He stepped away and I closed the door, turning around to find Liv curled up into a ball in the corner of the bed. The second I flipped off the lights, she broke into sobs and my heart shattered into a hundred pieces. Kicking off my shoes, I padded across the room and slipped into bed with her, wrapping my arms around her.
“We’re going to get through this.” I wished my voice was as strong as my reassurances, but it betrayed me.
Liv whimpered, grasping on to my arms. “Will God forgive us?”
I thought about her question long and hard. We’d done all of this in God’s name, only to find out it was really in Maz’s name…
But if there was one thing I knew about God, it was that He was forgiving.
“Yes. We just have to navigate things from here on out the right way. We can’t go back to senseless killing. There are plenty of humans that need to be protected from bad vampires. We will focus on those and no longer blindly take orders.”
She nodded, her tears drying up as some of the heaviness left my chest.
Yes. That’s what we would do.
An idea formed in my mind then. A wild idea, a huge idea.
What if Liv, Sterling, Vasquez, and I started our own hunter house? One that only killed in self-defense, and one that protected. A bodyguard service for humans and supernaturals. Because Luka was right. God made everything under the sun, and that meant supes too. If they had souls, which I believed they did, then I would protect them with my sword.
My mind spun for an hour thinking of all the details, calculating the money that it would take and how much I had, plus what Liv had in savings. We could totally make it happen. I was thinking of hunter house names as I finally fell asleep, feeling at peace with my place in the world and my moral duty to right my wrongs.
* * *
The next morningI awoke with a headache and remembered that I should have let Luka feed last night, but of course in my disturbed state I’d forgotten and he was kind enough not to ask. I shook Livvie awake. Her eyes were puffy, and she looked like she could use hours more sleep.
“No,” she groaned, and rolled back over.
I grinned. “I want to open our own hunter house. One that only kills in self-defense and protects humans and supernaturals alike. With Sterling and Vaz too.”
She shot up from her pillow so fast she almost cracked into my forehead. “You want to play bodyguard to supes?”
I shrugged. “Only the good ones. Like Luka, Sage, the other werewolves I met who saved my life. They were good people.”
I saw the moment the idea clicked with Liv. She grinned. “This would make amends for all the … bad … we’d been doing.” She winced, unable to saymindless murdering rampaging.
I nodded. “What do you say?”
She grinned. “Only if Vasquez is the janitor. Then you have a deal.”
I tipped my head back and laughed, finally feeling good about this situation. We were going to turn some lemons into lemonade!
She rolled over to go back to sleep and I slipped out of the room and brushed my teeth, tying my hair into a topknot and changing into jean shorts and a tank top. Some deodorant and dry shampoo and I was ready to be fed on by a stupidly hot vampire who I now apparently believed had a soul…
I was pretty sure I’d lost my mind and was now living in some delusion. Stepping out into the hallway, I padded across the kitchen and then went up to Luka’s door, poising my hand over it to knock.
That’s when I thought of our almost kiss in the helicopter. I was going to know this guy for the rest of my life. Kissing was a horrible idea. Right?
“Come in. I hear your heartbeat,” Luka said, and I groaned.
Stupid human heartbeat.
Pulling the door open, I saw him sitting up in bed reading with his side lamp on. He had a green apple sucker, the ones they dip in caramel. “Good morning, Aspen.” His voice was husky; I hated when he was so formal.
I curtsied. “Prince Luka,” I said in a mock English accent.
He grinned, pulling the sucker slowly from his mouth, and my gaze fell to his chest and the tattoo that peeked out of his powder blue cotton tee.
“What’s Five Crew?” I asked, shutting the door and crossing the room to sit at the foot of his bed. He watched me walk over, eyes running shamelessly down my bare legs as my cheeks heated.
