Saros rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “He’s dead. Effectively accepted his fate.”
He’s dead.
I knew Saros didn’t mean it to come off so brusque, but if this didn’t work… Atlas was gone. Forever.
How would I keep going?
What would I tell our son?
No. I needed to focus on doing whatever I could right now so I wouldn’t have to learn those answers.
Vivaldi appeared before us. He pointed to Atlas’s throat and his forearm. “He has some strong-looking veins here. Have a preference?”
I shook my head. “Whatever will save him.”
He nodded, then bit into Atlas’s forearm. Blood seeped down his wrist as the vampire drank from him. Using a sharp fang to slice into his own forearm, he dribbled the blood into Atlas’s mouth. I’d never seen how vampires sired others, only the fictionalized accounts on television. It wasn’t something their community openly shared. Vivaldi’s tongue lapped around where he’d bitten Atlas before he repeated the process of biting him to take more blood and feeding him his own, licking the wound, and starting over.
“How do you know him?” I whispered to Saros.
“My first undercover assignment,” he said, watching everything the Vampire King did, as if he didn’t fully trust him. “I had a favor to call in.”
“But you don’t even like Atlas.” The last few days had been horrible between them. If he only had one favor to call in from the King of Vampires, surely this wouldn’t have been his first choice.
“I’ve seen how much he means to you.” He cupped my hands in his own, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he paused. Then he drew his evergreen eyes to mine. “And I know how much you mean to me.”
“Thank you.” My voice quivered. There were so many things I wanted to say but I didn’t know where to start. Saros had saved our lives tonight, and now he was trying to save Atlas’s.
“It’s done,” Vivaldi said, a seductive lilt caressing his words.
I looked down at Atlas. His chest was still rising and falling, more prominently than before. Vivaldi shut his eyes, placing two dark bloodstones over them. The bleeding had stopped, his arm had already healed, leaving behind two small fang marks. I lifted his bloody shirt, the skin beginning to stitch itself back together where he’d been stabbed.
It’s working.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay with this turn of events?” I asked, my hand fidgeting in his.
“If it were me and I got a second chance to live a life with the ones I love, I wouldn’t be too picky about the circumstances,” Saros replied. Being a vampire, sired by their mob boss leader—that was going to be a tough transition for Atlas and all we’d ever known, but we’d have to cross that bridge when we got there because Saros was right.
“So what do we do now?” I asked, flickers of hope bursting to life in my veins.
“I will wait with them.” Saros looked over at Lynx. “He’ll take you home to Hazel and Aspen. Go get showered, feed him, and then come back. It’ll be a while from what I remember.”
“But—”
“Come on, Wicked.” Lynx put his arm around me. “Let’s get you ready for when he wakes.”
When.Notif.
Relief washed through me.
Atlas would live. Forever.
And when he woke up, I would be here to savor it with him.
Chapter26
Oakley
“Are you really okay letting her go?” I asked, looking back toward the cave we’d emerged from earlier, wondering where Aurora had escaped to. The wind whistled and whispered within the trees, as if they were telling secrets to one another.
