by Zoe Chant
Corbin fell silent. His breath rasped in Blaze’s ear.
“And if I cannot,” the warlock added, after a moment, in much more his usual measured, controlled tones, “then I will take everything from you. I will teach you what it means to be empty inside, to lose what you hold most dear. You cannot hide from me. You cannot run. No matter how long it takes, I will kill your mate.”
Rose struggled out of sleep, pulled by a persistent, nagging feeling of wrongness. She felt cold, despite the blanket carefully tucked round her. The space next to her on the bed was empty.
“Blaze?” she said, jerking upright.
She relaxed a little as his mind brushed against hers, soft and fleeting as a kiss on her forehead. Nonetheless, something felt…off. He wasn’t far away, yet his presence in her soul was dim and subdued, like a banked campfire.
“What’s wrong?” She sat up, glancing at the bedside clock. It was mid-morning. Golden light filtered through the closed curtains. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t pause in gathering up their few possessions. “Packing. I talked to the concierge. There’s a flight to London in a few hours. He helped me to book you a ticket on your card.”
“What?” Rose flung back the sheets, suddenly wide awake. “But we still haven’t worked out how to sneak you onboard the plane!”
He zipped up the suitcase, his back to her. She couldn’t see his face. “I’m not coming.”
She scrambled out of bed, glad that she’d been too tired to get undressed. She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him round to face her. He resisted, shoulders hunching, not looking at her. His muscles were like iron under her fingers.
“Blaze. Blaze.” She didn’t have a chance of moving him against his will. She ducked under his arm instead, popping up on the other side so that they were face to face. She lifted her chin, refusing to let him evade her glare. “What’s going on?”
For a moment he just looked at her, expressionless, mouth set in a flat, unreadable line. She reached for him down the mate bond, but she might as well have stretched up to try to catch the sun. She could still feel him, still see him, but she couldn’t touch him.
Then he let out his breath in a sigh. His arms closed around her, gathering her close. His head dropped to rest on hers.
“Corbin called,” he said into her hair. “He knows we’re here.”
“So?” His heartbeat thrummed through her body, rapid and agitated. She stroked his back, trying to calm him. “We already knew that he could track us.”
“He made threats. Against you. Rose, I have to hunt him down.” Blaze pulled back, hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm’s-length. “As long as he lives, you aren’t safe.”
“He was trying to scare you, Blaze. It’s just another trick to try to split us apart. He can’t touch us as long as we stay together.”
Blaze shook his head, his mouth twisting in agony. “I can’t protect you. Not by staying at your side. Rose, Corbin still doesn’t know who you are. If I…if I stop him from tracking you magically, he won’t be able to find you.”
Rose blinked. “You can do that?”
“I can. I worked out how, while you were sleeping.”
Blaze didn’t look like a man who’d found a way out of a trap. His expression reminded Rose of the people she’d seen fleeing the raging wildfires—numb, blank-eyed, clutching a few irreplaceable treasures tight in their arms. Abandoning everything, to save what they most loved.
She gripped his arms, hard, fingers digging into his taut muscles. “Blaze, what aren’t you telling me?”
His chest jerked with a spasmodic, painful catch. “It…it will hurt you. Terribly. But just for a moment.”
She couldn’t help flinching away from him. “Not my swan! Don’t take my swan!”
“No!” He looked horrified, as though it hadn’t even occurred to him that she might think he would burn her animal. “That would change you, who you are, your very nature. I could never do that.”
“Then what are you proposing to do?”
His eyes squeezed closed for a second, as if in pain. “I can’t explain it. There isn’t time, the taxi will arrive any minute to take you to the airport…please, Rose. This is the only way I can keep you safe. Trust me.”
Our mate, her swan whispered in her soul. He is our mate. We need to be with him.
But that was an animal’s instinct. She pushed her swan aside, forcing herself to consider the situation with human logic.
Blaze was right. The current situation was untenable. He’d been half-mad last night with guilt, and the warlocks had barely managed to touch her. If something worse did happen…it would destroy him.
She couldn’t be responsible for that. Couldn’t consign her mate to a life of paranoia and fear, always looking over his shoulder, always having to be on guard to protect her.
If they were ever to find true happiness, she had to let him go.
Nonetheless, Rose hesitated. “You said it would hurt.”
His fingertips traced the side of her face, soft as a feather. “Only for a second.” His mouth curved in a strange, wavering smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Then everything will be the way it was before. You won’t even remember it happened.”
“And afterward…when it’s all over, you’ll find me again? We’ll be together?”
He hesitated. “Rose, Corbin will still be able to track me. If I can’t find him, if I can’t eliminate the threat, you’ll be in danger if I’m with you.“
“I don’t care,” she said fiercely. “Promise me you’ll come back to me, no matter what. Promise me.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “I promise,” he whispered, very softly.
She took a deep breath, setting her shoulders. She was so scared she was shaking, but this was Blaze, her mate. Her life, her heart, her soul.
For his sake, she could bear any pain.
“Okay,” she said, her throat dry. “Do it.”
Scrunching up her face, she braced herself for—she didn’t know what. Fire, flames, sweeping agony.
She wasn’t prepared for his mouth to press against hers, fierce and desperate. He kissed her with even more passionate intensity than he had during their mating, as if claiming her anew. All her fear and apprehension melted away in that irresistible heat. She leaned against him, pressing up into his mouth, certainty filling her as bright as the mate bond itself.
No matter what, she was his. He was hers. Forever.
His hands slid down from her face to her shoulders. Gradually, reluctantly, he pushed her away. Even as he stepped back, he bent to keep his lips on hers, lingering as long as possible.
When he finally released her, she wobbled. She had to brace herself on her suitcase to keep standing. Her lips felt hot and flushed, her mind reeled, her whole body tingled…but she didn’t feel any different.
He’d said she wouldn’t remember.
“Is it over?” she asked uncertainly.
Blaze had backed away as far as the door, never turning. He fumbled for the door handle, never taking his eyes off her. Every muscle in his body was strung tight, as though he was having to fight himself to stay where he was, to not stride back to her. Black flames burned in his eyes.
“I will always love you,” he said.
The door closed behind him.
No, no, no! cried her swan. Go after him, he needs us, he is our mate!
Rose forced herself to turn away from the door. Scrubbing her hand across her eyes, she made herself look at the paper he’d left on top of the suitcase. A printout of her flight times and itinerary. This time tomorrow, she’d be back in England.
Without him.
“Just for a little while,” she said out loud, to the empty room. “It’ll just be for a little while. He’ll come back. He promised.“
And then—
Her scream ripped the remnants of his soul into tattered shreds. Blaze slid down the closed door, fists clenched, biting his lip so hard that blood ran over hi
s chin.
He had to hold back his own howl of agony. He couldn’t let her hear him, couldn’t let her know he was there.
She didn’t know he was still there.
She couldn’t feel him any more. She never would again.
But he could still feel her. The one thing he couldn’t burn was his own mind. Despite the smoking, blackened chasm between them, she was still his mate.
He knew the depth of her pain. Could sense her confusion, her terror. Could sense how she sank to the floor, clutching her head, fragments of scorched memories whirling through her mind like burning leaves.
“My mate, my mate, my mate!” Rose screamed, and he knew that she didn’t even remember his name.
She didn’t remember him at all.
It felt like every bone in his body was broken. He made himself stand anyway. Made himself walk away from the terrible sounds of his mate’s grief.
Even though she didn’t know who he was, she still wept for him.
But not forever. She would mourn the mate she’d never known, but eventually, she would move on. She would find happiness. She would heal.
He never would.
He’d burned the mate bond.
There was nothing left but ash.
Chapter 15
She stared down at him, and it was like she could suddenly see through time. She saw him twenty years younger—hair sandy-brown without a hint of gray, face unlined by grief. Still solemn, still controlled, but with his fire burning close to the surface, lighting his features with warmth and power.
She knew that face. Knew his name. Knew who he was.
“You’re Blaze,” she said, numbly.
His face reflected her own dumbstruck disbelief. For a moment, he just gaped up at her, eyes wide with shock.
Then he whispered, “You remember.” His open-mouthed astonishment transmuted into pure, shining joy. “You remember!”
He was still holding her, still inside her. She leaped off him as if he’d burned her, scrambling backward from the man who was suddenly, terribly, not her Ash.
“No, Rose, wait!” He sat bolt upright, reaching out to her. “I know this must be confusing, but—”
“Don’t touch me!”
He stopped at her shriek, hands freezing in mid-air. She scrabbled further away from him, chest heaving, until her back pressed against the wall. Her head was like a shaken snow globe, whirling with fragments of memories.
Memories that she’d forgotten.
“You made me forget you.” She clutched her head, trying to make sense of the flashing images. “You burned my memories, you burned my mind. You made me forget you!”
“It was the only way.” His hands were still outstretched, fingers open toward her, trembling. She’d never seen his face so raw and unguarded. His eyes shone with an emotion too deep to name. “I had to burn every trace of myself from your mind. It was the only way to stop Corbin from being able to find you. It was the only way to keep you safe.”
She huddled into a ball, shaking with shock. “I would rather,” she said, her voice muffled in her arms, “have died.”
“It was the only way to keep you safe,” he said again. “Rose, oh, Rose. You truly remember me?”
She scrunched her eyes shut against a barrage of impressions—a frost-covered window, a blazing inferno, walls of a building falling away from rising wings. The scent of scorched cloth, the sweet burn of his touch. Cinnamon and cream, a laugh, fire turning snow into steam. His voice in the dark. The heat of his mouth.
Blaze.
Her mate.
“My mate,” she said out loud.
“Yes,” he breathed. “My mate, my Rose, yes.”
Not our mate! Her swan’s scream split through the chaos in her mind. Its furious wings beat back the old memories, fighting them, refusing them. Our mate is gone, our mate left us, this is not him! Not our mate!
Her throat felt sliced open. She couldn’t speak, choked by pain. She remembered, remembered what he’d been to her. Remembered how bright and fierce he’d burned in her mind, how he’d lit up her entire soul.
Now…her heart was a barren, charred wasteland. And it had been for twenty years. She’d huddled over cold ashes, and thought herself content, because she’d forgotten she’d ever known fire.
She lifted her head, looking at him. The young man she’d loved so passionately, the older one she’d loved no less deeply. She saw them both at once. Blaze reignited in Ash’s careworn face, hope burning bright in those eternal eyes.
She jerked her gaze away, unable to bear the sight of him. Sliding off the bed, she snatched up their discarded clothes.
“Get dressed,” she snarled, hurling his uniform at him. “And get out.”
He caught his garments, but made no move to put them on. “Rose, you remember me. That should be impossible, I was sure it was impossible, but my fire touched you just now, and you remembered—”
He stopped abruptly, his breath catching. The joy transfiguring his stern features faded, turning into horror.
“Ten years.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, hiding his expression. “I wasted ten years.”
“Twenty.” Rose could barely do up the buttons of her blouse, her fingers were shaking so much with rage. “Twenty years, Ash—Blaze—oh, for heaven’s sake, what am I supposed to call you now?”
He dropped his hands again, emerging looking gray and weary. “Ash will do. That’s how everyone else knows me, after all. And I couldn’t have returned to you earlier. I had to hunt down the warlocks, had to make sure none of them were alive to follow me to you. It took me a decade.”
More fragments of memory flurried up in her head—cages, despair, an ocelot’s spotted fur. She remembered her own righteous fury, how she’d burned to bring the warlocks to justice. Her own raw, young passions washed over her, disconcerting in their intensity. When had she stopped feeling things so deeply?
When he burned our mate bond.
“Well, at least one good thing came of this,” she muttered. “I’m glad you destroyed all those evil monsters.”
His mouth tightened. His fingers crept up to rub the old scar around his right wrist. “I didn’t. I never found Corbin.”
She stared at him. “But you came back to me.”
“I’d made a promise,” he said, very quietly. His shoulders dropped in a long sigh. “ I shouldn’t have come back to you. We never found a trace of him, not in all those years.”
“We?”
“I didn’t hunt alone.” He hesitated. “Do you remember the wendigo?”
A blizzard in July. Icicles and antlers. She flinched. “You teamed up with that thing?”
“He…wasn’t what he seemed.” He shook his head. “In any case, we killed every warlock from the base, tracking them down one by one. Except for Corbin. Ice—the wendigo—was certain he had to be dead. He wanted to give up the hunt. And I…I’d reached a point where I couldn’t bear another day without you.”
He looked away, down at the clothes still draped across his lap. He absently smoothed a thumb over the fire service crest embroidered on his sleeve. “I didn’t mean to stay. I just wanted to know that you were well. That you’d made a life for yourself, like you’d dreamed. So I came to England. I found your pub.”
His voice went soft. “And when I walked through the door, you smiled at me, whole-heartedly, as though you’d been waiting for me all that time. Even though you didn’t know me.”
She remembered the first time she’d seen him—no, not the first time, oh, this was far too confusing—she remembered when she’d first laid eyes on Ash. How she’d looked up at the door just before he opened it, though she hadn’t sensed anyone approaching. How her stomach had given an odd little flip at the sight of his tall, quiet form, even before she’d seen his face. How her swan had said not our mate, the way it always did…but how her heart had said otherwise.
That wasn’t a new memory. She’d worn that one smooth, reliving it night after night. Tryi
ng to decide if she was just being fanciful, or if she really had felt that strange, bright spark when their eyes met.
Now she knew that she had.
Even now, his broad shoulders and defined arms lit an undeniable heat low in her belly. She tried to look at his hands instead, but that was even worse. She couldn’t help remembering how those strong, callused fingers had caressed her inner thigh…
She swiveled on her heel, clearing her throat. “Will you please put some damn pants on?”
To her relief, she heard a rustle of cloth. She pretended an intense interest in smoothing out creases in her skirt, determinedly not looking.
When she risked a peek, Ash was sitting on the edge of the bed, buttoning his shirt. And he was Ash now. It was like he’d put on that still, silent persona along with the uniform. She couldn’t see Blaze anymore in his shuttered, frozen face.
Somehow, it was even more difficult to talk to him now that he was fully dressed. Sitting next to him on the bed would have been far too intimate, so she leaned awkwardly on her dresser instead. She folded her arms.
“If Corbin was still out there, why did you stay?” It came out aggressive, accusing. She didn’t care. “After going through all this to keep me safe, I’m surprised you risked hanging around.”
“I shouldn’t have.” Ash didn’t look at her, still concentrating—or, she suspected, pretending to concentrate—on doing up his cuffs. “But I found I couldn’t leave. Not again. I told myself that I wasn’t endangering you, not as long as I was careful not to get too close to you. None of the warlocks knew your name or appearance, after all. I tried to keep my distance from you so that even if I was being watched, the warlocks would have no reason to suspect anything.”
That’s why he’d kept his distance from everyone, Rose realized. Why he’d maintained a level of reserve even from Alpha Team. If he showed that he cared for anyone, the warlocks could have used them as a hostage.
“Do you think you are being watched?” she asked.