“I can’t do it,” the voice was saying. “I won’t.”

The tone was so familiar, the smoothness, the sensuality, the depth of it. I could feel him so close to me. Could almost feel his touch on my flesh.

But no. I wasn’t alive anymore; I knew I wasn’t. At best, I was in a dream. A dream where I was lying in a bright place, on something soft and warm.

My head was throbbing like someone was standing over me with a mallet, hammering cruelly, rhythmically into my skull.

This dream was wonderful and terrible at the same time. I could still hear Tristan over the pounding. That voice still came to me in morsels, and I held onto them like grim death.

I’m dreaming about my lover, I thought. I’m dreaming about Tristan because I don’t want to let go yet.

Maybe I haven’t died yet, but I must be close.

“I won’t do that to her,” he was saying. “You know I’d never let her suffer like that…”

“You’ll lose her if you don’t,” said another voice. “She’ll die.” This time it was a woman.

Kara, I thought. Kara had somehow made her way into my mind’s conjured fantasy.

Everything was so fuzzy. The light over my head was blinding me. I tried to turn to the side, but a hard throb hit me again, crippling me into paralysis. I couldn’t even manage a moan.

It was taking all my strength just to lie still.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Kara was saying now. “Something has to be done, or we’ll lose her. You’ll lose her, Tristan. I know what’ll happen to you if you do.”

“I don’t care what happens to me. I won’t change her!” Tristan shouted. “I won’t curse her. Not even to keep her alive. I’m not that fucking selfish, Valkyrie.”

Keep…me…alive.

All of a sudden the images poured back into my mind. The pool of blood. The trauma that I’d suffered after Jack had shoved me.

I’d nearly died, but maybe I’d somehow made it through, into a sort of limbo between life and death. Tristan was resisting the temptation to use his powers to save me. He didn’t want to turn me into the abomination that he saw in himself. He didn’t want to put me through whatever horrors he’d experienced all those years ago.

I tried to open my mouth, to speak. But nothing came out but the mousiest whisper. Do it, I breathed. Save me so I can be with you. I don’t care about pain. I don’t care about the rest of it.

It was what I’d hardly dared dreamed about, but it was the thing I knew now that I wanted most. To spend a long life with him. If he changed me, we could have hundreds of years ahead of us. We could find a way to be happy, he and I.

“Tristan!” Kara said, “look!” The next thing I knew, my lover was holding my hand, staring down at my face. My vision cleared for a moment, and I saw that his blue eyes were rimmed with tears. The man who could sometimes be so cold had melted, if only for a moment.

“I’m here,” he told me. “I’m so sorry, Ariana. I failed you…”

But then everything faded to black again.

When my eyes opened again, I could see that I was in a large room. Its curtains were shut, but a hint of sunlight pierced through in a fine line between the panels, hitting the floor like a laser.

By some miracle, the throbbing was gone. The fuzziness, too, as though someone had given me a magic pill that had cured me of all pain.

I pulled myself up to a sitting position, marveling at how good I felt.

Almost immediately I heard footsteps outside the room, running towards me. A moment later, Tristan was by my side, grabbing my hand and kissing it a hundred times.

“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay.” He kept repeating the words, seemingly to reassure himself.

“I’m fine,” I told him, reaching for his face. “I think I am, anyhow. But…” I looked around. “Kara was here,” I said. “I heard you two talking.”

“She was here, and I owe her everything,” he replied, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “We both do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Tristan reached for a glass on the bedside table and handed it to me. Water. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I laid eyes on it. I took a sip, a delight for my dry throat.

“Your injury,” he said, “there was a lot of blood loss.”

“I know,” I replied. “I remember.”

“Kara gave you a transfusion.”

“She what?” I almost spat out the last sip of water when I registered the words.

“She’s a universal donor, to put it in mild terms,” Tristan said. “Her blood is powerful, as you can imagine.”

“But I heard you talking—I thought you were going to change me—”

Tristan shook his head. “Why on earth would I ever change someone who’s already perfect?” he asked. “No, I couldn’t do it. I never want you to know the torments of being in a body like mine. I wouldn’t want you to see how it tears your soul to shreds.”

“But Tristan,” I said, “I’ve thought about this. I’ll die long before you do. I’ll live a few decades, and that will be the end of it.”

“You think you want to spend hundreds of years with the likes of me?” he asked, his expression somewhere between sadness and joy.

I nodded. “Of course I do.”

But he shook his head. “I’d rather have thirty years of perfection with you than three hundred years of sorrow,” he said, “and that’s what we’d be signing up for. Besides, with Kara’s blood, you will age more slowly. You’ll be stronger. It’s a compromise, but you need to trust me when I tell you you’re getting a far better deal.”

My mouth settled in a frown. I supposed I had to take his word for it, much as the thought disappointed me. “Wait—if I have Kara’s blood, does that mean…” I began, realizing that the question I was about to ask was pretty close to insane.

Just then, Kara walked into the room, a smile on her face. “It doesn’t quite make you a Valkyrie, if that’s what you were about to ask,” she said. “It does bring you a step closer, but I don’t think that’s what you should focus on right now.” She glanced over at Tristan as if to ask if he or I needed anything. He smiled at her and shook his head, and she turned to leave.

“Kara,” I said weakly.

“Hmm?” she replied, turning to look at me.

“Thank you for what you did. It seems that everyone’s saving my ass these days.”

“You’re welcome. I…I know I can’t replace the sister you lost. But I thought you might like to have a thousand new ones.”

“New ones?”

“The Sisterhood of the Valkyrie,” she said. “You’re one of our blood now.”

With a quick smile, she left.

“She knows?” I asked Tristan. “About Grace?”

“I’m afraid everyone knows, after what Jack did,” he replied. “Word’s gotten out that it was your step-father who assaulted you.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over now. I think it’s really over.”

I tried to climb out of bed, but Tristan stopped me, laying a firm hand on my shoulder. “Not yet,” he said. “You’ll need a few days to recover.”

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“Opening night was two days ago,” he said. “You’ve been in this bed since I found you and brought you here at intermission.”

“How did the play go?”

Tristan chuckled and shook his head, a look of disbelief widening his glorious eyes. “Really? You get attacked, nearly die, and you’re asking me how the play went? You really are dedicated to the theater, aren’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Fine, then,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “It went very well. The critics loved your sets, by the way.”

“Well, there’s that, then,” I laughed.

He moved closer and slipped his arms around me, pulling my body close to his. It was the best feeling in the world.

Well, almost.

I could only hope that the best was yet to come.

“We never had our special date,” I told him, remembering his promise. “Never had our special night.”

“Soon,” he said. “Very soon.”

“You know, soon is a four-letter word I’m learning to hate,” I muttered into his shoulder.

He pulled away and looked into my eyes, then kissed me gently, a much-needed reminder of how good his lips felt on my own. “I’ve been waiting for you for over two-hundred years,” he said softly, “so you can imagine that I’ve learned patience. In two days, if you’re feeling all right, I promise you that we’ll have our special evening together. Candle-lit dinner and all.”

“You really, truly promise?”

“Promise. As long as you don’t go opening the door for any psychotic creatures who want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry; I’m never opening a door again.”

“Good.”

He rose to his feet and walked over to the door. “Meanwhile, you should get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll be back in a little to check on you. Could I tell Marcus that he can come see you? He’s very worried.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’d love that. Oh, and I have a favor to ask of you.”

“You want a job for your friend.”

I nodded. “Is it possible?”

“Consider it done. I’ll double his salary and make sure he has a nice corner office.”

“Thank you, Tristan.” He turned to leave but I stopped him again. “Wait!”

“Mmmm?” he said, spinning around.

“What happened to Jack?”

My lover grabbed the door frame and gripped it so hard that I thought he was going to tear it away from the wall. “Once we’d picked up the scent of the person who’d been to see you and left you for dead, Rourke trailed him and caught him,” he said. “He’s currently being held at my detention facility underneath Manhattan,” he said. “When you’re better, you can tell me what you’d like done to him.”

“I’d like to see your wolf tear him limb from limb, to be honest,” I said. “But I’m not as cruel as he is. So I’ll probably tell you to let him go. He can live a miserable life with my miserable mother.”

“He nearly killed you, Ariana. He doesn’t deserve a life.”

“He’s a shit-head, for sure,” I said. “But he wasn’t trying to kill me. He just wanted money.”

“Oh, so he’s just an extortionist, then.”

I smiled. “Whatever he is, as long as he’s out of my life, I don’t care,” I said. “As long as I have you, nothing else matters.”

“You have me,” he said. “Like I told you, I’m yours as long as our relationship doesn’t put you in danger.”

“Good.”

“Now sleep,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

Within two minutes, I’d done exactly as he suggested.