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Lukas didn’t know what to say, but he had to stop Blaire before she did anything stupid. He didn’t want her to leave. In the beginning, this would be amazing news, but not now. Not now that she had wormed her way into his very being.

He needed her.

He might not be good enough for her, but he would spend his life trying to be what she needed. His eyes felt hot behind his closed eyelids. It was all he could do to ward off the tears. He didn’t want everyone to see him break down again. They’d seen enough of his dramatics lately to last a lifetime, he was sure.

Everyone ate in silence, other than the occasional verbal sparring between Seth and Riley.

Blaire finally stood from the table, picking up her full tray. “I’m not very hungry. I think I’m going to lie down.”

Lukas tensed. She was going to make a run for it, and he had to stop her.

She looked at everyone at the table quietly, her eyes stopping on Lukas. So much pain filled her green eyes that he felt it in his soul. She stared at him, as if she were memorizing his face, before turning away and leaving the cafeteria after throwing out her food.

“What was that all about?” Riley asked.

Lukas stood and glanced at Aiden, and he nodded. His best friend knew something was wrong, but he didn’t push.

Aiden turned his attention to Riley to distract her as Lukas left their table. “Dunno. You wanna go to Happy Panda tomorrow?”

Lukas ran down the hallway, knocking into a few students as he rushed down the stairs to the deserted courtyard. Everyone was either at dinner or already in their dorms for the night.

Fencing around the edge of school grounds left only one way out of Blackthorn, and he hoped Blaire didn’t have any tricks up her sleeve as he ran as fast as he could to the gate to wait for her.

He wasn’t going to let her go without a fight.

He loved her.

His heart belonged to her, and he needed her to know that.

37

DESPERATION

Shifting her duffel bag higher on her shoulder, Blaire made her way across the darkened courtyard quickly, stopping as she reached the top of the winding road that led away from Blackthorn Academy toward the gates.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t accept becoming a Vasirian, and she didn’t want to force Lukas to complete the bond with her, only to watch her grow old and die. If the emerging bond between them already caused them difficulty and pain, then what would happen to Lukas when they were irrevocably tied together? She wouldn’t do that to him.

Blaire sighed heavily and moved to one of the benches that lined the flower beds around the courtyard, sitting down on the hard surface and dropping her bag at her feet. The adrenaline she had been running on when she fled the cafeteria gave out, replaced with a hollowness deep within.

Blaire didn’t want to leave Lukas. He might not understand it now, but in the long run, he would be okay. He would be able to find someone compatible—someone like him. Someone he could one day marry and have children with. She put her hand on her stomach as a wave of nausea washed over her at the thought of the loss of that future with him. He could find someone the Order approved of. Someone who could spend hundreds of years with him and wouldn’t die in the next sixty to eighty years.

She breathed in the scent of blooming hydrangeas and closed her eyes, trying to make sense of her scattered thoughts.

How did she expect Lukas to understand her feelings when she didn’t understand them herself? Only recently had she uncovered the true reason why she hesitated so much to complete the bond with Lukas, because she did want him. She had fallen completely for him, but she didn’t trust that he could stop when it came time to exchange blood. How much did he need to take? How much did she have to take from him? She’d pushed back so hard against the idea of consuming blood she failed to ask the important questions.

Then, there was the question of becoming a Vasirian. She didn’t want to do that. She understood the benefits. Understood what it would bring her with Lukas and the future, but she was caught up on the whole throwing away her humanity bit. What would become of her soul? She wasn’t sure if that was really a thing, but if it were, would that be lost forever if she became another being? Did Vasirian have souls? Drinking blood daily to survive didn’t exactly appeal to her either, but would that change once she was turned? That was if she survived the transition. Which was another thing she feared, given her weakness when her tissue samples had been stolen in the night.

Blaire stared down the road to the tall black gates standing between her and freedom. But was it freedom, or was she just running away from another place where something bad happened, as Riley had put it? She couldn’t run away her whole life. That wasn’t freedom, that was fear. Her entire problem circled back to fear. Fear of the unknown. But what did she know for sure?

She had friends here who cared about her, and she cared about them.

She had the opportunity to get a degree toward an amazing career and give back to others who had suffered as she had, so they didn’t grow up trapped in their trauma.

She had Lukas.

Despite what she thought before, and his rough behavior at times, he cared for her. What was she going to do now? She couldn’t leave him, and it wasn’t because he would follow her. She couldn’t abandon him. Her heart wouldn’t allow it.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she lay her head back, wrapping her arms around herself as she took a shuddering breath.