My mate sways, her legs finally giving out. I’m moving before she hits the ground, catching her, one arm around her waist, one hand cradling the back of her head, so her neck doesn’t snap back.
She folds into me like she was always meant to be there.
The thought guts me.
I’ve held a lot of people in a lot of states over two centuries—the dying, the grieving, and brothers pulling me upright when my legs went out from under me—but one of iteverfelt like this.
Like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
She’s lighter than she should be, new vampires always are, their bodies not yet adjusted to undeath’s strange physics.
She looks up at me with eyes that are starting to dim, the bloodlust fading into exhaustion. Her hand reaches up, her fingers trembling as they touch my bearded face.
“I-I know you,” she whispers, and her voice is silk, smoke, and everything I never knew I needed. “I don’t… I don’t know how. But I know you.”
My throat locks around every word I want to say. Then my thumb moves on its own, brushing along the underside of her jaw, the softest thing my hands have done in maybe decades. She leans into it a fraction, the way something starved leans toward food without meaning to.
“Yeah,” I manage, my voice cracked open down the middle. “I know you too.”
“Am I going to be okay?” The question is so quiet I’d miss it if I weren’t holding her this close. And it hits me somewhere in the chest I thought had armored over so long ago and forgotten it could be hit.
“Yes,” I say. No hesitation, or a promise I have no authority to make, not yet, not with Crave behind me and the club watching and everything this means still unraveling. But I make it anyway.
I mean every syllable.
“You’re going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
Something flickers across her face like she’s letting herself believe this for half a second even though every instinct she has should be screaming not to. Then her knees buckle, and her fingers slip against my shirt. The fight drains out of her all at once, body sagging hard into mine like whatever kept her standing has finally given out. Her head drops against my chest, lashes brushing her cheeks, and the only reason she doesn’t hit the floor is that I catch her before gravity can. New vampires can only sustain bloodlust for so long before their bodies shut down, forcing them to rest while the turning completes.
I stand here, holding her, feeling the weight of multiple gazes on my back.
My packmates.
My brothers.
My family.
AndCrave.
His confusion bleeds through our diminished bond. He’s hurt at feeling me pull away, at watching years of absolute loyalty suddenly… complicate. His fear of losing me to whatever the hell this is.
But I can also feel something else.
Understanding.
Because Crave, more than anyone, knows what it’s like to have your entire world shift around one person. To feel a bond form that rewrites every rule you thought was absolute.
He has Sloane.
And now…
…I have Charlotte.
I don’t know how I know her name, I just do. The same way I know she’s twenty-three, that she was turned against her will last night, she’s fed on four humans since then, and hates herself for every single one.
I turn slowly, Charlotte cradled in my arms, and meet Crave’s silver gaze across the distance.
His eyes flicker from me to Charlotte, then back, and hold.
