The things I did to myself so that the cat wouldn’t have to suffer the same fate were horrible. I thought that by making myself bleed, I could spare her.
But that kind of sadism, like love, is cumulative—everyone gets their share.
I remember with sick clarity the moment I burned Victor out of me for good. It was twisted and broken behavior, which he sadly helped me by participating in. I’m certain it destroyed parts of him as well, but he did it to make it easier for me to do what I had to. The scars on my back remember, but I keep them because I wanted the pain to be visible. I needed to carry proof of mymonstrosity. Every time I look at the jagged white seams, I am reminded: this is what happens if you love me.
You’d think that would have made me more cautious, but I fell head over heels into Alistair anyway.
Wilde took that mistake as a challenge. First, his scars were left on the inside, the aftermath of fights I never saw coming. There were days when the air between us was so poisonous, I felt like I was breathing in glass. My wordy mate would lash out at me, and then spend hours patching up the wounds, like a surgeon operating over and over on the world’s most unfixable patient. He took immense glee in tearing me up before piecing me back together, and it only got worse over time.
The real irony is that I took on Wilde’s torture to allow Deli to mitigate hers, but all I did was give him and eventually, Sari a free pass to use me as their punching bag. The more I gave, the more they took, until there was nothing left but the memory of who we used to be. The rest was just performance—a bloody ballet for an audience of none.
But it gave the cat a chance with the assassin, so I endured it.
With Talia and Taurus, the parameters of the game have changed. This time, it isn’t just my own heart on the line. If I don’t do this, the woman who somehow made me feel again will leave, and I cannot lose two people for the want of one. The past two years have been filled with far too much heart ache and loss for me to shut myself away again, as if that will fix the barely glued together bits of my heart and soul.
A shiver of energy ripples through the air. At first, I think it’s just the wind picking up, but then the trees lean, as if something massive is pushing its way through the world. The sky goes frombruised to black in a matter of minutes. The air tastes electric—like ozone, or blood. I can feel the magick pooling in the circle, coiling around the stones and the altar and my own skeleton. The ring on my finger sears my flesh, and I realize that whatever is coming is not something I can ignore or outlast.
This is going to hurt, and there will be no hiding from it.
I want to run, but my legs won’t move. The sense that the world has already written the next chapter, and I am just an extra in my own story. Maybe that’s why I laugh, a low, ugly sound that no one but the trees and the ghosts can hear. The wind howls and the sky booms above me. I feel the magick in the circle gathering as if it is preparing for a major event, but it’s too wild and uncontrolled to be my primary.
Frustration makes me snarl because if the woman has lost control and my wife—who has no goddamned idea how to wield magick of this velocity—is running the show, we’ve all got a real fucking problem. And when I say all, I mean every damned person in the Rift.
Who the hell knows what shit the cat has in the well she hasn’t thought to try?
Stalking back and forth, I try to muddle out what I’m going to do. I attempt to reach out to Deli, hoping that if I connect to her, I can break the link.
No luck, no response—nothing. Fuck.
Though I don’t want to, I try reaching out to my wife instead, answering her call. Maybe if she hears?—
A sudden burst of light appears in front of me, humming with energy as it spreads into a large portal like the one we used toget to the other place when we visit outside of the Rift. As far as I know, the closest portal to our home isnota few miles into the woods on our property.
I narrow my eyes to study what’s on the other side of it. It’s a beach with storms brewing and two women lying on the sand that appears in my mind. One woman is my wife, clutching my primary’s arm and crying hysterically. The cat looks like she’s struggling like hell to wrest her arm away. The ocean crashes hard against the shore and their palms are shaking with the might of the wind as my woman’s power is creating a physical tempest to match the emotional one my wife is unleashing.
This has to stop before someone gets hurt.
Swallowing hard, I pray everything won’t come spilling out of me if I step into this portal. Emotional magick is the hardest to control, the cat says. It’s the reason she keeps the door to nature powers closed when it’s not needed. She had it open, and now she’s a bloody comic book character. Although, this thing could drop me on Mars and it would cancel out the whole situation; there’s always that.
In a blink, I feel the sand under my feet and breathe a sigh of relief. I made it to my destination without losing my innards. Running forward, I drop to my knees and pry apart their arms, breaking the link. The elements slow around me as the seething storm calms. I look down at my primary, astounded at what she was able to do, even unconscious. She looks exhausted and pale, but okay. Her eyes flutter closed and I know she’s working on stuffing everything back in its box inside.
She won’t want my help with that—that, I am certain of.
I crawl over to my wife next. Looking at her in concern, I cup her cheeks and try to pat her awake because she’s not moving. “Oi, Blade. Come on now, love. Are you there? Talk to me!” Shaking her a little, I panic because she’s not even letting out a small groan as the woman did.
Finally, she responds. Her voice is raw when she murmurs, “Rafe?”
“I’m here.” Her head tilts up, and she squints as if the light is hurting her, so I shift to block it. Combing my fingers through her hair, I cradle her in my arms and hold her tight to my chest. “I’m here, love.”
I can’t do much more than that. Even if she’s planning on breaking me, I can’t stop myself from being here. I can’t let her suffer, even if it means both myself and my primary will have to endure the consequences of my weakness.
Her voice pulls me out of my head, murmuring, “Don’t go away. I can’t lose you. I thought you didn’t love me; I need you to love me.”
Tears drip from my eyes because I love her and I have no clue how I’ll make her believe it without destroying everyone involved, including me. A shudder runs through me and I fight off the pain to respond. “I love you so much I choke on it. Without you, I’m nothing. I’d do anything not to lose you. I’m so tied to you I can’t imagine being without you.”
She buries her face against my neck, muttering into my skin. “I didn’t know; I didn’t believe; I didn’t trust you.” I can tell she’s getting weaker because her voice wavers a bit. “Please take me home. I’m so tired. Where’s Deli?”
There’s the anger again.Nowshe’s worried about my primary?! She almost flash-pointed her trying to get to me—wee one be damned—but now she’s worried.
