Page 12 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I was awoken early the next morning to someone shaking my arm. Despite the touch being gentle and unthreatening, my fist was already swinging through the air before I had a chance to realize it was Gabriel waking me and not my knee-jerk-reactor of a sister coming to take another stab at Dominic while I slept. Lucky for him, he caught my fist mid-air before it could make contact with his face.

“Jesus—”

I scrambled up into a sitting position and tried to remember why the hell I was sleeping on my mattress in the middle of the cold ass basement. It took a few seconds of effort before everything came back to me. “What’s going on? What happened?” I asked as I wiped the sleep from my eyes.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine,”

he assured in a hushed voice.

Feeling my adrenaline calm at his words, I pulled the comforter up around my body to stave off the chill that had permeated my skin. “What time is it?”

“It’s a little after five o’clock.”

“In the morning?”

I gaped, feeling the pain of it already.

Long after the shock and anger of my mother and Tessa showing up unexpectedly last night had worn off, my mind remained stuck on spin-cycle for the better part of the night, making even the notion of shuteye a complete impossibility. Between replaying every word that had uttered between us, and worrying about my usual mountain of problems, I hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep to function at this current time of day.

He gave me an apologetic look and then crouched down low beside the edge of my mattress. “Everyone is still asleep. I thought you’d be more comfortable if we did our session without an audience this morning.”

I stared back at him in astonishment.

“That is…”

Uncertainty drew his dark brows together. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about doing this?”

“No, I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

he inquired.

I tried and failed to stop gawking at him like he’d just sprung a tail out of his ass. “I’m just…surprised is all.”

The crease between his brows deepened. “Surprised?”

“Doing this behind Tessa’s back.”

My mouth pulled up into a smirk. “You’ve never struck me as the rebel type before.”

He grimaced, not liking the comparison. “I’m only trying to help you and my brother.”

“Oh, I know that, and I appreciate it more than you know.”

“But?”

he asked, sensing that there was one.

I shrugged. “I guess I didn’t expect you to stick to our arrangement after Tessa’s reaction yesterday.”

And could he really blame me? Gabriel had always been the farthest thing from anything even remotely related to a rebel. For as long as I’d known him, he had always conducted himself firmly between the two straight lines that had been drawn out for him since birth. I knew as much as anybody that had I brought this bloodbond idea up to him a few months ago, he probably would have been staunchly against it. Maybe even reported me for it.

But things were definitely different now—he was different now.

Gabriel had witnessed the horrible state his brother was in firsthand and had a front row seat while Dominic’s demon tormented me at every corner. Clearly, that had been more than enough to sway him over to the dark side with me. To not only agree to bond himself to me, but to do it behind my sister’s back despite her protests.

That was the part that surprised me the most, because at the end of the day, Gabriel had always been the martyr-type willing to sacrifice himself for the betterment of others, so it didn’t completely shock me that he’d agreed to do this with me—if for no other reason than because I had asked him to. But doing it despite my sister’s wishes…

That was next level badassness, especially for Gabriel.

“Contrary to what you might think, Tessa isn’t my keeper,”

he answered simply, his shoulders taut and squared. “And I gave you my word.”

Well, damn. Color me impressed, I thought as my grin stretched across the whole of my face. “You know, I’m kind of really digging this new side of you,”

I admitted as I gave him a thorough once over.

He immediately flustered at my comment, though I wasn’t sure why that was.

“Hey,”

I called and then offered an encouraging smile. “I meant it as a compliment.”

“Yes. I know.”

And yet his expression remained perturbed and unchanged. And then it dawned on me. “I take it you don’t like this new side of you quite as much as I do, huh?”

His guilt-ridden eyes gave him away before he could answer. “It’s very…conflicting at times.”

“Conflicting how?”

I asked, tipping my head to the side as though a different angle might yield a better read on him.

His gaze plummeted. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Well, that’s a total copout.”

He shot me a displeased look.

“Well, it is. Come on, Gabriel. I’m your friend,”

I pushed, wanting him to feel comfortable enough to open up to me. To share his fears and worries with me. “Talk to me.”

“It’s just that…things are becoming skewed at times…or rather my intentions are…”

He scrubbed a hand over his face as if to collect his thoughts.

Good idea, I thought since he wasn’t making any sense.

He met my eyes again and released a breath. “I thought I had agreed to do this purely for the sake of helping you save my brother. Because it was the right thing to do. But I’m not entirely sure I know what the right thing is anymore.”

His throat bobbed as his heavy eyes looked away from me. “I’m not even sure of my own intentions and I fear that makes me a monster of the worst kind.”

“A monster?”

I flinched back as my heart dropped into my stomach at his strange revelation. “Jesus, Gabriel. You’re not a monster. You’re the furthest thing from that.”

“Am I?”

His gaze cut back to me. “Then why am I craving your blood like an animal? Why am I imagining myself doing—” His words dropped off with a shake of his head as though he couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.

For a split second, I wondered what he had been imagining doing that was so disturbing to him, but then shook the curiosity away. I wasn’t sure why, but a part of me was almost afraid to know.

“You’re craving my blood because you’re a Revenant, Gabriel, and the fact that I’m a Slayer is only making that doubly hard on you. There’s nothing more to it than that,”

I said, assuring the two of us with the same breath.

He ducked his chin a nod, but it seemed forced and unconvinced. The gesture gave me pause, realizing that he was really struggling with this. More so than I had anticipated or was prepared to handle.

What kind of damage was I doing to him long term?

Had I done the wrong thing asking him to do this?

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about anything.

“Tessa was right, you know.”

The statement came out like a dirty secret I didn’t want to speak on. “There’s still time to back out of this if it’s too much for you. We can stop if you need to.” As much as it pained me to utter the words, they needed to be said. I wanted Dominic back more than I wanted to breathe air, but I couldn’t sacrifice Gabriel in the process. He was my friend and he mattered too.

His gaze drifted over my shoulder to his brother then. I could see the war waging in his eyes, see how torn he was inside about everything, and my heart broke for him.

I touched my hand to his knee. “I won’t blame you if you did. We can find someone else.”

“There is no one else.”

His brilliant green eyes circled back to me. “We both know that.”

“Well, that’s not your problem,”

I said gently, because it wasn’t. Not really. “And if you’re worried about me not understanding or hating you because of it, I wouldn’t.”

“I’d hate myself enough for the both of us,”

he said, and I knew that was a real possibility. He’d find a way to shoulder the blame for this and then spend the rest of his life punishing himself with all the what-ifs and could’ve-beens in typical Gabriel fashion. “This is the only real chance Dominic has.”

“But at what cost, Gabriel?”

Clearly, I hadn’t fully considered all the ramifications when I’d asked him to do this for me. But now that I was face first with all the grief and strife, it just didn’t feel right anymore. “I want so bad to help Dominic; to save him from himself and bring him back to us. Believe me, I want that more than anything right now. But not at the expense of losing you. You mean too much to me. Our friendship means too much to me.”

“As it does for me,”

he answered, his voice as soft as a butterfly’s touch. “Which is why I have to do this for you. I made a promise to you, and I intend on keeping it.”

“I appreciate that, Gabriel, I do, but it’s—”

“It was a moment of weakness,”

he cut in, silencing my protest. “Nothing more. I wouldn’t have agreed to do this if I didn’t think I could handle it.”

I lowered my eyes, feeling the emotion behind his words in the core of my heart. Our short, fleeting moment to back out of this thing had come and gone and I knew then I wasn’t going to change his mind.

He was all in, no matter the cost to his own soul. And a part of me was relieved of that. Relieved that he was committed to helping me bring Dominic back no matter what. Even despite himself.

And I couldn’t help but hate that part of myself.

***

Later that morning, after scrubbing off the thick layer of guilt left behind from our bloodsharing session in a steaming hot shower, I made my way down to the kitchen to grab a bite to eat before heading off to school, hoping to avoid seeing my sister and mother altogether. At least that had been the plan. All of that went to hell in a handbasket upon finding both Tessa and Jaqueline sitting at the kitchen table in shared silence, staring at me expectantly when I entered the room.

The only saving grace was that Gabriel was there too, though he was leaning against the kitchen counter with his head hung low and his eyes focused on his boots.

Clearly, they had all been waiting for me.

“We need to talk,”

said Tessa, her hand splayed against the kitchen table as if to brace herself against any blowback.

Ignoring the sense of doom invading my body, I pushed off my heels and continued to the fridge. “Didn’t we do enough of that yesterday? I think it’s pretty obvious where we both stand. No sense in kicking a dead horse around,”

I said as I pulled out the sliced bread and then a jar of peanut butter.

“This isn’t about that,”

she said ominously.

Dropping the items on the counter, I slowly looked up and met her eyes. “Then what is it about?”

She tucked her short black hair behind her ears and then turned all the way around in her chair to face me. “Remember when I told you that mom had been doing some research and that she wanted to meet with you?”

My gaze bounced to my mother as unease crept down my spine.

“Well, it’s about that.”

I suddenly and inexplicably had the urge to flee as though my soul knew this was going to be another one of those bombs-dropping-on-my-life type of conversations and I inherently wanted to avoid it. “Actually, I’m going to be late for school,”

I said as I opened the jar of peanut butter and scooped some out with a butter knife. “But we can totally talk about this later. After school—tonight.”

Jaqueline cleared her throat, drawing my attention back to her. “This isn’t something you want to put off, Jemma. We have a lot of road to cover.”

Well, that just turned my desire to run from this into a desperate, feral need to take a flight right out of town. I swallowed past the knot at the back of my throat and continued buttering the slice of bread that I was no longer hungry for. “I have an assignment due this morning. How about we meet during my lunch break?”

My voice sounded off. Far too pitchy and shaky to be mine.

“Jemma.”

My gaze shot to Gabriel. Well, fuck. His voice sounded bizarre too. Like it was coming from inside my head and not his mouth. Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Was I having some kind of stroke?

“I’m sure you can turn your assignment in tomorrow,”

he suggested evenly and then nodded into it, urging me to sit down with them and listen.

For some strange reason, his presence had calmed me just then. Like maybe this wasn’t going to be the absolute worst conversation of my life. That hearing them both out wouldn’t cause the ground to fall out from under me again. It was a false sense of comfort, but I was holding onto it with everything I had.

“Alright, fine. Whatever,”

I said, giving in as I dropped the overly saturated slice of bread onto the plate and left it there. “Start talking.”