Saiden stiffened. “I do.”
“And do you like it?”
He pulled away from her hold and stared at her. He doubted she could make out too much of him in the dark, but he needed to see her face. Needed to see what she truly thought of him.
“No, Cora. I don’t. Do you honestly think me so evil that I would enjoy killing anyone, regardless of the situation?”
She bit her lip and wrinkled her brow for a second before herface relaxed. “No. I don’t think that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be offensive.”
He settled down and guided her head back to his shoulder. Back to where she belonged. His mate.
“I hate it,” he whispered into the night. “I hate that it needs to be done, and I hate that it’s gotten worse lately. Mostly, I hate that I’m good at it.”
“I hate that for you,” Cora whispered back, their words melding in the darkness.
“Thank you,” he said, unsure of any other adequate response. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing what I do, because I still hold onto the hope that I can save some of them. The other enforcers don’t even try. They’ve become so desensitized that the rogues are little more than animals to them. I’ve seen firsthand how wrong that can be if you get to them early enough.” He paused. “I just wish it wasn’t the only thing in my life.”
“That makes sense,” Cora murmured, her voice taking on a sleepy tone. “I hope you find your mate someday. I hope she’s so amazing that you can forget about all the bad in your life, Saiden. I hope you can just be happy for once.”
Her words were a curse and a blessing.
“I hope so too,” he whispered, clutching her tighter. “I hope so too.”
Chapter thirty-six
Cora
It was nearly midnight when Cora finally cried uncle, admitting she was a little too cold and a lot too tired to stay at the falls any longer. The drive back up to the compound was quiet, but the silence wasn’t awkward so much as contemplative. Both of them seemingly lost in thought.
She tried to force her brain toward safer subjects, but it kept bouncing back to Saiden and their discussion about mates. The reverence in his tone when he spoke about them. The longing and sadness that practically emanated from his body.
The conversation had sparked something in Cora that she couldn’t quite put her finger on when they’d been laying in the clearing. Something that bothered her, and the feeling had only grown as the night wore on. As he told her more about his cousins and his early life in Sicily. As she told him about the first short film she ever made, and how she learned the hard way that fake blood can dye your skin.
Whatever they talked about, that feeling was still there in the background, demanding she pay more attention. It kept pestering her like an itch that needed to be scratched yet some doctor had said ‘whateveryou do, don’t scratch it.’ Knowing she shouldn’t examine the feeling just made it tug harder.
Saiden expertly navigated the dark forest roads with an ease that spoke of a lifetime spent making the drive. He kept the headlights off, telling her he could see just fine and didn’t want to blind any woodland creatures. It was such a considerate thought, so at odds with what she thought a vampire’s nature should be.
Cast almost completely into darkness and with no other conversation to focus on, Cora mistakenly let her thoughts wander back to the moment when she told Saiden that she hoped he found his mate. The moment when he’d responded with, “I hope so too.”
The unrelenting feeling she’d been fighting so hard to ignore flared to life once more, forcing her to accept it for what it was.
Jealousy.
But that was even more absurd than the fact that vampires existed to begin with. They had sex one time. Or maybe five times. She never understood how people counted that. Did the multiple orgasms he’d overwhelmed her with earlier each count as their own time? Or was it more like one movie but broken up into different scenes?
Wow. Her brain was really struggling to think of literally anything except the reason why she was jealous.
She cared about him. At some point during all the kidnapping and soulful confessions, she’d started to think of him as something more than a vampire. She’d started to think of him as just a guy. A guy she might like to date. A guy she could maybe even love one day if so many things were different.
She forced the sigh to stay locked inside her throat and not escape out into the wild where Saiden might ask what she was thinking about. There simply was no future between them in any capacity. Even if she wasn’t dying, she was still human and would never be anything but human.
Which meant as soon as she spoke to Marquin, Saiden would be wiped from her mind forever. That thought threw a smothering blanket of sadness on the flaming jealousy burning in her stomach. She didn’twantto forget Saiden, even though sheshould. After all, if they couldn’t be together, then wouldn’t it be better to Eternal Sunshine his obscenely tight ass from her mind?
Her brain begged for a razor to cut out every trace of him, yet her heart vehemently denied that request. If she was going to die soon, then she wanted to keep the memory of this experience. Wanted something to clutch onto and revisit when things started to get bad.
Of course, the likelihood of Marquin approving that request was so laughable it deserved its own Netflix special.
Cora was still struggling with her emotions when Saiden guided the Aston Martin up to the main gate. He stopped the car, waved at the camera, then sat back, waiting for someone to let him in.
