by Karen Lynch
“Will you sit with me?” she asked softly as I walked to one of the chairs.
I turned to see her sitting on the couch. My pulse skittered with surprise and pleasure as I went to join her. We sat on either end, facing each other, and I couldn’t help but notice how tightly she clutched her hands in her lap.
“Are you okay? You said Chris found the guy following you.”
I expected her to be relieved not to have a stalker, but she looked troubled.
“Yes. His name is Mark Rowan, and he’s a private investigator who was hired by my sister to find me.”
I stared at her. “Your sister?”
“Marie and I haven’t seen each other in a very long time, and she thought I was…” Emma let out a trembling breath. “She was looking for me.”
“You said you had family stuff to take care of before we could talk. Was this it?”
She nodded.
Her sister must be older to be able to hire a private investigator. I had a suspicion that their separation had something to do with what had happened to Emma before she came here.
“Did you and your sister work things out?”
She gave me a small smile. “Yes. She came here yesterday, and we talked all night.”
“That’s great.”
I couldn’t understand why she didn’t look happier about reconciling with her sister. Or maybe she was happy about that, and something else was upsetting her. Dread twisted my stomach.
“Emma, about us,” I started.
She held up a hand. “I’ve had all week to think about what happened. I was upset and mad at you, at first, but I think I understand why you didn’t tell me about your wolf. I won’t pretend to know how werewolf males think, but Shannon and April said you don’t think or act like human men. It took me a few days to get what they were saying and what you said about me pushing you away. You were right. I was doing that, but not because I don’t want to be with you.”
Her brown gaze held mine. “What happened between us Saturday night wasn’t one-sided. I wanted that as much as you did, and I don’t know if I could have stopped us if you hadn’t.”
I swallowed at the memory of her body on top of mine. “I couldn’t let us go any further. We would have been mated before you knew about the imprint. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Thank you for that. I need to tell you things too about my past, and it wouldn’t have been fair to you to take our relationship further before you knew them.”
I heard her say something about her past, but I was stuck on something else she’d said.
“Our relationship?”
“Yes. If you still want one with me after you hear what I have to say.”
My heart thudded. “Do you even have to ask? I came here prepared to beg you to forgive me and to give us a chance.”
“You don’t have to beg.” She looked down at her hands. When she raised her eyes to mine again, they were stark and vulnerable, like she was baring her soul to me. “I love you, Roland.”
“You…?” The need to touch her drove me to the center of the couch. Taking her hand, I tugged her to me until she sat on my lap. She turned her face toward me, and I saw the sheen of tears in her eyes before I brushed my lips against hers.
“I love you, too,” I said, my voice rough. “So much it’ll kill me if I don’t kiss you now.”
She pressed herself against me, and that was all the permission I needed. My mouth covered hers, and she opened to me, kissing me back with an urgency that left me light-headed and hungry for all of her.
Her fingers threaded through my hair, sending shivers through me, and her slight weight on my lap made my body ache. If we continued much longer, I was going to carry her to the bedroom, and this time, we wouldn’t stop.
It took a minute for me to register the salty taste of tears on our lips. Breaking the kiss, I looked at Emma’s brimming eyes and wet cheeks.
“What is it? Am I going too fast?”
“No. I…” She pressed her lips together and looked away from me. Then she set her shoulders and got off my lap to sit on her end of the couch again. Her tears and the misery on her face confused and scared me after her declaration and the way she’d kissed me.
“What’s wrong?”
I reached my hand out to her, and she shook her head as she wiped her cheeks. I tried not to let the rejection bother me. More important was why she suddenly was so upset.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Before we can be together, I need to tell you things about me, about my past. I’m afraid…” Her breath hitched. “I’m afraid you won’t feel the same about me when you hear what I have to say.”
“I love you. Nothing you say will change that.”
“This will.”
The certainty and fear in her eyes made my gut clench. I knew something bad had happened to her before she came here, but why would she think it would change how I felt about her? Coldness spread through me as I imagined the worst.
“Emma, did someone hurt you?” I asked gruffly.
Her silent nod sent a knife through my heart. My hands curled into fists, and I wanted to hunt down the man and make sure he’d never hurt another female. I looked at her helplessly, unsure of what to do for her.
It was a few minutes before she spoke again, her voice hoarse and strained. “This is very hard for me to talk about, especially to you. All I ask is that you don’t leave before I finish. Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I vowed.
Her sad smile told me she didn’t believe that even though she wanted to.
Jesus, what did they do to you?
“I’m not who you think I am,” she began slowly. “My name is Emma, but my last name is Chase, not Grey. And I’m not Sara’s cousin, though she and Nate are like family to me.”
“What?” I croaked.
“I needed a place to live, somewhere quiet, and Sara offered her apartment. I agreed to come on the condition she didn’t tell anyone the truth about me. That’s why we made up the story about me being her cousin.”
“Sara knew?” I asked dumbly, trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“Please, don’t be angry with her. I made her promise not to tell anyone. You know Sara never breaks a promise.”
“Why did you change your name? Who are you hiding from?”
“No one…everyone.” She let out a ragged breath. “Sometimes, I think I’m running from myself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” She rubbed her hands along her thighs. “This is so hard to explain.”
She looked ready to run from the room, so I softened my tone.
“How do you know Sara?”
I’d been with Sara up until January, and after that she’d been tucked away in a faerie mansion in California for months. Something didn’t add up.
“I met Sara in Las Vegas in March. She…healed me.”
“Oh.”
Now it made sense. Sara had been in Vegas in March looking for her mother, and they’d had a run-in with a big group of vampires. Strange, she hadn’t mentioned meeting a girl there, or that she could heal humans now.
I remembered how pale Emma had been when she first came here, and I wondered if that was because of her illness. The thought that she could have been so sick she needed Sara to heal her sent a chill through me.
“Were you very sick?”
“It wasn’t that kind of healing.” She looked away, biting her lip. “Sara healed me the way she healed Nate.”
I stared at her. “Nate? But he was a…”
“Vampire,” she finished for me, her voice barely a whisper.
My stomach lurched sickeningly. No. She couldn’t have been a vampire. I’d know. Wouldn’t I?
I thought about Nate. I hadn’t seen him as a vampire, but I was there the day Sara made him human again. I’d shifted and smelled him, and there hadn’t been a trace of a vampire on him.
But that was Nate. It was one thing for
Sara to help her uncle who’d been a vampire less than a week. Why would she heal a strange vampire with everything that was going on back then? Every sucker in the country had been looking for her, along with a Master. It made no sense unless she’d known Emma before she was changed. That must be it.
“How long were you a vampire before Sara healed you?” I asked with surprising calm.
Silence.
“Emma?”
She breathed deep and looked at me. “Twenty-one years.”
“What?” I felt my body grow cold as the implications of her words sank in. I tried to reconcile the sweet girl I knew with one of those sadistic bastards, but I couldn’t do it. My mind wouldn’t let me imagine the girl I loved as a brutal killer.
“Please, tell me this is some kind of joke.”
She jerked her head from side to side.
My gaze dropped to her mouth and bile burned the back of my throat when I imagined her with a pair of snake-like fangs. I’d killed so many vampires, and I’d seen what they could do. They were killing machines, and they took joy in inflicting pain. Sara had seen that firsthand when her father was killed by them, and she hated bloodsuckers even more than I did. It didn’t make sense for her to save one unless she was close to them, like Nate.
“Why did she heal you?”
Emma flinched. I felt bad for my harsh tone, but my emotions were all over the map. I didn’t know how to cope with what I was hearing.
“It was because of Eli,” she said hoarsely.
I recoiled from her. “Eli? The same Eli who was obsessed with Sara and nearly killed her?”
“Yes.”
A shudder went through me. The familiar way Emma said Eli’s name told me she’d known him, and not just in passing. The thought of her with him made my stomach roll violently, and I moved to get up.
“Please, let me explain,” she pleaded desperately. “If you want to leave after, I understand. But I need you to know the truth. All of it.”
I returned to the far end of the couch, my body stiff as I waited for her to continue.
“I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was me, my little sister Marie, and our parents. I was a normal teenage girl who liked to go to the mall and hang out with my best friend. I loved to paint, and my dream was to go to art school. I was happy.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “One night I snuck out to go to a club with my friend Chelsea. We got separated. That’s when Eli found me. I didn’t know what he was until he got me to go outside with him. By then, it was too late.”
Her eyes took on a faraway look filled with horror. “The things he did to me… I prayed he would kill me, but he had other plans. A week after he took me, he made me into a monster just like him.”
The sheer agony and despair in her voice lashed at my heart until it felt like it had been shredded. Every breath hurt, and my wolf wanted to howl out his pain.
“Eli owned me after that. He was so strong, and he loved to control me. The vampire I became didn’t try to escape him. It was as twisted as he was, and it wanted to be with him. The demon possessed my body completely, and I could only watch as it did to others what Eli had done to me.”
She raised her hands and looked at them as if they belonged to someone else. “The blood of so many innocent people is on these hands, and no matter what I do, they don’t feel clean. I see the faces when I close my eyes. I hear them cry and beg. They come into my dreams, and every night I relive the things that I – the vampire did to them. The demon is dead, but I’m not free. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free.”
Her eyes were desolate when she looked at me again. “I lived in hell for twenty-one years, until I went with a group of vampires to attack a Mohiri safe house in Las Vegas. I had no idea Sara was there or what she could do. I attacked her, and instead of killing me as she should have, she made me human again.
“You wanted to know why she chose me. She touched me, saw my memories, and took pity on me. She told me later that when she saw it was Eli who took me, she knew my fate would have been hers if not for Nikolas and you. That’s why she saved me.”
My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak. I wanted to reach out to her, but I was still reeling from her story and trying to sort out my emotions. Hatred for vampires had been ingrained in me since I learned to talk, and a part of me felt revulsion when I looked at her. But I also saw the girl I loved, the person I wanted as my mate, in terrible pain. The two sides of me battled each other, and I felt like I was being torn apart inside.
Emma pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “I was terrified and so confused after Sara healed me. I had no one, and I couldn’t go back to my family. Sara took care of me and brought me to Westhorne to live with her. The Mohiri were kind to me, despite what I used to be, but I couldn’t stay there forever. I needed to try to make a life for myself among humans again. When she couldn’t convince me to stay, Sara offered to let me live here as long as I wanted.
“I was afraid of moving to werewolf territory because of my past, but Sara said there was no safer place for me outside of a Mohiri stronghold. The security guy at Westhorne got me fake IDs and a social security number, and I changed my last name to Grey. Sara and Tristan gave me enough money to live off for a long time, and she even put the studio upstairs for me. I can’t ever repay her for all she’s done for me.”
I found my voice, at last. “I thought one of my kind hurt you before you came here, and that was why you were nervous around us. But you were afraid we’d find out the truth about you.”
“Yes.”
I felt betrayed, and it stung. I’d befriended her, fallen in love with her, and my wolf had chosen her for our mate. She let me get close to her, knowing how I’d feel when I learned the truth. Why else would she have kept it a secret? If I’d known, my wolf might never have imprinted on her.
The rational part of me said I was being unfair. Emma had tried to keep her distance from me when she moved here. I was the one who kept coming to her. She hadn’t tried to lure me into a relationship or make me fall for her. That was all me.
And no matter what she’d done as a vampire, she was a victim just like Nate. My mind struggled with that, too, because it went against all of my conditioning to see vampires as anything but evil. Nate was different because I’d known him all my life and he’d only been a vampire for a week.
Emma’s questions about Nate on Saturday night made sense now. How would I have felt about him if he’d been a vampire for as long as she had?
I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure how to feel.”
“Do you hate me?” she whispered.
“No.” I met her eyes, and the pain in them almost gutted me. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault. It’s just…”
She gave a tiny nod. “You can’t look at me without seeing what I used to be.”
“I’m a werewolf, and I just found out that the girl I chose for my mate was a vampire a few months ago.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you or deceive you. Whatever else you think of me, I hope you know that.”
I stared at the fireplace, not sure what to say next. I was so confused, torn between wanting to comfort her and needing to leave and clear my head. My wolf was agitated, and he wanted to run. Maybe it was a good thing I was going on a hunt tomorrow. A few days away in my fur might be what I needed to help me come to terms with all of this.
“I think I should go,” I said after minutes passed with neither of us speaking. “I need…”
“You don’t have to explain,” she said thickly as we stood and faced each other. “Is this goodbye?”
The thought of never seeing her again made my heart feel like it was in a vise. The pain gave me comfort because it wouldn’t hurt so much if I didn’t belong with her.
“No. I just need a few days.”
We walked to the door. I opened it and looked to where she stood a few feet away, hugging hersel
f. I hated leaving her like this, but I couldn’t stay.
“Will you be okay here?” I asked her.
She attempted a smile. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Telling me not to worry about her was as effective as telling me not to breathe. Despite everything, she was the only person I could imagine spending my life with, and I’d always be protective of her. I wouldn’t think of anything but her while we were apart.
“I’ll see you soon.”
I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.
Emma
I sat a few feet from the edge of the cliff and gazed out over the wide expanse of ocean. The wind plucked strands of hair from my loose braid and tossed them in my face, and I used both hands to tuck them behind my ears.
What a wild, beautiful place. It was no wonder Sara had spent so much time down here with Remy. I’d peered over the edge, trying to see the cave she’d told me about, but it wasn’t visible from up here. The foaming water below had made me dizzy, and I’d had to back up. I obviously wasn’t as brave as Sara.
So, this is it.
This was where Sara had killed Eli and freed me from him at last. She didn’t know it, but she’d saved me twice – once when she ended his life, and again when she killed the demon he’d put inside me. A person who hadn’t even been born when Eli took me had been the one to save me from him. I’d never been a big believer in fate, but it felt like a higher power had sent her to me.
I’d avoided coming to the cliffs because I hadn’t wanted to go anywhere Eli had been. He’d controlled me so completely all those years, and I’d been afraid some part of him was still here, waiting to enslave me again. I think it was also because I was hiding from that life, and being here where my maker had died resurrected a lot of old memories of him.
Today, I’d come here to confront my past, and to put the ghost of Eli to rest forever. I’d cried long and hard after Roland had left last night, and it was in the early hours of the morning when I finally ran out of tears.