The halls were barricaded on both sides by a wall of males, both vampires and angels there to ensure Oliver didn’t make a run for it.
Pretending they weren’t there, Bijou kept her fingers twined with his and walked over to the empty gurney. The one next to it was draped with a sheet, and though she couldn’t see him, the body beneath was enormous.
She swallowed hard, then stepped back so Oliver could get in position.
His hand trembled again and her heart broke for him. Regardless, this was the end of something huge and the beginning of something monumental. Human and vampire would go their separate ways, to emerge not as one but two, their souls untethered.
“Look at me,” she urged as he paused. “Keep looking at me. No matter what.”
His eyes were glassy, but he was holding back his emotions by sheer force of will.
“We don’t care about any of them,” she told him, standing as close to him as she could get. “They don’t matter right now.”
“Can I see him?” Oliver asked, nodding toward the sheet-draped gurney.
Michael was the one who came forward, revealing the enormous vampire. His eyes were closed, his long hair tucked beneath his head. Bijou couldn’t help thinking he was well-preserved for being so … dead.
Oliver let out a shudder, then eased onto the gurney. Bijou stood between both gurneys, turning her full attention to Oliver, his eyes locked on hers.
She maintained the eye contact as he reclined.
Somewhere behind her, she heard them speaking. Familiar voices discussing what was going to happen next. She blocked them out, kept her attention fully on the male in front of her.
“Bijou?” Her father tapped her on the shoulder.
Still she didn’t look away. “What?”
“You can’t be touching him.”
“Too bad,” she said. “I’m not letting him go.”
There were more voices, a couple of them raised, but Bijou was locked with Oliver in that moment.
“We will get through this together,” she whispered. “Stay with me.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, his brown eyes steady on hers as though she was his lifeline.
“Stay with me,” she repeated, swallowing past the emotion choking her.
As stoic as she was being, Bijou knew it was only for him.
Whoever he was.
Oliver expected to wake up from thisnightmare any minute now.
No fucking way was he seriously laid out on this gurney, about to have a vampire’s soul ripped out of him. No matter what they told him, he couldn’t even fathom that he was the vampire. It was ludicrous to think that.
In fact, it was all absolutely ridiculous. His mind could not process how this was even possible. Maybe he was the vampire, maybe he wasn’t. No one seemed to know anything aside from the fact there were two souls taking up residence inside his body. A human and a vampire, having co-existed for twenty-eight years.
Nope. Nuh-uh.
Then again, someone had shared the news with Penelope that they weren’t related by blood. So at least they had part of the story right. The sane part of it. Yes, he was adopted, born sometime in the vicinity of Penelope’s birth. They shared just enough features to be passed off as brother and sister.
What had surprised him most was Penelope’s genuine concern for him. She’d been angry on his behalf and that… He hadn’t known what to do with that. After all the shit he’d put her through, she was standing behind him in this.
Maybe this was his sister’s way of getting rid of him. It wasn’t like he’d been a good brother to her. In fact, he’d been a shitty one. Never had he felt close to her, but then again, he had known all along that he wasn’t her brother. Not in the biological sense. His parents had dropped that little bomb when they separated, back when his mother ran off with a man-child. Oliver didn’t think they’d meant to traumatize him, but they were both so self-involved, it simply happened.
Of course, he’d done some research on his own, and the only thing he’d ever been able to determine for fact was that there weren’t any pictures of him and Penelope together for the first few weeks of their lives. Every single one he’d found was of them individually. How could parents of twins not take pictures of their babies together? They couldn’t. And that was when he’d realized they were telling the truth. The pain that it had caused … well, it was the very reason he’d taken to being mean to her. He had been jealous. Angry and jealous.
