Page 28 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

I jolted awake to the sound of a boisterous crash outside my window. In my dazed state, it took me a few beats to realize that it was merely a thunderstorm and not a stampede or hellhounds coming to drag me off to Hell.

Sitting up in my bed, I glanced around my darkened bedroom noting that it was nighttime, though I had no idea what time it actually was. What the hell had happened?

Had I slept the entire day away?

Tapping my palms against my bed, I tried to feel around for my cellphone and then startled at the sound of someone clearing their throat. My gaze snapped to the corner of the room as a flicker of lightning illuminated the figure sitting there.

“Gabriel?”

My hand rushed to my pounding heart. “What the hell? You scared me half to death!”

He was sitting back in my desk chair, watching me, his entire body swathed in shadows but for the periodic flashes of light coming in through an opening in the curtains. And he wasn’t happy. Not in the least.

“I was just about to say the same damn thing to you,”

he said, his voice hoarse and curt as he pushed forward, leaning his elbows onto his legs as he brought his face out of the shadows. “Do you have any idea how close you came to death this morning?” he asked, his voice heated with spears of fear and anger.

Memories from earlier in the day flooded back to me just then as I quickly pieced together the events that had transpired. My gaze dropped to my wrist, noting it was neatly bandaged and not spewing blood as it had been the last time I remembered looking at it.

I blinked at him innocently. “But did I die, though?”

He all but growled at me. Clearly, it was too soon to joke about it.

“Okay. That came out wrong. Look, I’m sorry for freaking you out like that, but I’m fine, Gabriel,”

I said, holding up my wrist as proof that the disaster had been averted. “Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?”

He shot up from the chair and crossed the room to the foot of my bed, peering down at me with white-hot fire in his eyes. “Do you have any idea what you put me through?”

I shrank a little at his words.

“What you did was stupid, and dangerous, and irresponsible and worse, you made me complicit in it.”

He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, as though trying to erase something from his mind. When he met my gaze again, his eyes held the weight of a thousand deaths. “You forced me sit there and watch you slowly bleed to death.”

“But I didn’t die,”

I reminded again. “Because it worked. You compelled me, Gabriel.” Yay?

“But at what price?”

He shook his head. “There were other ways, Jemma. Ways that didn’t involve you slicing your—” His words dropped off as though he couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“Necessity is the mother of invention, Gabriel. I learned that from you and my mother,”

I said as I pushed the covers off my legs and climbed out of the bed. “We did it your way for weeks and it wasn’t working because you didn’t need it to. This was the only way and we both know it,” I added bluntly, walking past him on my way to the bathroom.

He snagged my elbow and halted me. “But what if I hadn’t been able to do it? Did that ever occur to you?”

He searched my eyes for an answer that wasn’t there. “You could’ve died, Jemma, and you would’ve made me watch it happen.”

My stomach sank at his words.

I hadn’t thought about what it would’ve meant for Gabriel had he not been able to compel me to stop. I’d sort of banked on it working and left my thoughts at that. Suddenly, I felt like the world’s biggest asshat.

“I’m sorry,”

I said heartfully, looking up to meet his somber eyes. “I didn’t…I didn’t look at it that way.”

I had been far too desperate, too eager to make something happen. To force us into the next phase of my plan. I hadn’t been able to see anything other than that and while I did feel bad that I hadn’t properly considered Gabriel’s feelings had this gone completely sideways, I didn’t regret doing it for a single second. Because it worked.

“On the plus side, you can now compel me to never do anything like that again,”

I informed brightly, smiling from ear to ear.

But all he did was glare back at me, unmoved.

“Come on, Gabriel. Try to focus on the positive for once. I’m pretty sure it won’t kill you to smile occasionally, you know,”

I said as I tapped his chest and then strolled off toward the bathroom. “This is a good thing! We’re finally getting somewhere with the bloodbond.”

“Well, we won’t actually know that until we test it with Dominic,”

he said, following me to the washroom as another clap of thunder exploded outside the windows.

My heart fluttered at the sound of his name. “What do you mean?”

I asked as I turned on the shower and ran my hand under it to gauge the temperature.

“I mean we won’t know if we’ve truly formed a substantial bloodbond until we allow Dominic to try to compel you.”

“Right,”

I said and straightened, pulling my elastic out from my hair. “Obviously.”

A boney claw of anxiety dragged its nails down my spine. What if the bond wasn’t strong enough to overpower the one I had with Dominic? What if all this had been in vain? I shook the thought away, refusing to think about it until I literally had no other choice. Besides, I was doing the positive thing now.

“Well, I guess there’s no time like the present time,”

I said as I grabbed the hem of my stained shirt and then met Gabriel’s eyes. “Turn.”

He turned around and faced my bedroom as I pulled off my shirt and then bra. “Don’t you think you should give yourself a chance to fully recuperate first?”

he asked as he ran a hand through his dark hair.

“What for? I feel great,”

I lied as I took off the rest of my clothes and then stepped into the shower. “Besides, if this doesn’t work, I’d rather know sooner than later. That way we have time to come up with a plan B.”

I surprised myself at how even and confident my voice sounded, as though it wouldn’t be the absolute end of the world if my one and only plan had been shot to shit.

“Very well,”

he said and dropped his head. “I’ll meet you in the basement in twenty.”

***

After scrubbing off the dry, crusted blood from my body and dressing myself, I decided to apply a thin coat of mascara and lip gloss in an effort to make myself feel semi-human again. Of course, I told myself it had nothing to do with the fact that I was going to be waking up Dominic again after weeks of painful silence.

With my heart in my throat, I made my way down to the basement to meet with Gabriel. He was already standing inside the makeshift prison with both hands on his hips as he stared down at his brother’s incapacitated body. I wondered what he was thinking about in that moment and even contemplated trying to reach into him through our bond to see if I could feel some of his emotions, but then decided against it. Apart from being an invasion of his privacy, I really couldn’t wait a second longer to finally wake up my sleeping angel.

Pulling in a grounding breath, I walked into the cell and then stopped beside Gabriel. My heart was racing wildly in my chest, pounding every which way as though searching for a way out altogether. In a few short moments, I was going to see Dominic alive again. I would finally get to see those haunting eyes of his and hear that honeyed voice that was all his. Granted, it was still emotionless Dominic but at this point, it was better than nothing.

Besides, I had to start somewhere, didn’t I?

“So, how are we going to do this?”

I asked, without taking my eyes off my angel of darkness as I bit the inside of my cheek.

“We’ll need to give him the illusion of opportunity so that he makes an attempt to compel you.”

“Right.”

I nodded in place. “And what if it works? What if our bond isn’t strong enough to override my bond with Dominic?” I asked, still not moving, still eating away at the inside of my cheek.

Frankly, I had no idea how any of this worked or even what constituted as a strong enough bond to negate the one I had with Dominic. The only thing I knew for sure was that something had happened between Gabriel and me. We both felt the connection coiling between us, and now that he’d finally been able to compel me, it certainly appeared as though a bond had been forged. Even so, none of that was a guarantee and there was only one way to know for sure.

“I’ll be right here if anything goes wrong,”

he reminded me and then pulled out his own stake from his leather jacket, his hand as steady and unflinching as a timeless rock.

I nodded again, but still didn’t move, feeling stuck under the weight of all the things I had riding on this. With all the bad that had rained down on me these past couple of months, I wasn’t sure I could weather yet another setback. I needed a win. I needed to be able to start working with Dominic on getting him to turn his emotions back on, but none of that was going to be possible if my bloodbond with Gabriel wasn’t strong enough.

“Would you prefer to wait until tomorrow?”

he asked, studying my hesitation as though he were going to be quizzed on it at the end of the week.

I shook my head vehemently. No more waiting. No more running. It needed to be now.

Squaring my shoulders, I crossed the prison cell to Dominic and then knelt on the ground before him. My hands were slick with sweat and my heart was thumping violently in my chest, but I wasn’t stopping for anything. I wrapped my shaky fingers around the stake and then yanked it out on a Hail Mary.

For a fleeting moment, I watched, mesmerized as the color and smooth texture returned to Dominic’s face, almost as though he were rewinding his age right before my eyes. His dark, sinful eyes snapped open just as his arm struck out at me like a cobra, wrapping his lean fingers all the way around my throat and then squeezing.

Well, fuck. Not exactly the reunion I was hoping for.