“I am yourblood mate.” She spat the words. “It is not me you are mated to, but my blood. I am merely the vessel.”
My stomach twisted while acid danced across my tongue. It was my turn to shake my head as my hands balled into tight fists. “Adrienne, I would never drink another drop of your blood for the rest of my existence if it meant you would believe me when I say that it isyouI am mated to. It is you I desire, you I dream of when I find my rest and you I see when I wake. There is no other but you.”
“No, you’re wrong.” The words were so soft that even with my preternatural hearing I barely heard them. “It is the blood you want. Vampires will say anything in order to get what they desire.”
For over a year I’d struggled to understand her reticence to our mating bond and the way she distanced herself. But now, as that voice shrieked through her head again, I thought I could. I’d thought she’d been a shell of herself these last few weeks, but now I realized that instead she had been filled with so many lies they now spilled over. Those words were not her own, but taught to her like others were taught nursery rhymes.
“I can prove it to you,” she rasped, tugging the pin from her hair until it fell down in waves over her shoulders and chest.
My brows drew together. “Ther?—”
Before I could finish the words, she brought the sharp end of the pin to her wrist and dragged down until blood flowed over her palms and dripped onto the floor. I stood, frozen in horror, as she repeated the action. Her eyes were wide, a wildness clinging to the corners as she stood bleeding onto the music room floor.
“Thisis what you want, what you are mated to. And when you have found another, you will leave me as they all do. I have seen it happen time and time again and I cannot bear another second of wondering when the end will come.” Her breath rattled with her tears. “I do not think I can survive it. I do not want to be her.”
Her voice broke on the last word. This time when I circled around the pianoforte she did not move. My knees buckled at the sight of the blood splashed across her skirts and pooling on the floor, but it was not from thirst. It was rage and shame that I was the one to blame that made my muscles seize.
I had told myself that it was kindness to be steadfast—through patience all would be well. Had I not been thinking about Mael only the other day? How I’d enabled him and failed him and now the world paid for that failure?
Here was the evidence of that same failing hurting the one I loved above all others.
“If it is proof you are looking for then it is proof I will give you,” I growled. Fear sparked across her expression as I took another prowling step forward.
Too long I had been content not to push, to tell myself her choices had been taken away and I would not be another one to do the same. Too long had I contented myself with whatever she would give me, grateful for any scrap of attention or affection her fear would allow her to offer.
Where is your courage, Eamon?Seth had asked me.
In one swift movement, I brought my wrist to my mouth, teeth slicing through the flesh until blooddripped as hers did. Any color drained from her face and, though she twisted to run, I caught her by the nape of her neck. She whimpered, hands slapping against my chest as I pulled her closer.
“I am not the man you think I am,” I rumbled low, repeating the words I’d said in the woods over a year ago.
Adrienne struggled against me as I brought my wrist to her mouth, but I ignored her as she shrieked, as her nails scratched my flesh she could not tear and she tried to push my arm away. I pressed my bleeding wrist against her mouth, pushing enough to part her lips and force the truth to slide down her throat.
Her eyes grew so big I could see the entire ring of blue around her pupils before they dilated. Her lids fluttered shut and a soft moan slid across my skin as my blood worked through her system. We were both covered in blood—hers and mine—but I did not care as she grabbed my arm, holding it to her mouth. In an instant the wounds she’d opened in her wrists closed and I slid my hand from her neck to curl my arm over her shoulders, tugging her close.
“Do you see now? Can you feel it?” I whispered hoarsely. She moaned again, arousal perfuming the air and cutting through the harsh scent of her fear. I nipped at her ear, pressed my mouth to her temple, watching as rivulets of her blood and mine slid down her breasts, seeping into the fabric until it was more red than cream. “I would rather throw myself upon a pyre than leave your side. Each morning I go to my rest is agony, each night I rise is empty until you are in my arms. You are my mate, Adrienne Valois, my other half, my soul match, and I would fight Keryes himself before I ever let you go.”
She blinked as I withdrew my wrist. The temporary connection flared between us and an onslaught of feeling rushed through. I hadn’t given her enough for the connection to last long—no more than a few days or so—but it wasenough for there to be no more secrets between us. Fear. Pain. Grief. Loneliness.Hope.
I touched her cheek, running my thumb across her lower lip. “Do you understand now, my heart?”
Her breath was slow, but there was so much relief flaring through this blood link that it was as if she had not had air for too long.
“Yes.”
Chapter Thirty-One
At first, I struggled to understand the emotions washing over me.
There was an overwhelming sense of reverence, like one might have for a goddess, followed by a compassion that made my eyes prick and throat ache. Others came next, so quickly I struggled to quantify them until I was left reeling in the face of what I had never dared to hope for.
Eamon loved me.
“Yes, I do,” he breathed, stroking my jaw.
I surged up, covering his mouth with mine and twining my arms around his neck. His emotions burned through the overwhelming fear that had clung to my mind like a second skin. The last few weeks had been a blur, the memory of my mother’s hand on my throat and her words in my ears a poison I could not cleanse.
Eamon’s blood had been the antidote all along.
