Tendra

My stomach was a mass of hissing vipers. I hadn’t thought my life could change much more, but last night proved that I could throw a serious wrench into my already deconstructed life.

Ruby would have been amused as hell. Only you, Ten, she’d say with a bright laugh.

Athan stood in front of me, pulling on his coat, and turning into Badass Vamp mode. I swallowed as he set his jaw and turned to me. “I’m going to head out and scout the area. See if the Quellen are around. Has the somnus worn off?”

“The wha—?” Oh. “Um, yeah, about that.”

Athan was in front of me in a split second, my face in his giant palms. “Tendra, tell me you didn’t—”

“You were unconscious!” I yelled, the tears pricking at my eyes while the bite on my neck continued to burn. “I tried to manipulate your wrist, but then said fuck it because you were dying.”

Athan blinked rapidly, shaking his head back and forth. “No, no, no.”

“You said Idris could still drink from me, that it’d be okay—”

Athan turned away, his coat swirling around his legs as he fisted his hands in his hair. “No, no, no.”

“Stop staying that.” I grabbed for him. “Why do you keep making me feel guilty for—”

“I feel guilty!” He whipped around with a roar. He thumped his fist to his chest. “Me. I’ve taken you from your home, your friends, forced you to come with me because of your blood and now you’re going to be turned?” He clutched his shirt with white knuckles. “You wanted the choice, it meant something to you—”

“I did choose.” I stomped my foot, needing to make sure he heard me.

“You didn’t have a choice.”

I lifted my chin. “I could have let you die.”

He scoffed. “My death or become a vampire. What kind of choices were those?”

“The ones I had. And I chose and I don’t regret it.” I paused. “Is it really that bad to be a vampire?”

He shook his head. “No, but…” He sighed. “I wanted you to have time, to be sure.”

“Well, I didn’t have the luxury, but I’m sure.” I nibbled my lip. “How long do I have before I turn?”

Athan took a long time to answer. “Couple of days to a week.”

“Then I guess we better get going.” My eyes trailed down to his side, where his injury had completely healed now that he’d fed. “You didn’t tell me about what happened during the fight. To make you so weak.”

He pulled his hair back and hooked the strands that escaped behind his ear. His expression was hard and I knew he was still dwelling, but took my cue to talk about something else. “We’ve heard rumors that the Quellen were working on a weapon against us. A type of steel called Sevren. We’re not sure how they make it, and we hadn’t expected it to be effective…until yesterday.”

“So wait, they used this Sevren on you?”

He nodded. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, and it sucked the life out of me. I could feel my body draining energy like that.” He snapped his fingers.

I lunged forward and grabbed the bottom of his coat. “Don’t go out there again! What if they attack you? What if—”

“Trust me, Ten.” He took my hand and squeezed it before letting it drop. “I know what they have now. I know to stick close to the rock. I’ll be fine. You stay here no matter what. I’ll leave my phone, and if anything happens—”

“Call Idris, yeah,” I mumbled.

His smile was brief. Then with a quick kiss to my forehead, he was gone.

I sat down on the floor alone with Brex, the only light the small fire, which gave me about five feet of visibility. Athan had said we had another day’s worth of travel or so. This would be our final leg, barring any issues. I was torn between wanting to reach the compound quickly, and wishing this journey would go on forever. That I could be Athan’s and no one else’s. That I could live simply and not have this heavy title of Sanguivita resting on my shoulders. What a mindfuck.

An hour later Athan’s footsteps announced his arrival first, and then he was crouching down in front of me, the flickering of the flames illuminating his dark eyes. I pushed his hair off his forehead and he leaned into my touch for a moment. “They’re still out there. I can’t see them but I can smell them. They’re patrolling the rock cliff.”

My heart sank. “So what’re we going to do?”

“This cliff? Goes for half a mile. It’s taking them a while to cover the distance, watching for us. And what they don’t know is we have a port on the other side.” He shrugged. “Quellen are great killers and fairly smart. But not that smart. And they don’t know this area like I do.”

“So what you’re saying is we’re going to leave a different way than we came in.”

He nodded. “We have to keep moving. I need to feed eventually and you need to eat.”

“Let’s just stay here. I’ll feed you, and Brex can kill mice for himself. I’ll learn how to forage and become a vegetarian, living off berries and leaves and sucking the moisture out of bark.”

He stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. “Tendra…”

I shrugged, grazing my fingernails along the cave floor and muttering, “I watched a lot of Man vs. Wild reruns.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Athan sounded exasperated.

I rose to my feet, and Athan stood up with me. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m ready.”

Athan rummaged in the back and drew out a belted knife holster. He pulled out the knife from its leather sheath, and the blade was easily as large as my forearm. He handed it to me, and I let the edge drag across my palm as he buckled the holster in place on my waist. “You were amazing with your switchblade, but this is going to do more damage, okay?”

I pricked my finger with the tip of the blade, drawing a bead of red blood. “Damn, this is sharp.”

When I glanced up, Athan was staring at the blood on my finger, his eyes swirling. I swallowed, and sucked my finger into my mouth. He tracked my movements, and when I pulled my finger out of my mouth, I lifted up on my toes. “Kiss me.”

He smashed his lips to mine with such force, my body crashed into the rock wall behind me. He licked into my mouth as he threaded his fingers through mine, and lifted them to either side of my head.

Every point on my body where he’d nicked me pulsed white-hot—my neck, my breasts, my inner thighs. I moaned and squirmed as he continued to devour my mouth. He pulled away with a gasp and thunked his forehead onto the wall beside me. I gulped in air as he panted, our chests colliding with every exhale. His fingers squeezed mine, and then he drew our hands down to meet behind my back, pushing my body into his so I felt the hard ridge in his jeans. “Tendra,” he moaned in my ear. “How will I ever let you go? Tell me I’m strong enough to do it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How could I reassure Athan when I didn’t know myself? I nuzzled his chest, breathing in his intoxicating scent, the fierce protective way he held me. If it were up to me, I’d choose Athan and make him king. But it wasn’t up to me. Athan’s duty meant everything to him, and I had to respect that. I untwined one of my hands with his and drug my hand up his back to slip into his hair. “You are, Athan. You’re strong enough for both of us, which is good, because you’re going to need to be.”

He pulled back, his strong face lined with pain. He kissed me again, softer this time, not spurred on by blood, but instead by our need for each other, a need we were going to have to ignore.

With a heaving sigh, he let me go, stepping backward. He watched me for a long moment, the fire illuminating him from behind, throwing his eyes into shadow. With a frustrated growl he turned around, sending a spray of dirt over the fire to kill it.

We were plunged into darkness. I waited long moments, my heart pounding in my ears, until his hand closed around mine. With a soft voice, he said. “Let’s go, my Sanguivita.”

I walked in darkness for an hour, with Athan’s hand in mine, until a port appeared in front of us. Once outside, Athan checked for Quellen, his nose in the air, and then he signaled for me to follow.

And of course, I did.

Athan’s hand remained in mine. He didn’t let me go, and I didn’t want him to. The visibility wasn’t too bad—the sky was clear and the moon lit our way after my eyes adjusted.

I ate an energy bar and drank a bottle of water while we walked. We let Brex out of the bag because Athan said he liked the cat’s instincts. I was glad to see how far they’d come since that first time Brex had slashed Athan across the face.

That had been…barely a week ago? And fuck, it felt like a lifetime. I kept my head down, pretending that the blisters on my feet didn’t hurt, that I wasn’t hungry for a real hot meal, that my muscles weren’t aching.

And trying really hard to tell myself I wasn’t in love with Athan. That I could let another man touch me, mark me, the way Athan had. My stomach rolled, and I recited Boondock Saints lines in my head so I didn’t throw up my energy bar.

That worked fine until the moment I inhaled and smelled Quellen. This time the three of us all went on alert at the same time.

Maybe now that I’d smelled one up close, I could detect them better. Either way, before we heard them crashing through the trees over our heads, before we heard their hissing, their stench surrounded us.

Brex walked low to the ground, ears back and tail down. I shooed him under a bush, where he crouched flat. He watched me warily, ears back. I covered him as best as I could with the branches of the bush, then returned to Athan’s side. He stood strong and tall gazing up into the tree canopy, before inhaling deeply and turning to me. “You have your knife?”

I patted my side, tamping down my panic, replaying all the training my mother taught me. It was for this moment. This one right here.

Athan pulled me toward him, pressing our foreheads together. “I don’t know how this is going to turn out. But don’t worry about me, understand? Worry about yourself.”

“I’ll worry about myself,” I shot back. “But don’t say dumb shit. Of course I’m going to worry about you.”

He sighed heavily, dropped a kiss on my forehead, then turned around. He pulled out two of his own knives and rolled his wrists as the first wave of Quellen descended from the trees.

I brandished my knife, standing with my back to Athan’s, because no way was one of these fucks going to creep up on me from behind again. I was confident in my fighting skills, but these Quellen were not drunken bar bros. They were trained assassins.

With hissed calls, they converged on us, sending way more manpower at Athan, which surprised me. I was the target, wasn’t I? But I didn’t have time to dwell, because they weren’t leaving me alone, either, and if I went down, Athan’s back was vulnerable. So I twirled my knife and dispatched as many as I could.

When I glanced over my shoulder, Athan was a blur, his jacket swirling around his massive form, blades catching the light of the moon. I was at a disadvantage without daylight, but my eyes had mostly adjusted. The powder-pale skin of the Quellen was easy to spot, the dark center of their eyes like black holes in their white faces.

They weren’t trying to hurt me, at least not yet. It was clear they wanted to take me. And I was not about to be taken, at least not while I was still able to fight.

But they were coming fast now, and while a pile of Quellen lay at Athan’s feet, and a couple more at mine, more were advancing, hitting the ground running as they leaped down from the trees, a white murderous shroud.

And then the Valarians came.

They were much taller than the Quellen, striding out of the darkness of the woods like demons, their red eyes glowing, lips curled back to reveal sharp fangs.

That was when I began to actually panic. My blade was slick with Quellen blood, and I stumbled over bodies below me. My muscles ached as the adrenaline ceased to fuel me. I blinked back tears as more Quellen entered the fray.

Athan kept fighting, but his tired grunts worried me, his heavy pants clanging alarm bells in my head. My blade felt like a fifty-pound weight in my hand as I swung it at three advancing Quellen. One got too close and knocked it out of my hand, and a sick shot of fear pierced my gut.

This was it, this was where I died, with a vampire who was the love of my life at my back, and no hope for the human race. All of this, and we’d failed. One vampire, no matter how powerful, and a lone human weren’t a match for an army of assassins and enemy vampires.

The Quellen grabbed my hair first, which only enraged me. Why did they always have to go for the hair? I fought and kicked, screaming, and Athan whirled around. The stench of Quellen filled my nose, making it hard to breathe. What if they made me pass out? What if I had to watch Athan die? What if—?

A low sound began, shaking the ground below us, and the air vibrated as the noise grew to a dull roar of rushing wind. The Quellen holding me froze, and I blinked to focus on the source of the noise.

Where Athan had stood was now a funnel of tornado-force gales. The winds sucked up scattered leaves and branches, catching them in the cyclone. There was something in the middle but the debris kicked up prevented me from seeing what it was. Was Athan in there? How the fuck was he alive? Amid the sound of rushing wind, I detected a voice, a scream.

The Quellen held on to me, but they didn’t move, and their arms shook. Hell, I shook. Maybe the whole earth shook. The top of the tornado was rising, expanding, gaining speed, until my hair whipped around my face. The Quellen holding me stumbled and we tripped to the ground. He tried to hold on to me, but I kicked him in the face and crawled away. Toward the tornado. It might be a death sentence, but two dots of glowing red amid the swirling winds called to me. To my blood. I’d find safety there.

Just as I reached the outer edge of the cyclone and feared I was going to end up like Dorothy, the winds abruptly stopped. I covered my head as the debris crashed to the ground.

The scream was now a penetrative roar, which rattled my bones. I peeked out from between my arms and my heart skipped a beat. Athan crouched on the ground, shirtless. Slowly he lifted his head and rose to his feet. His eyes were completely red, the veins in his face, neck, and chest pulsing red and purple. He bared his teeth, and then from his shoulders emerged two wings.

Wings.

They were bat-like—black, leathery skin stretched over bones. The entire clearing, from me to the Quellen to the Valarian, went deadly silent. Athan flapped his wings once, twice, and then erupted.

In a streak of flesh and wings, he flew over me. With inhuman speed, his form raced around the clearing, cries sounding from where he claimed victim after victim, leaving bloody bodies in his wake. There were claws at the tips of his wings, deadly sheaths that left no enemy untouched. Death rattles sounded from all around me, and I spun in a circle from where I knelt on the ground as Brex emerged from his hiding spot and perched on a pile of dead bodies near me.

Several Quellen tried to climb trees to escape him, but that was a shitty plan because Athan could fly now. Fucking fly. He soared through the air, taking out the last of the filth sent to take me. And when there was no more movement but the three of us—Athan, me, and Brex—my winged blood guard then dropped to the ground in front of me. He landed on a crouch, and his wings shrunk, retreating into his skin, until his back was once again smooth.

He didn’t move, his back heaving with deep breaths, the nearly white skin streaked with blood and dirt. I crawled toward him slowly and reached out, trailed my hand over his shoulder blades where moments ago his wings had been. His skin was smooth and unblemished.

When I withdrew my hand, Athan rose. His eyes returned once again to those dark orbs, and his chest heaved. I stood in front of him and placed a hand over his heart, the beat of it comforting beneath my palm. “Wh-what just happened?”

His nostrils flared, and he ran his tongue over his teeth, catching on a fang. “The prophecy.”

This was freaking me out. “What about it? Athan, you had fucking wings!”

“It came true.” His voice betrayed his disbelief. His eyes unwavering as they locked on mine. “But this wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”

I curled my fingers until my fist rested on his chest. “Wait, are you saying…” My brain was running in a million different directions. “What are you saying exactly?”

“This was supposed to happen to Idris. Your blood wasn’t supposed to affect me.” His eyes were wide and a little feral. He looked on the verge of losing it.

I stepped closer, brushing along his arm. He was trembling. “What does this mean?”

He reached over his shoulder, feeling the places where he’d had wings a minute ago with a shaky hand. “I don’t fucking know, Ten. I don’t—” His voice gave out and he dropped to his knees. I jumped back as he fell forward onto his hands. His head rolled, like he could barely keep it up.

I kneeled in front of him, lifting his head so I could see his face. Tears leaked out of his eyes, tracking through the dirt on his face. He was in shock, with dilated pupils, and a slack mouth. The sight of him so confused, so broken, unfurled caring instincts I hadn’t even known I’d possessed. I pulled my shirt up to wipe his face as he blinked his wet hair out of his eyes.

He heaved a breath. “I’ve lived my whole life believing one thing and my role in it, and now I don’t know anything.”

I cupped his face and spoke as firmly as I could. “I know you believe in the blood that courses through my veins and yours. I know you think it makes us special. But it doesn’t, Athan. It might be changing the course of our lives, but it’s not all we are. My blood hasn’t kept me alive all this time, or saved me from the Quellen. I did that—and you. We are more than the prophecy. This is your chance to take the hand you’ve been dealt and make a choice about your life.”

His throat clicked, like he was trying to speak, but he gave up when no words came.

“And I’ll be there with you. Because that’s my choice.”

He grabbed me and hugged me to his chest. I held him until he stopped shaking, until his heartbeat didn’t sound like it would burst out of his chest.

I must have fallen asleep, cradling him to me, because when I opened my eyes again, the sun was rising over the horizon. The golden rays reached out to us from gaps in the trees, and I smiled at its warmth.

That lasted for a split second before I remembered I was with a fucking vampire. I scrambled to my knees, looking around for Athan and prepared to somehow cover him with my body. I opened my mouth to scream his name when I caught movement in the center of the clearing.

A shirtless Athan stood with his arm extended, rotating his hand back and forth while a single beam of sunlight fell onto his skin. I held my breath, but there was no smoke. No ash.

Just Athan feeling the sunlight for the very first time in his life.

I crept toward him, not wanting to ruin this moment. One of my favorite things in life was letting the sun warm my face, wash over my body. There was something renewing about a new day, another rotation of the Earth.

Athan’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. His chest heaved as he continued to stick various parts of his body in the sunlight. He hesitated a moment before plunging his face into the beam, his eyes squeezed shut. I clapped my hand over my mouth, not wanting to laugh, but he was like a kid.

My foot nudged a pile of leaves, and the rustling caused Athan’s head to jerk up. When he saw me, a smile spread across his handsome face. A smile I’d never seen him make. “Tendra.” His face held pure wonder as he stepped into the beam and held his arms out at his sides. “Look! I can…I can touch the sun.”

It crested over the distant grove of trees and spread across the ground. The bodies all around us began to burst into flames. I had to jump back from a pile of dead Quellen as they ignited. Within minutes all that was left of the massacre from the night before was scattered clumps of ash.

Athan hadn’t moved. His head was back, the sun shining on his face. When he lowered his head and grinned at me, I was sure it was the best sight I’d ever seen. I knew no matter what the future held at the Gregorie compound, I was looking at my king.