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Stranger still, Nick saw that peculiar vampire rage, the kind that knows how to turn cold when it can’t be immediately satisfied, that can simmer for decades, even centuries at a time, waiting for the exact moment to be sated.

Nick had felt that feeling before.

He remembered it, even now.

Charlie stood not far from Jordan, also with vampires.

Just like in the portrait the seer had done, she looked terrified, her eyes wide and staring, her hands clasped in front of her as she stared at the portal with a mixture of wonder and dread and disbelief. Overlaying all of it, shock and terror at what she assumed would probably be all of their fates had obviously paralyzed her.

The doppelganger gripped Wynter’s arm a second time.

He held it more tightly that time.

Then, without warning, the rest of the painting had begun.

The doppelganger was dragging her, forcing her to stumble after him over the grass and stone, forcing her to accompany him to the open portal.

The portrait was complete.

The image ended here.

But not quite.

Nick saw the doppelganger look over his shoulder at Nick, staring at him with that mad, violent, vicious look on his face, the one he remembered from the painting too. He stared at Nick from under the wide-brimmed hat, the long coat and gloves. Those were now the only things protecting his slowly dissolving face and body from the now-visible sun.

…and now they were past the painting, past that single instant frozen in time.

Nick watched a sick, broken, deeply unhappy man drag his wife towards a swirling vortex of light. He watched that same broken man break out in an involuntary smile of triumph as he realized he couldn’t be stopped.

Nick felt a scream building in his chest.

He lurched against his captors, screaming at his mate.

He screamed with every ounce of his being, every fragment of who he was.

He screamed her name.

He screamed it over and over, making every seer and vampire and human around him wince, and turn away.

“WYNTER! NO! NO! WYNTER! WYNTER!”

He screamed and screamed and kept screaming for her.

Everyone turned, staring at him.

No one knew what to do.

No one knew how to make him stop, or how to help him.

Even the other Nick stopped in his tracks. He turned around, looking at Nick, but Nick didn’t care about him anymore either.

He stared only at his wife.

He wanted only his wife.

He met her shocking, blue-green eyes when they turned to meet his. He saw the tears there, and he wanted to rip the fucker apart, tear him limb from limb, just for making his wife look like that, just for making her so heartbreakingly sad.

Then out of nowhere…