Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
“You’re saying come for, but you mean kill,” Ryan clarified. “Her main objective here is not to kidnap him or something.”
“She would never come for Raph,” Deidre corrected him. “Why would she engage with the kyrie who killed her mate and almost had her? That’s madness. It’s far easier to take Jackson, imprison him somewhere, and then watch Raph’s life force slowly drain.”
“You lost me,” Malic said.
Her brows furrowed as she regarded him. “If she kills Jackson, Raph will soon follow, and by the slowness of it, he’ll know what pain his mate is being made to endure.”
“What?” I husked, the very idea of the man I loved dying because of what was happening to me, done to me, making my stomach twist into a tight, painful knot. “I don’t—what’re you talking about?”
She looked confused. “Surely you know that a kyrie, bound to a human, should that individual die, so will they. What did you think it meant when you ingested his blood when you first claimed him?”
I’d thought what he’d told me. That if it didn’t work, if he wasn’t supposed to be mine, he’d bleed to death right there in front of me. The fact that he’d kept this new little tidbit from me for the entirety of our relationship was a horrible betrayal of trust.
The room was scary quiet, and as a group we rarely were.
When I looked at my mate, I found him very interested in the rug under the toe of his hiking boot. “Why in the world have you never told me this before?” I asked breathlessly, unable to get any power into my voice.
Nothing.
“Look at me,” I whispered roughly, feeling hollow and cold down to my core.
He turned his head slowly, his eyes flicking to mine.
“You sonofabitch,” I swore, having gone from unsure to furious in seconds.
He pressed his lips together tightly.
“If I die, you die?”
He cleared his throat. “I—”
“Why would you do that?” I ground out the words, utterly wrecked. “Why would you bind yourself to me when I’m human and you’re…you’re… This makes no—”
“It makes perfect sense,” Raphael said hoarsely, swallowing hard. “I refuse to live without you. Ever. Period. End of discussion. Before you, there was nothing. You can’t let me see the sky and then expect me to return to the cave.”
“Great speech,” I choked out.
“Don’t be like that,” he muttered, sounding hurt.
“Raph—”
“It can’t be undone, even if you prefer that it could. You’re my one shot at happiness. If you die—or stop loving me, because that would be the same—I’ll cease to be, simple as that.”
No pressure. God.
It was all suddenly too much. The cold room, all the eyes full of pity, and the overwhelming burden of having his life in my hands.
I got up fast and charged across the room to the door that led onto Jael’s enormous deck overlooking a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. I hurled open the French door, slammed it behind me, and stormed to the railing, holding on to it as tight as I could. I wanted to jump, to see if I could leap all the way to the ocean, but instead I just stood there, shaking with fear and anger. It was chilly outside, but still, it took me several moments to even become aware of the moist bite of the salty sea air.
“Jacks.”
I didn’t turn to look at him.
“Love.”
I felt the muscles in my jaw clench, the sting behind my eyes.
“It’s freezing out here.”
It wasn’t, not to me, and I was far more susceptible to wintry temperatures than he was. Being a kyrie, he was far stronger than me in every area, certainly in tolerance to wind.
“I could go get your trench coat from the car.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have gone outside without it in the winter, and would have thanked him for being thoughtful, but since my plan was never to speak to him again for as long as I lived, I remained silent.
“Or just come back inside.”
I stared at the roiling ocean instead of saying a word.
“Please, Jackson.”
I shivered in the wind because yes, it was February in Northern California, so I was, in fact, on my way to being cold. Not like it had been growing up in Tennessee, but still, biting.
“You’re gonna freeze out here.”
“Hardly,” I growled, annoyed that I’d responded.
“I want you inside where it’s warm.”
I turned to look at him, taking in his dark bronze skin, his perfectly shaped glossy brows, burnished topaz eyes, and the full lips curving into a wicked smile. His thick, wavy brown hair was being tousled in the frigid breeze, and I noticed how tight the Henley he was wearing was stretched across his wide shoulders and broad, muscular chest. Sometimes it hurt to look at him. And he was beautiful, yes, but more than that, he was mine.
“You love me, right?”