CHAPTER 39
Rock Cove, Oregon
Lexi cried for the first two weeks. She hid in her cottage at Rock Cove, tucked high above the churning sea. Arsen had been true to his word. The entire interior had been replaced, and her possessions—those with the most meaning—had been put back into place. But she couldn’t sleep in a new bed that sat against a new wall without thinking about the cat that was still a kitten and had trusted too much. She dragged a blanket and pillow into the empty guest bedroom and curled on the floor.
Eventually her body protested, and Lexi pulled the mattress from the bed. But she remained on the floor because the cottage no longer felt like home. She slept in the dark, ate in the dark, never ventured outside during the rain-filled days. Her entire world alternated between the mattress, where she dreamed, and the couch, where she stared sightlessly through the windows and watched the gray fog as it swallowed the setting sun.
When a month passed and winter began to settle in, someone knocked gently on the door. Lexi refused to answer, but Marge came back every afternoon and quietly knocked, often leaving a bag of groceries, or a container of soup. By the end of week six, Lexi answered the door. Her face was pale. The deep smudges beneath her eyes gave her a haunted look. Marge just held her, wrapped her arms around a waist too thin, shoulders too broken, finally urging her onto the couch where Marge rocked her like a child.
They renewed their cautious relationship of therapist and friend. Lexi regained some weight but not enough. Marge told her to eat more protein, sit outside in the fresh air despite the constant winter storms. Lexi was drawn to the rain, to the wind swirling with electric energy. Her favorite place became the deck, where she wrapped herself in a thick quilt and thought of her childhood, of her mother’s flight to freedom. She thought about her grandmother, how when Lexi was ten they had gone high into the Cascades, spread blankets in a green meadow and stared up at the summer sky.
“What do you see, Galaxy?”
“I see the sky, Grandma.”
“No, darling girl, you see the future. You just can’t see the details yet.”
Lexi refused to think of Christan. Instead, she worked her way through the past lives that she knew. Then she worked through a few more that were newly remembered. There had been a brief time around the Black Sea, another on the Mediterranean Coast. A girl who wore a purple veil laced with silver and ate oranges in the sun. All fleeting impressions, nothing specific, for which she was grateful.
She’d met each one, though, held them in her arms and cried for the young, naive women they’d been. She forgave them their fears and their selfishness. She allowed them to cry for the love they lost and she set each one of them free. All of them, except for Gaia, who remained her constant friend. And five-year-old Gemma, chasing butterflies in the sun.
On the fourth day of the new year, Arsen stood at the foot of her deck. A cold wind blew in from the ocean and icy mist clung to his hair. He didn’t approach her.
“How ya’ doing, Slick?” he asked quietly.
“Been better, Bucko.”
“So has he.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, gripping the door with a hand that felt too tight. “I can’t.”
“He loves you.”
“I know,” she choked, and turned to go back inside. Knew that Arsen hesitated, before he followed.
“We’ve been worried,” he said, closing the door. He remained where he was, though, giving her as much space as she needed. Lexi struggled against weeping as she tried to make the coffee.
“Marge has been good.” One shoulder lifted as she reached for two mugs. She’d realized they knew where she was the moment Marge found her. But having Arsen confirm it tore her heart apart. They’d been so patient, hoping she would come back. Her hand fumbled and she turned, leaned back against the counter. Looked at him sadly. “I know you don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
“I met Three,” she said, watching the expression change on his face.
“We wondered.”
Her thin shoulders lifted as she tried to explain, as gently as she could. “He can’t recover what he’s lost. Neither of us can. I know about your war. I know Three needed Christan to be terrifying and she used me to do it. I thought I was saving him, Arsen, but I changed him when he didn’t want to be changed. Christan doesn’t realize it, but he’s a symbol now, bigger than what we tried to have.”
Arsen would have interrupted but Lexi carried on, squeezing down hard on her hands.
“She told me about the jungle, what she made him do, the eighteen days of dying. I know it destroyed him and my heart breaks. It wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t his fault when Gemma died. It was her sin. But I remember the look on his face that night in Zurich when Six attacked me. I can’t do that to him, Arsen. I can’t ask him to watch me die again.”
“That’s a choice he should make, Slick. Don’t you remember how you felt when he made a choice for you?”
“I know why he did it. Why all the warriors committed to the Agreement. Three didn’t give anyone a choice then, and maybe that’s my point. She manipulates circumstances. Gives options. She says the choices are always his, but they aren’t, not really, because she sets up those circumstances with only one option, the one she wants. Now I’m ending her manipulations.”
“No, Slick, you don’t get off that easy. I won’t let you get off that easy.”
Lexi hated the trace of anger, wanted him to understand and knew that he didn’t. “You’re the brother of my heart, Arsen. I know you love him. I’m setting him free.”
“He doesn’t wish to be free.”
“Not now, maybe, but you know what I’m saying is true. They would always find a way to get to him through me. Three told me how she’s always used the girls—Renata was right when she said we were just a used thing, with no choice of our own. You wonder why Katerina is frightened every time she sees you? Maybe that’s why.” It was the cruelest thing she’d ever said to him, and it broke her heart to do it. But they all needed to understand the truth. “It was why they forced the Agreement in the first place, to take away the choice. He needs to move on with his life and he can’t do that with me.”
“You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes. I do.” He was so silent, so far away she couldn’t let him go without one more thing. “You’ll always be in my heart, Arsen.”
“Will he?”
“He needs to become that dragon again and make them tremble. All of them.”
“Slick—”
“Please… tell him that for me.” And it was all she could say before her throat closed and she was crying, standing in the middle of the kitchen with tears running down her cheeks.
Arsen pulled her into his arms. Carefully, and with tenderness, he stroked the pale hair from her forehead.
“I’ll tell him.”
Lexi first noticed him a week later, as she walked along the deserted footpath that followed the cliffs, high above the ocean. He was simply a presence that brushed against her skin, and she grew angry that he would come after everything she’d said. She pulled her jacket tighter around her throat, glaring into the shadows before she ran back to the cottage and slammed the door, sitting huddled in front of the fire for two hours before she felt capable of moving. She checked the locks on all the windows and doors, but couldn’t relax in the total dark, curled on the mattress in the guest bedroom. When night was at its darkest she dragged her blanket to the couch and threw more wood on the fire, left a light burning in the hall. She didn’t sleep, but neither did she dream, and things evened out in the end.
Two weeks later Lexi went to the trees to think. The air was damp, the ground still wet from the storm that crashed against the cliffs during the night. She huddled against the trunk of a wind-twisted pine and stared out at the ocean below. He crouched several yards away, just watching. He was in his lion form, the color of the dusk. Lexi pulled her shoulders up, turned her face into the setting sun and hoped he wouldn’t try to reach her telepathically. She wouldn’t be able to endure it.
But the silence stretched out, and when Lexi heard nothing she wondered if it had been an ability she’d only had at the villa, a temporary effect from the surge of power that he’d pushed into her mind. It was then that the wave of loneliness became profound. She didn’t feel him approach but shuddered when he slowly lowered himself at her side, placed his head in her lap. She stretched out her hand, let it settle, her fingers stroking his mink-soft ears.
She couldn’t look at him, continued to stare out to sea. But she took comfort in the low rumble deep in his chest while her hand moved across the soft fur.
Lexi didn’t sense his presence again. Days, and then weeks passed, and it made her angry that he would come and then disappear—who the hell did he think he was?
But she missed him. Missed his deep laugh, the feel of his arms. She wondered if they could find a way around the manipulation. No, probably not, since Three anticipated everything. The immortal used human emotions to achieve her desired result; nothing Lexi felt could be trusted to be real. Perhaps she and Christan merely suffered through the same obsession in every lifetime. That was why they’d slipped from bad to worse and then to total destruction. A dream built on smoke could never last.
During the day Lexi thought about the villa, wondered if he was there or if it had been completely destroyed. If Gemma’s garden had been trampled into blood and mud.
During the night she thought about Zurich, wondered how it ended when he’d gone to war. She wondered if he’d found Kace, or if the slimy bastard had gotten away.
But she hoped Christan had killed him, long and slow. Then she hoped Kace would come back to life so Christan could kill him again.
Her anger grew irrational. She didn’t care. Maybe it was the effect of the blood bond. Three mentioned Christan wasn’t the only one to benefit from the bond—she’d gotten something from it, too. She should have asked what those benefits were, besides the suggestion that she could shield herself. Lexi had no idea what that meant, and her anger grew irrational again, until she didn’t care about anything except learning how to forget.
March arrived, and Lexi sat outside more often. The weather was still horrible, but she loved sitting in the Adirondack chair wrapped in a mohair throw, with a cup of coffee in her hand. Loved watching the waves and the birds always looking for something, swooping over the silvered, foamy water.
She hadn’t felt him close for over a month. She tried to hold him in her heart, but the feeling was elusive, as if he was drifting away. She wished she was brave enough to love him even though her mind told her it was time to let him go. To just open her hand and let... go.
She closed her eyes, struggling with the emotions—and the coffee mug was no longer in her hand. It had sailed through the air to smash against the wall, knocking loose a cedar shingle and disintegrating into tiny shards. Stunned, Lexi looked at the wreckage, then down at the tingling sensation moving around her wrist. She hadn’t thrown the mug; her arm never moved from the wide armrest of the Adirondack chair or dislodged the mohair throw wrapped against the chill. And her heart began to thud.
It happened again a day later. A book she was reading went sailing out of her hand.
And again, with a can of beans that flew out of the cupboard and ended upside down on the stove because she’d been thinking about cooking dinner.
But she didn’t start to panic until Robbie came by to deliver the groceries and she heard his thoughts in her head. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, clutching a container of tomatoes with her heart thundering in her chest. She tried to set the tomatoes down but there was something odd about her hand. She looked and saw one dark claw extending from her finger.
She screamed and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door.
Ten minutes later she heard Marge's voice.
“What happened, Robbie?”
“I don’t know, love. We were in the kitchen talking. I was helping her put the groceries away and she started screaming. I followed her, knocked, but she won’t come out.”
“Should I talk to her?”
“Someone has to.’
“Are you sure about what you saw?”
“I’m sure.”
Their voices resumed twenty minutes later.
“She won’t talk to me but I can hear her crying.” That was Marge; Lexi recognized the motherly concern.
“Keep trying,” Robbie said. “I’ve called Arsen. He said it could take time to get here.”
No, Lexi thought desperately, not Arsen. She didn’t want him to see her like this. She started to panic again, looked around. The window was too small to squeeze through and Marge was outside the door. No easy escape. Maybe she’d just imagined that claw extending from her hand. Her fingers all looked normal now. But Robbie had seen it too, and she knew that was why he’d called Arsen.
“I’m frightened,” Marge was saying, her voice starting to waver.
“She’ll be all right, love. She just has to remain calm.”
“I knew it wouldn’t be easy with that damn blood bond. Can’t you go into her mind and try to help?”
“Not without permission—that would make it worse. Just keep talking to her. Keep her calm.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
It was dark outside when Lexi heard the voices again. She’d lost all sense of time, shrank back into the shadowed corner as the door unlocked with a smooth snick. Christan stepped inside. He took one look at her tear ravaged face and dropped to his knees.
“Come home, cara,” he said, his voice shaking. “Please… let me take you home.”
Lexi shook her head, trembling. “I’m afraid.”
“You have more courage than anyone I have ever known. Please, cara. Fight for me as hard as I’m fighting for you.”
His voice was raw. She saw the fear in his eyes, black pools. Fight for us, she’d said to him in Zurich. It was all he was asking of her now.
“I’m changing.”
“Then we’ll change together.” He stretched his arms wide and she didn’t hesitate. He scooped her up, held her tight against his chest while she pressed her face against his throat and cried. He crooned as if she were a small child, rocking her back and forth until she calmed enough that he could loosen his hold to stroke her damp hair.
“Sei la mia vita,” he whispered.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you are my life, cara. The other half of my soul. I am only half a man without you.”
“You only think that because she made you think it.”
“Sono passo di te.”
“You have to stop speaking Italian or else I’ll have to remember it and my memory isn’t that good.”
“Lo scelgo te. Solo tu,” he whispered against her throat.
“You just think you can sweet talk me into cooperation using words I don’t know.”
“Cucciola, I can’t wait to see you naked. I could have said that in Italian, but those words, cara, I want you to know.”
He kissed her then, with such heat she was burning. His arms tightened and he rose strong and fluid to his feet, smelling of sunshine and wild sweet oranges. His voice, so deep in his throat she trembled.
“Let me take you home.”
“I can’t go back there.”
She felt him shudder. “I would never take you back there.” And she knew he felt the same grief she did. They could never go back to a villa that once held such promise, a place where they’d loved, where she’d stomped delphiniums in the sun. She curled her fingers in the midnight of his hair.
“Wherever you are, that is my home.”
“We’ll go to the mountains. Arsen’s compound.”
“Can I have my same cabin?”
“You liked that bath, didn’t you?”
“And the fireplace. That flicky thing you did with your hand.”
She heard him laugh. “I’ll arrange it with Arsen.”
“He’s a good friend.”
“Yes, he is.”