B00AO57VOY EBOK

by Myers, AJ

The iciness of his skin seemed almost warm in comparison to the arctic quality of his voice by the time he finished speaking. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to defend myself for first. Yes, I had known Gabriella was a ghost, but I had only kept the secret because she hadn’t wanted him to know. And I had drained his energy to an almost dangerous level, but I had only done that to keep him safe.

  Therefore, it seemed like the best idea to just apologize for everything at once.

  “I’m sorry, Nathan,” I murmured, still not looking him in the eye. Yep, I’m a coward. Instead, I focused on the tight line of his clenched jaw. “I can explain?”

  “Explain what, Ember?” he snapped, his temper finally boiling over. “Explain why you kept Gabriella’s presence in our home a secret? You’re sorry for nearly killing me? What exactly is it that you think you can explain? What are you apologizing for? Please. Enlighten me.”

  His unforgiving tone pissed me off. I knew he had a right to be angry, but he didn’t have to be such a jerk about it. If he was mad about Gabriella, he needed to take that up with her. She was the one who had wanted to keep her presence a secret, after all. As for almost killing him, I wasn’t about to apologize for something I hadn’t done. I had drained him, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t been planning on giving him back what I had taken.

  “None of it!” I hissed, now just as furious as he was. “I’m not sorry for any of it. There. How do you like that, Nathan Ashley?”

  “You’re not sorry for any of it?” He asked, his shock at my response momentarily stronger than his anger.

  “No, I’m not,” I shoved at his chest to try and push him away, but he only held me tighter. The song had changed to something more upbeat, but we hadn’t noticed.

  “You could have put me in a coma and you’re not sorry?” he growled, his anger returning full force.

  “Nope,” I told him, still trying to wiggle out of his grip without causing a wardrobe malfunction I might never recover from. “I knew what I was doing. I had to take more from you because you’re a vampire, but you were never in any real danger. I’m sorry I had to do it, but I’m not going to apologize for trying to protect you. So if you want to be mad, go ahead. You’ll get over it.”

  The anger died in his eyes before the last word left my lips and he just stared at me. It took me a second to realize that he was speechless. For the first time since we had met, he just simply didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t care, though. I had tried to save him and he had thrown that in my face like I had committed a crime or something.

  With one last shove, I was finally able to tear free from his hold. I took a few steps back, putting some much needed space between us, and crossed my arms over my chest. He looked like he wanted to reach for me, but something in my face stopped him cold.

  “Ember, I don’t need you to protect me, baby,” he said sadly, running his fingers through his hair. “I need you to…”

  “Run and hide like a weakling,” I finished for him. “Something that is never going to happen. So, are you going to help me or not, Nathan? Because I really don’t have time for this shit right now.”

  For a long, silent moment he just looked at me. I felt something inside me wither when he tilted his head to the side and gave me a disdainful look that made me feel even smaller than I had felt before.

  “You don’t need me,” he said coldly. “You’re Ember Blaylock, the one woman show. So go ahead and do what you feel you’ve got to do. But, if you die, don’t expect me to be waiting for you on your next trip. I’ve had about all the heartache I can stand.”

  With that, he gave me another cold look and stalked out of the gym. I watched him go, feeling my heart break as I tried to figure out how things had gotten so messed up between us so fast. I honestly didn’t know what hurt more, the fact that he didn’t believe in me…

  Or the fact that he didn’t look back.

  The hour we spent waiting for the game to end was the longest hour of my life. Though Bastian was pretending to have been tortured, he had chosen to attend the game anyway, probably just to torment me as I waited to die. I spent the time trying to get my emotions under some semblance of control. Every time Nathan’s face flashed across my mind, I wanted to throw something. Every time his final words decided they needed to replay themselves for me, just in case I forgot, I wanted to curl up somewhere and bawl my head off.

  Kim, Blake, and Tyler kept their distance, letting me have the time I needed to pull myself together. They had witnessed our fight and Nathan’s abrupt departure, but they hadn’t asked me any questions. Instead, they just stood off to the side and gave me pitying looks every few minutes.

  I was sitting in the farthest, darkest, corner of the gym, wishing the game would just end already, when I suddenly felt this terrible, gut-clenching, sensation in the pit of my stomach. Less than a second later, I was doubled over, gasping for air and holding my arms over my chest. It felt like something was trying to rip out my heart and show it to me.

  No! Nathan’s voice suddenly roared in my mind.

  Fighting off waves of dizziness and that god-awful pain in my chest, I closed my eyes and tried to reach out to him, to follow that agonized voice in my mind. And, believe it or not, it worked. The second I found him, I took off at a sprint, not even caring if the others followed me. The only thing that mattered was Nathan.

  I nearly tore the door of the west wing off in my haste to get to the center of my universe. I didn’t have to wonder where I was supposed to be. I had seen the image of the room from my nightmare very clearly in my mind. I skidded to a stop in the doorway and then froze in horror. Once again, I was tied to a stake, burning brightly in the darkness of the west wing. She was a perfect replica of me, right down to the gown she was wearing that Kim had designed especially for me. The fire hadn’t reached my hair or face yet and I—well, the other me—was screaming as my gown caught and the skin on my arms started to turn black and crack open.

  It only took a second for everything to fall into place. Bastian had used my blood to create a duplicate of me that was so lifelike that even my own soul mate couldn’t tell the difference. The real victim of my stabbing hadn’t been me at all.

  It had been Nathan the whole time.

  I snapped out of my terrified daze just in time to keep Nathan from committing vampire suicide. Without thinking, I ran at him and hit him hard in the stomach with my shoulder just as he made to jump into the flames to save the me that wasn’t me.

  “Nathan! Stop!” I shouted as he kept going, my weight not enough to keep him back. It was as if he hadn’t even heard me. Even when Blake and Tyler ran into the room and added their strength to mine, he continued to fight us.

  When he pushed me aside and started fighting Tyler and Blake’s hold like he was possessed or something, I totally freaked. When he finally managed to free himself, I threw up a shield between him and the girl burning at the stake with barely a second to spare. He slammed into it with enough force to send him flying across the room. His eyes were wild and I could see blood tears staining his too-pale cheeks. But it was the animalistic sounds coming from deep in his chest that scared the hell out of me.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he roared, still running at the barrier it was taking my whole focus to hold in place. It was only when the me in the fire stopped screaming that he sank to his knees. The dead look on his face as he stared at her was enough to make my blood run cold. When he spoke again it was in a whisper so agonized that I felt my heart break. “I didn’t mean it, baby. Please come back. Please, Ember.”

  “We have to do something,” Kim said, coming up beside me and looking at Nathan with eyes shining with tears. When nobody moved, she turned to Tyler and Blake and screamed, “Do something, damn it! You can’t leave him like that!”

  “They can’t help him,” I told her, choking on the sobs threatening to strangle me. “They can’t, but I can.”

  I heard Kim protest, but I kept moving toward Nathan, anyway. His love for me had
reduced him to the shattered man before me, and my love for him could bring him back. I just had to get him to look at me.

  “Nathan?” I said on a sob. “Baby, it’s not real. Please, just look at me.”

  When he didn’t even turn his head, just winced and kept rocking, I felt the beginnings of real, true panic. I didn’t dare touch him, but his grief was tearing me apart. Taking another step toward him, I tried again.

  “Nathan, it’s okay. I’m right here. Look at me. Please.” This time, I got a response from him. He looked up at me with eyes so shattered that I felt like he was stabbing me in the heart.

  “You’re not real,” he whispered, more tears falling down his cheeks, as he turned back to the burning remains tied to the stake. “You’re gone.”

  “No, I’m right here,” I told him, my voice breaking. “Nathan, listen to me. I’m fine.”

  “You always said that,” he said, talking to my dead dummy again. “You always said that and you never were.”

  Knowing the only way I was going to reach him was to touch him, I took a deep, shuddering breath and reached my hand out to lay it on his shoulder. Just before my fingers brushed the material of his shirt, Tyler’s long fingers wrapped around my wrist and stopped me. I looked up to see him staring at the dead version of me burning in the center of the room with a sick look.

  “Don’t touch him,” he whispered. “He’s dangerous right now, beautiful. Let me talk to him.”

  Nodding, I stepped back and watched as he knelt down in front of Nathan. Kim ran over and wrapped her arms around me. She studiously avoided looking at the thing that looked like me that had become a very crispy critter and put every ounce of her being into comforting the real me instead. Really, though, I think she just couldn’t stand the idea of seeing me that way, whether it was real or not.

  “Nate, I want you to listen to me,” Tyler said, his voice so soothing that even I reacted to it. “That is not Ember.”

  “She’s gone,” Nathan said in another broken whisper, his eyes glazing over with agony.

  “No, she isn’t gone,” Tyler said, flinching as he saw the same shattered eyes I had seen when Nathan dragged his gaze from my dead face to look at him. Pointing toward me, he said, “Look, Nate. She’s right there.”

  “You can see her, too?” Nathan asked hoarsely. “She’s haunting me, isn’t she? I broke my promise. I left her. I told her I wouldn’t wait for her. I didn’t mean it, though. I swear, I didn’t mean it.”

  “She knows that,” Tyler murmured soothingly. “Look at her, Nate. Let her tell you she knows you didn’t mean it.”

  Nathan shook his head and turned back to watching my dummy burn instead. I could almost see the thoughts going through his head. If we didn’t do something, and quick, he was going to find a way to hurt himself. Tyler must have seen the same thing in his eyes I was seeing because, with a sigh of defeat, he looked at me and nodded.

  “Slowly, Em,” he whispered. “Blake and Kim, get on either side of her. If he snaps, get her out of here.”

  Swallowing hard, I slowly stepped toward my broken mate, tears streaming unchecked down my cheeks. The second my fingers touched him, he turned on me like a wounded animal. Before my protectors could stop him, we were across the room and his fingers were wrapped around my throat like a manacle. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes, only fury and a grief so deep that I felt it surround me like a living thing.

  When Tyler, Blake and Kim came running toward me, I used every bit of power I had to throw up another shield to keep them back. Then I turned back to Nathan. Though I should have been terrified, I wasn’t. This was Nathan. Nathan wouldn’t hurt me. I just had to make him see me.

  Preferably before he strangled me to death.

  “Nathan, please,” I gasped out, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. “Baby, it’s me. Look…at me!”

  “No!” he growled, his fangs flashing in the light of the still-crackling fire. “You’re a trick. He’s tormenting me. You’re not real.”

  “Yes…I…am,” I choked out.

  Still refusing to panic, I laid my hand on his chest, directly over his heart. Then, closing my eyes, I let my thoughts show him how much I loved him in the form of the memories we had shared.

  The first time I had seen him and the way my heart had skipped more than one beat. The way I had felt my world change the night he kissed me in Grams’ garden. The love I had discovered as he whispered to me in the dark about his life and forced me to share mine.

  My memories ended with the afternoon we had spent together, the passionate embraces and the love that had flowed between the two of us. Love. Every memory was saturated with that one emotion, every thought, every action. And it was love that was going to bring him back from the darkness he was trapped in and give him back to me.

  “I love you, Nathan,” I gasped out, saying the words out loud for the first time even as my vision started to blur from lack of oxygen. “I love you.”

  That declaration of love finally snapped him out of it. He sucked in another deep breath and his hand left my throat like I had burned him—something my dying body had been trying to do for the last minute and a half out of sheer self-preservation.

  “Ember?” he whispered in horror as I coughed and gagged. “Oh, God! Baby! What have I done?”

  “I’m…fine…” I choked out, trying to smile up at him. My throat felt like I had been swallowing shattered glass and every breath was agony. “Is…okay…”

  Faster than I could blink, his arms came around me in a hold so tight that I actually gasped in pain, fearing for my ribs and the vulnerable organs behind them. He immediately eased up his grip but didn’t let go. Instead, he stood there and stared at me, his eyes tracing my face like he was still trying to make himself believe I was really there.

  “I thought you were gone,” he whispered, a shadow of that broken creature I had seen before flashing across his eyes again. “I felt it, Ember.”

  I felt a chill slip down my spine at those words. How had Bastian done that? How had he made Nathan feel the pain of the loss of a soul mate when I was right there, alive and well?

  Then again, I thought maybe I might already know.

  “Nathan, listen to me,” I wheezed out, feeling proud of myself. Though I still felt like I was sucking air through a straw, at least I could talk. Holding his face between my hands, I looked deep into his eyes. “You have to believe in me, Nathan. If you believed in me, he never would have been able to make you think I was dead. I demand that you trust me, damn it, starting right now. If you don’t believe in me, I can’t do this.”

  “I do, Em,” he whispered, crushing me to him and burying his face against my neck. “I do believe in you, baby. I do.”

  “Then let me do what I have to do.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my head against his chest. “Trust me to come back to you, Nathan, and let me finish this.”

  He pulled back and looked at me, his eyes scanning mine for a long time. Smiling weakly, he leaned down and placed a soft, gentle kiss on my lips. .

  “Somebody put that damn thing out,” he said, keeping his eyes on mine rather than look at my burning doppelganger, reaching out to run the back of his knuckles along my cheek.

  “I got it,” Blake said, ducking out of the room.

  He was back in a matter of seconds with a fire extinguisher. As soon as the fire went out, Tyler picked it up and carried it out with the fake me still tied to it. Kim and Blake followed him out, giving me and Nathan a few minutes of privacy.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Nathan whispered miserably. “I was angry and scared, but I never should have said what I did. I didn’t mean it, Em. None of it. I will always wait for you.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told him, laying my hand over his heart again. “Now, I have plenty to apologize for. And I plan to be very creative about it, too. So, let’s go get this done so I can get to work making everything up to you. I think, what, two days alone at our
cabin should do it?”

  “A solid week,” he said, smiling weakly. “To start with.”

  Nathan held out his hand for mine and we walked out together. Tyler, Kim, and Blake were a short ways down the hall, talking in quiet voices.

  “What was that thing?” I asked the second we were close to them.

  “A very clever, very cruel, ploy,” Tyler muttered, giving Nathan a narrow-eyed look of caution. “You okay, Nate?”

  “I am now,” he said, wrapping his arm around me and pulling me close. “You shouldn’t have let her touch me, though, Tyler. I nearly killed her. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “That you were going to commit vampire hari-kari,” Blake said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We wouldn’t have let you kill her, Nate. Give us some credit. If you hadn’t let go when you did, you’d be in serious pain right now.”

  I shot him a look that told him to shut up and change the subject and he immediately closed his mouth. Seeing that he wasn’t going to do it, I decided to move the conversation along to less sensitive areas.

  “What did you do with it?” I asked Tyler, looking behind him like he might have hung my fried doppelganger on a hook from the ceiling or something.

  “We have it stored in one of the empty rooms,” Blake answered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Shea said not to dispose of it until she’d had a chance to examine it.”

  “Go get it and put it back where we found it,” I told him, tapping my finger against my chin as I thought about what we needed to do. “And if there’s some way to make it look like it hasn’t caught fire yet, let’s do that, too. A Glamour should do the trick, right? I want Bastian to think Nathan hasn’t seen it yet, that he still has that advantage.”

  “Bloody brilliant, beautiful,” Tyler said, smiling at me and moving to do as I asked.

  “And you might want to hurry,” Kim called after him, frowning down at her phone before putting it back in the small bag attached to her wrist. “I’d say we have about fifteen minutes before our favorite demon arrives. You ready, Em?”