by A. M. Hudson
“Promise what?”
“I promise I’ll marry you then.”
His face split into a wide, pearly grin. He looked up from our hands, making me smile too. “I will hold you to that promise.”
“You won’t need to. If I believe things are truly over for David and I, I wouldn’t hesitate to marry you, Jase. And it’d take hell to stop me.”
“Then—” He kissed my hand. “Until that day, I pray you fall out of love with him, but I hope it’s not for the cruelty he shows you. I don’t want you to suffer that way.”
I flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, softly rubbing my belly. Then, quietly, without warning, the vampire beside me placed his hand over mine. It felt warm and safe and so comfortable I moved my own hand away and let him feel the baby inside me.
“I’m gonna take care of her, Ara. She’ll never want for love a day in her life.”
“So, you’d be willing to take on a kid that’s not yours?”
“Ara, she is a part of you, and that makes her a part of me. As far as I’m concerned, she is of my own flesh and blood.”
I pouted, half smiling. “Sometimes, I wish she was yours.”
He leaned down and kissed my belly, hovering there for a few seconds after. “Me too.”
My gaze left his lips and the soft skin of my belly under them, and moved onto the side of his face. So much had happened between us. His face was one I used to fear and yet, now, it was the one I looked for when everything was falling apart. I slid my thumb down his cheekbone, thinking back to the day I confessed our affair—how I found him bruised and beaten in the cellblock. “Hey, Jase?”
“Mm?”
“Who hurt you the day David had you arrested?”
He looked up, his smile blending with a frown. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Who didn’t tell me what?”
He laughed, sitting back. “Falcon.”
“What?” I sat up. “He did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He . . . he was pretty pissed off. As soon as David left you alone in your room, Falcon came down and made sure I paid dearly for every inch of flesh I ever touched on you.”
“Oh, Jase.” I touched his hand. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I kinda deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t. And why didn’t you tell me who did it?”
“Aw, Ara, I wasn’t gonna do that,” he said simply. “You love Falcon. I didn’t wanna upset you.”
“But I am upset. I can’t believe he’d—”
“Really?” he said smugly. “You really can’t believe he’d do that?”
I bit my lip, huffing my hair off my brow. “I guess I can believe he’d beat you senseless. But it’s not like him to take the law into his own hands.”
“He wasn’t really thinking then, Ara. You might say he was blind with rage.”
“Wait.” I grabbed Jase’s forearm. “He’s not bound by the Curse of Lilith, is he? Like Blade was—”
“No.” He shook his head, smiling. “He just cares about you and wanted to deck the guy who ruined your life.”
I relaxed a bit then. “Like a big brother?”
“Exactly. Come here—” Jase reached out and tugged my sleeve until I crawled over and laid between his legs, my spine to his chest, his back leaned against the bedpost. “Don’t tell him you know. Just let him have this one, okay?”
“Yeah, okay then.” I nodded. “I just can’t make sense of it, though.”
“Of what?”
“I really adore Falcon, but the Curse of Lilith is supposed to befall any man with a heartbeat who is unlucky enough to be cared for by me—”
“Unless they’ve been in, or are, in true love with someone else.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Falcon’s been in love before,” he stated.
“He has?”
Jase nodded once against the side of my face. “I read all of his thoughts—past and present—when he was laying in to me. He lost his fiancé, Felicity, a few years back.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah. He called her over to help him sort out an argument with his sister, Annie. But she stormed off in a hurry before Felicity got there, didn’t even check the road before crossing it. She hit Felicity’s windshield and the car swerved into oncoming traffic. . .” His lips pursed into a thin line. “Felicity got just the smallest knock to the head, but she died in hospital shortly after Annie.”
The scene played out in my head, probably pictured all wrong, but the grief that came with it was unmistakeable. “What was their fight about?”
His closed lips angled up on the edges into a smile. “She’d been with a boy Falcon didn’t approve of and . . . she got pregnant.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “That’s just so tragic.”
He nodded. “So, go easy on him. In a lot of ways, what he did to me wasn’t just for you—it was for Annie, too.”
I angled my head and kissed the side of his jaw. “I’m sorry he did that.”
“Well, you just made it all worth it.”
I laughed and lay my hands on his where he rested them over my belly.
***
Despite David hating his brother, thankfully, he hadn’t revoked his approval for the lab. Jase was ordering parts and pieces, and I was supposed to meet him in the field to demonstrate my new rock-blasting tricks at their best. But as I walked into the Great Hall, the round, shiny surface of a golden apple caught my eye, just sitting there on the dining table for anyone to find.
“How did you get out here?” I asked the apple, walking over.
“I put it there,” Eve said, flickering and waving suddenly in front of me like smoke.
“Why, Eve? Someone might see it. What are you playing at?”
“Needed to get your attention. You don’t see me so much anymore when I’m in the room.”
“I don’t?”
She shook her small head.
“Well, why did you need my attention?”
“Because I wanted you to see something,” she whispered, then reached across and flicked the apple onto the floor. It hit with a mighty thud, leaving a small dent in the wood.
“Really, Eve, was that necessary?” I bent down to pick it up, and two pairs of feet came charging into the room from under the stairway. I stayed put for a second, hoping they’d pass, otherwise it might look like I was hiding down here under the table, and I wasn’t about to show them the apple, either.
“Emily. Just—” Blade ran after her, spinning her around in one swift, knightly move. “Please don’t walk away from me.”
“What do you expect me to say, Blade?” she cried.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, and that accent made me wish for a second that he was talking to me. “Em, just let me hold you. Let me—”
“There’s nothing you can do to make this better. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what you feel for me. I’m damaged goods!”
“Aw, Em.” He rolled his head to one side. “You’re not to me.”
“How can you say that? How can you want me after what he just told you?”
His shoulders dropped and he looked down at the ground, then off to one side.
“See?”
“No. Em.” He grabbed her wrist. “You don’t understand. I’m not upset about that. I’m upset because I don’t know how to make you see that none of that matters to me.”
She stopped trying to pull away from him and just stood there. “You’re not . . . repulsed by me?”
Blade laughed. “You could sleep with Arthur and I wouldn’t be repulsed by you. It’s gonna take a lot more than sex with that creep to keep me from you. And, besides—” He braved another step closer. “You were human then, and it was a long time ago.”
“Not for me, it wasn’t. It feels like only yesterday.” She hugged herself, looking at her fe
et.
Blade wrapped both arms around her, his shoulders tense for the first few breaths until it became clear Emily wouldn’t push him away. “I’m sorry he did that to you, Em,” he whispered into her hair. “But he’s the fool. Not you.”
And now I was very curious about what Em had told him.
“Mike couldn’t look at me after,” she whimpered. “He said he still loved me but he just needed time to make sense of it all.”
I covered my mouth. That boy needed to read Relationships, for Dummies.
“I know that makes you feel like he doesn’t care about you, but they were friends—close friends. And he’s had to come to terms with this new David he’s seen rise as king, and then with all of this.” He squeezed her a bit tighter. “He doesn’t blame you. And he didn’t mean to tell me, either.”
“I know.” She nodded against his chest.
“Have you told Ara?”
Her head moved in a no. “I’ve never found the words.”
“To tell me what?” I asked, standing up then to make my presence known.
Emily spun around in Blade’s arms, her brown eyes going wide. “Ara.”
“Emily.” I moved a bit closer, stepping cautiously. Somehow, right now, I got the sense that I was the last person she wanted to see. “What were you talking about?”
“You were listening?” she yelled, jerking forward.
“I was passing by, and I. . .” I smirked at Blade. “I thought Blade was finally confessing his love for you. I just wanted to listen.”
“Living vicariously through me now, huh?” she said sarcastically.
“If you must know—” I propped both hands on my hips, checking under the table quickly to see if the apple was hidden enough. “Yes. And I’m sorry for that, but . . . I just wanted to see you happy. That’s all.”
Her dead-straight spine relaxed again, and Blade and I followed suit.
“So you knew he was in love with me, too?” she asked, jerking her head at Blade.
I couldn't help but smile.
She rolled her eyes, but I knew the action didn’t fit the feeling. She was happy—happier than I’d seen her in ages.
“So, what was it Mike couldn’t handle, Em? Why did you break up?”
She sighed, looked at Blade, then moved over and took my hand. “I need to show you something.”
“O . . . kay.” I noticed her nervousness enough to check Blade's reaction, too. He was about as tense as a lamb in a field of wolves.
Emily ducked her head and lifted it again, sweeping her hair back off her shoulder. “Look.”
“I see a scar and—” I looked a bit closer, and just above the little silver scar left from the day Jase turned her was a tiny greenish-black dot—like a tattooed freckle. “A Mark?”
She drew her hair back over her shoulder. “Yes.”
“From . . . like what humans get when they have sex with a vampire?”
She nodded.
“But . . . Mike was your first and last. And he was Lilithian by the time you guys had sex. And Lilithians don’t leave—”
“Mike was not this poor girl’s first.” Blade exhaled his words.
An invisible rug came out from under my feet. “What do you mean? Who was?”
Blade cleared his throat. “Your husband.”
A vacuum slowly sucked the air from the room, my mouth going completely dry.
“Ara?” Emily stepped forward, but I waved her off, walking blindly toward the glass doors.
“Ara?” Blade tried, too, his voice going straight to my inner message bank.
David and Emily.
David and Emily.
He slept with her.
He held her like he held me.
His hands on her hips; his lips touching hers; his naked body completely wrapped up in hers.
All the images of them dancing together at my house—Emily in her green dress; David, so tall and so handsome—came rushing back to haunt me, blending and mixing with my own images of David’s naked body, scattering everything I thought I knew and replacing it with her. And him. Naked. Together.
The ground changed from wood floors to stone steps to long, swishy grass under my feet, until I reached the sunny clearing and fell to my knees a few hundred feet from my oak tree, sinking my hands into the ground to hold myself up.
“Ara?”
“Emily,” I said into the earth, watching another tear fall between my knees.
“I'm sorry you had to find out that way.” Her shadow darkened my hands as she stood over me.
I sobbed a little harder. “Was there a better way to find out?”
“I guess not.”
“Ara?” Jason’s arms wrapped my body and he swept me into his chest. “Damn it. Don't run off like that.”
“Like what?”
He leaned out, wiping his thumbs down my tear-soaked face. “I called to you several times. You just ignored me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Ara. You just scared me, is all.”
I looked at Emily then, and the pity in her eyes made it all hurt so much more. She knew. All along. She knew what it was like to be with my husband. She lied to me. He lied to me. Why would they do that?
“How did she find out?” Jason asked Emily in a very short, almost harsh tone.
“Wait!” I pushed away from him, falling back in the grass on my palms. “You knew?”
“Only recently.” He reached for me again.
I moved away. “How recent?”
“The day I turned Em.”
“That's not really what I call recent.”
“I know. And I tried to tell you, but everything happened after that. Then I was supposedly dead. And there hasn’t really been a good moment to break your heart like that with the news, Ara. Not to mention—” He sat down on his butt with a huge sigh. “David really should have been the one to tell you.”
I bit my lips and turned my gaze on Em. “Why didn't you tell me? You could have told me from the first day we became friends, and it would’ve been okay, Emily. But you lied to me, you—”
“She didn't lie, Ara.”
“What do you mean?”
“David erased it,” Jason said, offering Emily his hand; she took it and sat down across from him. “Emily didn’t even know.”
“You didn’t know you slept with him?” I asked accusingly, drawing the rest of that spiteful attack back in since, continuing would make me a hypocrite. “But you. . .”
“She was a virgin, yes,” Jason answered the question I wanted to ask.
“Then you were—”
“Bound to him.” She nodded, resting her chin on her knee. “I was obsessed with David, Ara, believed it was love, but—”
“Then, how come you suddenly remembered? Or did David actually tell you?”
“She didn't suddenly remember,” Jase said. “When she came to me, the day I bit her, it…she was so upset. She was mad at me for what I did to you at the masquerade, but her anger went beyond caring for a friend.”
“We got in a fight about how he left me,” she added.
“And then the truth came out,” Jase said, “that she never loved me.”
“I told him I was always in love with David—that I used Jason to get past that.”
“Oh, Jase.” I cocked my head, eyes of sympathy offering him wordless condolences.
“I was okay. But it didn’t make a whole lot of sense—for her to be in love with David. She didn’t really even like him that much.” He laughed when he looked at Emily, and even she managed a small smile. “I read her mind—saw all the times she just wanted to whack him with a baseball bat.”
“I knew it was wrong to feel that way,” Em added. “To hate someone so much but find yourself crying every night because they won’t ever love you. I mean, every time he looked at me, I’d wish he’d see that I was the one for him but, inside, if I really thought about it, there was nothing I actually liked about David.”
&nbs
p; “When I realised this, I swept her hair back and, sure enough, she was Marked,” Jason said. “I could’ve given her the memory back. I could have made her aware that this obsession was purely a spirit bind, but it would’ve eventually killed her.”
“I’d been admitted into psychiatric care already,” Emily said, her voice shaking. “When I told you I’d seen a counsellor over losing Jason, I lied—”
“It was always about David.” I nodded to myself.
Jason slid over to wrap his arm around me. “She would’ve killed herself eventually. So, I immortalised her to break the bind.”
“And that's why you never told me the reason you bit her.” I looked up at him quickly. “That's why you avoided it.”
He nodded. “I always planned to tell you, though, Ara.”
“But you. . .” I eyed Emily’s neck. “You ripped her apart when you—”
“I had to make it look like an attack. She wasn’t conscious at the time. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my lips with the very tips of my fingers. “Jase, I hated you so much for turning her like that. I—”
“I know.” He took my hand away from my mouth and kissed it. “But I knew you’d learn the truth eventually. It was better for you to hate me at the time than David.”
“Why?”
“You were so fragile. You thought you needed him to survive, which—” He laughed, looking away for a second, “—turns out wasn’t just a psychological dependence, like I thought. It was physical.”
“Physical?”
“Yeah. You literally needed him to survive. Without his blood, Ara, you’d have gotten pretty sick.”
“Oh, right.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “So . . . does David know you remember, Em?”
She nodded. “The first memory that came back to me was . . . that night.”
“That night?”
“The night they had sex,” Jase said.
“But . . . you attacked him when you first woke as a vampire. Was that because of—”
“Yep.” She bit her lip. “I was kind of reliving it.”
I got up on my knees and crawled a bit closer to her. “Em? What did he do to you?”
She wiped the side of her wrist down her nose, her eyes sparkling with a coat of tears.
“Emily, did he rape you?”