Page 60 of Haunted Nightmares
And avoiding the love of my life.
“You will not win me over with your tears,” Wraith angrily grunts from across the room but I’m beyond caring about his words.
It’s his actions that hold any weight for me and while I know he hasn’t processed shit either, our fate is determined, it’s set in stone but it doesn’t mean we’ll walk out of here as a mated pair when the sun sets.
I ignore him, the words I can hear echoing through my head, and settle on finishing what he started after I died. If Wraith won’t budge then neither will I. “You are a hypocrite.”
Closing my eyes, I let my tears fall as I tip my head back against the wall behind me. I picture the room in its entirety, every inch of wallpaper and wood then I imagine it all on fire, slowly burning from the ground up. Scorched and smoldering, our mated bed is nothing but ash. I let it consume everything inside the room, blackening the floor and ceiling, and everything in between until this room is as hollow as we both feel right now.
And my beautiful mate lets me.
15
Deadlocked
WRAITH
With my back against the warm and smoldering wall, I can’t help but stare at the perfect female sitting across the room and be utterly amazed by what I just witnessed.
This entire bloody mess amazes me if I’m being honest, butsheis truly awe inspiring.
It is her, I cannot deny it.
I did in the beginning, refused to accept what I saw transpire on the sidewalk outside this very house but all it took was mere seconds of being in the presence of her light for the first time in months for me to know without a doubt, Zephyr had returned to me.
And yet… I denied her anyway.
The confusion, the unwarranted feeling of betrayal, the hurt that sharply followed both. The regret and the guilt. They all sent me reeling the way my feelings had before and as the truth of her return sank further into my bones, the more panicked I became.
Death is something I deserve.
A slow, torturous death, one deserving of the centuries of pain and anguish I allowed my people to go through. A death fitting the sadistic bastard I am, the selfish male who has killed his own blooded kin in the name of making a change. The hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives I took or aided in ending just to achieve whatever my darkest and most depraved desires were.
Above all, I deserve the death I would bestow upon myself for allowing the most precious, the most beautiful gift I have ever received come to harm, submitting it to the punishment that should have been mine.
I deserve everything coming to me; the rotting, the madness and agony, all of it. It is a meager penance to pay for what I did to Zephyr.
But to cause her a second and even more brutal demise? One I am currently going through from the severing of our original bond? I could never allow that to happen.
This has been hell on earth and there is no bloody way I would put my gentle breeze through it by rejecting her myself but that means accepting the second chance we’ve been given, accepting our bond a second time and acting on it.
Which puts her at risk of harm, and of dying once again.
To be with me now, to mate me and stand by my side at this stage of the most fucked up game? I believe it is even more dangerous than the threat Atticus posed to us before.
There are too many unknowns, too many questions I’ve yet to answer.
A double agent amongst my followers. Someone who could easily use any of the knowledge they’ve acquired over however long they’ve been with me in order to kill Zephyr and see me in this same state I’m in now.
My bitch mother is still out there somewhere, most likely laying in wait while devising a plan to kill me and takethe throne she’s always believed was hers. And if Drusilla discovered Zephyr was back, the female wouldn’t think twice about murdering my gentle breeze. Severing our bloodline so that it dies with her would be far too enticing after centuries with Atticus.
Deveroux is less of a threat, a dangerous idiot but not so much a threat and since he never met my mate in our previous life I’m sure he wouldn’t exactly be able to pick her out of a lineup just to assassinate her.
And why would she still want me after taking her against her will—again.
I heard her thoughts, I heard the words of anger running through her head. And I didn’t give one good goddamn about stopping because her blood was singing to me. I could hear it rushing in her veins, I could smell it pumping through her body. The rich red liquid coursing through my mate sent my hunger into overdrive, sent my instincts into the most primal place they’d ever been, and I took her. I saw nothing but a beating heart and the warmest aura I’ve ever seen, and I fucked her in a way I’m sure I’ll regret even more as time goes on because of that very fact, and then I fed from her without an ounce of hesitation.
The soulless bastard I am would do again, too, given the chance.
