that apparently aren’t making it any less painful.
Isaac is my life now. Not my mother and her self-abusing lifestyle and not my sister, who I guess in a way has fallen in my mother’s footsteps.
As much as I am angry about what Isaac did, he means everything to me.
He gave everything up to save my life. He gave up his position as Alpha and he gave up his own life for breaking the Law and bonding me to him though he was forbidden to do it. If Trajan ever finds out about this, Trajan will have to kill him….
How could I let my anger blind me so coldly? Isaac made a decision, probably the hardest decision he’s ever had to make, bonding me to him without my permission and sealing my fate. But Isaac was right. Viktor would have done it if Isaac hadn’t. The very threads of my life could be in Viktor’s hands right now.
What have I done?
I’m still mad as hell at him for not telling me. I still have this bitter taste in my mouth left over from seven months of trying to make myself believe that Viktor’s disgusting blood wasn’t running through my veins, keeping me alive. I still want to tell Isaac just how angry I am that I’ve tortured myself endlessly because of this; worrying about how he might feel about me once he found out that I was bonded by blood to his enemy. I want to scream at the top of my lungs and get it all out of my system.
But then I want to spend the rest of what time I have left with him, being with him.
Because I’m going to end it all before it’s too late.
I won’t live like Aramei. I won’t. And with or without Isaac, I’m not going to.
I march quickly in the direction of the bicycle path and slip into the forest. It’s so different during the day, with the sun high in the sky, spilling through the tops of the trees and pooling on the blacktop path beneath me in splotches. My steps get heavier as I walk faster until I’m almost running toward the place where Alex and I were attacked.
And I stop.
I hear the birds chirping in the trees and the wind combing through the branches. The air is humid in my lungs, but the cover of shade helps to tame the heat.
This is where my life changed forever. Right here on the bicycle path branching out in three different directions. I look at each one and wonder if we had run this or that way instead of through the trees, would things have been different? Would Alex have never been infected by Ashe that night if we did just one thing differently?
But then I realize…I never would have met Isaac otherwise.
When my flight lands in Augusta, it’s raining. I know it must be around midnight. I catch another cab that drives me up the winding, dark streets toward Isaac’s house and every bit of the way I think only of him. As the double yellow lines on the road slither in and out of my vision, I picture the day I first saw him sitting in the back of Damien’s Jeep. I picture him at the skate park when I had my encounter with William and Ashe. Even then Isaac was watching out for me.
I think of the first time he spoke to me, the first time he touched me and the first time he kissed me.
And as the cab pulls to the end of the dark uphill driveway that leads to Isaac’s house, I try to picture what Isaac is doing right now, but all I can see is the way he looked when I saw him last, when I tore out his heart.
It’s pouring rain, but the cab driver doesn’t want to get his car stuck in the treacherous muddy driveway, so I pay him and get out and walk the rest of the way up. I’m drenched by the time I make it around the bend to see the house in my line of sight sitting at the top of the hill with the old well toppled out front. I trek my way through mud puddles and finally make it to level ground. My wet clothes cling to my skin, my duffle bag feels ten pounds heavier saturated by the rain that continues to pound furiously on me. Even my leather purse is soaked but I don’t care about anything right now except seeing Isaac again.
When I emerge from the blackness of the driveway and step in the subdued light funneling from the windows around the house, I see a figure sitting on the porch steps alone, his back arched over, his arms dangling between his legs, propped on his thighs at the elbows.
As if he s
enses me, Isaac looks up to see me standing in partial light.
I don’t move. I just look across the driveway at him, letting the rain pummel me, feeling it cool my face and roll over my forehead and into my eyes. I taste it on my lips.
Isaac stares at me for a long, intense moment and then rises to his feet. He takes only one hesitant step forward and the rest of his steps become swift. In seconds he’s standing in front of me, also drenched by the rain. He seems afraid to touch me, but I can see that it’s the only thing he wants to do.
“You didn’t even flinch…,” I say, “when I told you that Viktor was still alive.” My voice is forced over the loud pounding rain. “I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry for keeping it from you.”
He starts to reach out for me, to take me into his arms like he has done so many times before, but I see his arms harden and he refrains.
I let my bags drop to the rain-soaked ground and I stand solidly looking up at him, feeling the pain in his heart. I too start to reach out for him, but decide against it, maybe for the same reason he had, though I’m not even sure what the reason is.
“I was selfish,” I go on, my voice trembling, “I didn’t even stop to think about what my lie did to you, I was so shocked and wounded by yours.”
Once again, he starts to move toward me, but he doesn’t. It’s as if he’s waiting for something, maybe for me to tell him that it’s okay, that I want him to hold me. Or maybe he just wants me to say everything I want to say. I look him in the eyes, not letting my gaze weaken even for a moment. The rain washes continuously over my face, but not even it causes me to blink or look away from him.
I think because he isn’t saying anything yet, that because I can’t hear his soothing voice, it only makes me angrier.
I cry harder and pound my arms against his chest, letting it all out.
“You should’ve told me!” I wail, sobs quivering in my throat. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”
He lets me hit him, over and over until I can’t anymore and I fall against him, giving him the OK he had been waiting for all along.
Finally, he speaks:
“Because I wanted to spend the last of your days seeing your smiling face, not watching you let the pain of knowing what you’d become change you before the blood could change you.” He grips my arms and pulls me away from him, staring deeply into my eyes with ferocity. “Because I was being selfish!”
My chest shudders, but I try to choke it down. My emotions are a whirlwind of chaos. I hear the rain beating against the ground and faint rumbles of thunder far off in the distance. My body starts to shiver from the chill in the air, but I force that down too. “This is how you knew…,” I say softly, more to myself. “…You knew all along you couldn’t hurt me because I was bonded to you.” My head jerks up to look at him, my gaze burning into his angrily. “You knew, Isaac….”
Rain glides over his face as he stares into my eyes. He doesn’t have to say a word because his face answers for him.
I scream at him over the rain, “You’re just like him! You’re just like your father!” Tears barrel from my eyes. I know my words hurt him, but I’m hurting so much that the only way to relieve my pain is to cut him deeper.
“Don’t say that to me,” Isaac growls. “Please….”
“Isaac…we could’ve gone through this together.” I push his hands away again. “I’ve been going through it alone. ALONE, Isaac!”
“I CAN’T TAKE IT BACK!” Isaac roars.
“Would you if you could?” I say through my teeth, and he stops, stunned for a moment.
“No…,” he says quietly, his face still permeated with anger and grief. “If it meant that you would die…I wouldn’t take it back….”
The tears are burning my throat, but the shuddering of my chest subsides.
I see his jawline harden as if he’s gritting his teeth. His gaze bores into me, unrelenting, and finally he crushes his mouth against mine and lifts me up into his arms, carrying me across the yard with my legs wrapped around his waist, and then up the steps without breaking the kiss once. I hear the front door swing open, smashing into the inside wall and he kisses me all the way up the stairs, only breaking it long enough to let me breathe and to get us up the stairs safely.
We crash into his bedroom and I feel him kick the door closed with his foot. My back presses into the wall as he pins me against it with one arm holding me from the bottom. His kiss becomes harder, more aggressive, but I want it that way and he knows it. Isaac lifts my arms above me, peeling off my wet shirt and tossing it across the room. He buries his face in my neck, moaning against my skin; I feel the hairs rise on my arms when his tongue traces along my collarbone and the bare skin above my breasts. My fingers claw across his ribs and his back as I fight to tear his shirt off. I get it above his six-pack and then he reaches up and rips it off the rest of the way for me.
With his tongue tangled in mine, he pulls my body away from the wall. I feel both hands slip underneath me, carrying me across the room where he throws me onto the bed. The warm weight of his body presses against mine; rainwater runs down his chest and shoulders. It drips from the tips of his hair onto me as he lies on top of me.
I don’t even think about it when I reach down and fumble the button on his jeans. He does the same, peeling mine off first before letting me get his zipper down. Without ever moving his lips from mine, he manages to get his pants off.
I’m trembling, every inch of my body shaking inside when I feel him through his boxers as he presses against me.
He looks down at me and whispers, “I have to know…are you okay?”
I touch his lips with my fingertips, searching his face with my eyes. He kisses my fingers, gently licking the tips of them. “I drank you before I got here,” I say staring up at him. I pull him back toward me, taking him into another kiss, squeezing his body between my shaking thighs.
I feel his hand move between us, his fingers slipping behind the waist of my panties as he slips one side down and then the other seconds afterwards. I don’t even notice when he gets his boxers off. I gasp when his fingers slide in-between my legs and he touches me. My back arches, my chest lifting gently toward his and the longer his fingers move the more I feel my body urging to pull away, but he holds me in place.
He kisses me once more as he moves his hand away, letting his wet lips linger on mine for a long moment before looking down into my eyes and hesitates.
When I don’t back off, I feel him inside of me.
I inhale a hard and tremulous breath and my eyelids fall heavily. My thighs are shaking, every inch of my body quivering. I can’t open my eyes. I want to, but they’re too heavy with heat. He crushes his mouth over mine and I feel his moans in my throat. I push my body farther into his, wrapping my arms around his back, feeling his sweat under my fingernails as I drag them firmly down his moist skin.
He moans hungrily against my mouth until he pulls away and buries his head in my shoulder, pushing himself deeper between my legs. Tiny gasps escape my lips, over and over. My hands grip the back of his head, my fingers dig deeply into his dark, wet hair.
I hear a distinctive growl reverberate through his chest, through his entire body and I know, just like three months ago, what it means, what he’s becoming. Breathing fast and heavy, I reach up to feel his hand and let the sharpness of one claw barely graze my skin, but not enough to cut it.
I feel his body ease, struggling with himself, fighting against the transition into his mediate form.
I reach up with both of my hands and lift his head so that he’ll look at me. He resists at first keeping his head down, the rainwater and sweat soaking his hair and my fingers. “Isaac, look at me,” I whisper soft and forcibly. “I want to see your eyes.”
He shakes his head no in my hands and I can hear the denial in a low series of growls. I crush his body between my thighs when I feel him stop and he doesn’t try to pull away.
Pulling his head two more inches down to me, I plant my lips a
gainst his forehead and through his disheveled wet hair, my palms still trying to force him to face me. “Please….”
Slowly, Isaac raises his black eyes, but not without reluctance. His lips are slightly parted, but I can see his sharp teeth barely piercing the top layer of flesh on his bottom lip. Little blue-black veins have spread across and down his cheekbones from both corners of his eyes.
He is frighteningly beautiful.
His lips are inches from mine. I touch them with my fingertips and he gazes down at me with a look of conjecture. The rain pounds harder against the roof. I hear it draining and trickling through the gutters. I hear Isaac’s softened growls as he tames the beast inside. The heat coming off his body is almost unbearable now, but I press my body into his until I can’t anymore. “You have to infect me,” I say; each word so balanced and sincere.
Isaac’s weight starts to lift from mine, but I pull him closer, digging my fingernails into his back, tightening my legs around him to hold him in place.
He gives in to me, letting me hold him down, only because of the soft look of resolution in my eyes.
“No….” He shakes his head twice. “No.”
“You have to, Isaac.” I reach up and brush the very edge of my fingertip across the skin under his eye, feeling the tiny raised veins. “I won’t be like Aramei…you knew I wouldn’t. Isaac…you have to do this for me.”
Finally, he lifts up, but I latch onto him, forcing my hands around the back of his neck, my legs stay wrapped tightly around his waist. He sits up on his knees in the center of the bed with me, refusing to look at me, shaking his head no over and over again.
I won’t let go.
I follow his eyes no matter where they wander, forcing him to stay with me, to look at me and never look away. “My sister lived through it,” I say. “You heard what your father said, Isaac. He said that because my sister survived, the chances are I probably will too.”
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