Chapter Sixty-Five
With Angel wrapped tight in his arms, Jake left the portal like the devil was chasing his heels and strode across the damp earth to the back door of his one true home. The log cabin had belonged to his fathers – all of them. His father, his father’s father, and his father before him. It resided on a private wooded lot of approximately twenty acres on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.
He’d always known that if he’d ever decided he wanted to turn a woman into one of his kind – he would have to bring her here. This ground was saturated in the history and magic of his people. The air here had once been in their lungs, had been used to speak their words. The trees that soared above him now had been witness to the childhood play of ancestors who’d climbed their limbs and marked their trunks and used their branches for shade.
As Jake approached the back door of the cabin, it unlocked and swung open for him. And it wasn’t his magic doing it. It was theirs.
As if they too knew how desperately vital this moment was, as if they shared in their descendant’s emotions, their spirits gathered and helped him along. He felt them there, and it gave him hope. It gave him the strength to do what he was going to have to do.
Angel turned her head against his chest. It was only the second time she’d moved since Jake and the cavalry had stormed into her apartment to find her magically strapped to the wall. But this movement was more natural than the last. It wasn’t forced. Darius had been right about the immobility spell’s duration being relatively short. It was already wearing off.
Jake eyed the cruel bruise Clemens had left on Angel’s neck. The piercings from his teeth were gone; those marks always healed almost immediately on victims, no one knew exactly why, though there were theories. But the bruise remained, and it was clear evidence to Jake, an experienced vampire, that Angel’s blood hadn’t heeded his call. There was no reason to pull with such force against a vein unless blood wasn’t naturally rising.
Clemens must have cast the immobility spell on Angel in a fit of rage, no doubt believing she was purposefully keeping her blood from him. Immobilizing her would prevent her from having any control over her body whatsoever and bring that defiance to a quick end.
But Angel hadn’t been doing it on purpose; Jake knew that. He knew in his heart that her body had simply known he was not the one for her. That awareness of her spirit, that closeness of her soul on a deeper level, reminded him so much of his people.
Angel moaned softly against his chest, whether from pain or fear, he wasn’t sure. Those damn wards were still up around her mind, sturdy and steady as ever. He was impressed with his little warrior. She was incredibly strong.
It would be an honor riding with her should she choose to join the Monsters. His brothers had already welcomed her into their fold, whether she knew it or not. They would forever watch over her, forever keep guard, no matter what path she chose.
But at this very moment, there was only one path for her. The others fell away like rubble as Jake stormed into the single bedroom in the cabin and made his way to the bed. It had been kept clean and fresh, per his long-standing instructions.
Jake gently laid Angel down on top of the thick white quilt his grandmother had made long ago, and then he straightened and looked down at his beautiful healer. Her mass of soft, fine hair was spilled across the blanket like a waterfall of night, and her bright eyes were open. She was looking at him.
Watching him.
But she was so pale. “I have to take it all, Angel,” he told her. “Every last drop.”
Angel’s breaths stilled, and he saw her pupils contract in fear. He listened to the sound of her heart speed up, despite its weakness. Whatever magic Clemens had cast on her was worming its evil way through her system in an attempt to change her make-up on a cellular level so that she would become Withered when Clemens drained her blood and in turn gave her his.
Well, Jake was going to beat him to it.
Jake was going to drink her dry so that it was only his vampire magic keeping her alive, and it was his damn blood she would swallow. And when she made the change, which she would, it would be to his kind. No one else’s.
Because she was his. Now. Forever. Always, damn it.
He was going to prove it to her right now.
He lowered himself to the bed on one knee, listening as her breathing became more rapid. “You know me, Angel,” he told her softly as he climbed over her, straddling her body with his knees at her waist. “So you know you can trust me when I tell you that even though I have to take it all – I’m not going to hurt you. I never would. I’m not Michael,” he told her, wanting that to be very, very clear in her mind. “When I take this blood,” he said, lifting her arm to gently rub his thumb along the inside of her wrist across her pulse, “all you will feel is bliss.”
He watched her weak pulse flutter at the base of her throat when she heard his words.
Slowly, Angel smiled.
Jake was struck still for a moment. It was such a stunning thing to see, that smile. But then she took a small breath and softly said, “I know.” And then she gave a small laugh. “I trust you, Jake.”
Oh hell.
Pride and joy flooded Jake’s soul, and his lower body flooded with blood, growing painfully hard almost at once. He was coming alive beneath the loving gaze of his chosen mate.
There was a blue tint appearing beneath her eyes, and he knew he was running short on time; he would have given almost anything to do this slowly… over the course of days.
Some day he was going to track down Michael Clemens and flay him alive for forcing Jake to rush through this act.
But Jake leaned over, placed one hand beside Angel’s head on the pillows, and used the other to gently cup her cheek. The line of her chin was bruised where she’d been brutalized. So he said, “Angel,” and he placed a very soft kiss just above the bruise. “Drop your wards for me, baby.”
He needed in. If he was going to do this right, he needed her to let him in – everywhere.
Angel closed her eyes. Jake could feel ancient magic move around him lovingly, then move off him to surround Angel with the same love.
She took a slow, deep breath in the midst of that love and let it out in a sigh, smiling. “Done,” she said.
Jake tried not to let too much monster show when victory surged through him. Instead, he leaned over once more, and this time when he kissed her, he let loose with a little vampire influence, taking the pain of the bruise away from her. Ever so softly, his lips brushed across the marking, and Angel shuddered. But it wasn’t pain she was feeling now, it was pleasure.
“Jake,” she said, drawing his eyes to hers. “I love you.”
Something profound stole over Jake. This was the most magnificent moment in Jacob Crow’s life. This right here. Those very words. This singular, precious woman.
As the words poured over him and then moved through him, he closed his eyes and heard distant shouts of joy echo through the past. He had to brace himself on the bed above her when he began to tremble in the midst of his happiness. Knowing Angel as he did, Jake gave her his best space rogue smile and said, “I know.”
Angel laughed, and he read the happiness in her mind.
Then Jake gently wove his fingers through her silken strands of hair and tilted her head, exposing the un-injured side of her neck. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “This is it, Angel. You’ll be mine. I’ll be yours. Forever.”
She shivered, her body already beginning to stir beneath him in anticipation. Jake moved down, parted his lips above her weakly pulsing vein, closed his eyes – and sank his fangs deep into her delicious throat.