Page 14

Chapter Twelve

My mouth tastes like blood.

Not a metaphor.

Literal blood.

It covers my tongue, fills my nostrils, and makes me want to drink.

I try to open my eyes, but they’re locked shut with what I can only assume is more blood.

My blood?

Leviathan’s?

I’m not sure.

I remember standing my ground.

Finding balance.

Costin arriving.

For a moment, everything was fine.

Then…

nothing ?

This seems to be a pattern in my life lately.

Consciousness, unconsciousness, rinse, repeat.

I wonder how many more times I’ll wake up not knowing what happened to me or how much time has passed.

I swipe at my eyelids with trembling fingers.

Flakes are crusted along my lashes.

They sting as I peel them apart.

I manage to pry one eye open.

The destruction looks worse than I remember, like a bomb went off after Leviathan fled.

Broken shelves.

Scattered books.

Shattered glass from a mirror.

No.

It wasn’t this bad.

Pain radiates through my body as I try to move.

It’s not the sharp agony of a spell, but a bone-deep ache, as if I’ve been pushed beyond my supernatural limits.

Each muscle screams in protest as I force myself into a sitting position.

“Easy.”

Costin’s voice comes from somewhere to my right.

I turn, wincing at the stiffness in my neck.

He sits in a chair a few feet away, watching me with careful eyes.

There is a bloody rip in his shirt sleeve.

“Did I do that?” I ask.

He waves a hand in dismissal.

“It’s nothing.”

Costin doesn’t rush to help me.

Doesn’t try to lift me or support me.

He just waits, giving me space to find my own strength.

That’s new.

“How long was I out?” My voice sounds like I’ve been gargling gravel.

“A few hours.” He passes me a glass of blood without touching my hand.

“You collapsed shortly after I arrived.”

I drain the glass, letting the warm liquid soothe my parched throat.

Even my fangs ache, retracted but tender against my gums.

“Leviathan came back?” I ask.

Costin’s jaw tightens.

“You don’t remember?”

I look around at the devastation, trying to force a memory.

“Astrid’s going to be pissed about her books.”

His lips twitch with a ghost of a smile.

“I believe her exact words were irreplaceable first editions and centuries of magical knowledge.”

Someone had given me a pillow and blanket, but I’m on the floor.

I try to stand, but my legs buckle.

I expect Costin to catch me, to sweep me up in his arms with vampiric speed.

He doesn’t.

He watches me struggle, his body tense with the effort of restraint, but he lets me find my own balance.

When I finally manage to stand, swaying slightly, I see something in his eyes I didn’t expect.

Pride.

“You’re giving me space,” I observe.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He considers his answer carefully.

“Because you need it.”

I wait for more, for the lecture about safety, for the possessive concern, for the sire bond to pulse between us with demands of obedience.

None of it comes.

“That’s it?” I press.

“No, ‘Tamara, you shouldn’t have faced Leviathan alone’? No, ‘you could have been killed’?”

“Would it change anything if I said those things?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Would you do anything differently?”

I think about it honestly.

“Probably not.”

“Then what would be the point?” He stands, keeping his distance.

“You made your choice. You survived. You even found a way to balance your natures,” he gives a pointed look around, “if only temporarily.”

I follow his gaze.

“Are you saying I did all of this?”

Costin nods.

He’s so refined and composed, like we’re discussing the weather.

I shake my head.

I don’t remember.

“No, I… Really?”

“From what we can gather, you expended too much energy fighting without properly feeding and went into a rampage. That, Zephronis’ little time travel memory spell, Leviathan’s magic, and the sunlight. Your vampire side has not built a tolerance to daylight. That comes in centuries, not days, and you will never be able to handle more than this.”

Centuries.

The word sends a chill through me.

No longer a mortal.

I’m going to live forever…

well, forever or until I’m killed.

And then what?

Leviathan gets my marked soul?

That means even death won’t free me.

I look to the closed curtains, knowing there is protection on the glass.

Someone has thrown an extra blanket over the small stream that had been peeking through.

It’s only now I realize we’re in the dark and I can see almost perfectly.

“Did I hurt anyone this time?” I smell for fresh blood and detect a hint of it.

I look at his arm, and clarify, “Anyone else?”

“No. You started to, but you showed restraint. You attacked the books instead.” He gives a small laugh as if trying to hide a smile.

“You’re not angry?”

“I’m furious,” he says calmly.

“But not at you. At Leviathan. At myself for not being here when he came.”

I take a tentative step toward him, testing both my physical strength and the strange new dynamic between us.

“I expected you to be...”

“Controlling?”

“To use the sire bond to keep me in line.”

He tries to hide his emotions from me.

“Is that how you see me? As someone who would use that connection to control you?”

I don’t answer immediately.

The truth is complicated.

He did turn me against my wishes.

But if he hadn’t I’d be a prisoner of Leviathan.

He has used the sire bond, intentionally or not, to influence me.

But I also know he’s been trying to give me freedom within the supernatural constraints that bind us.

Maybe fate is really in charge of my life.

“I don’t know what to expect anymore,” I admit.

“Everything keeps changing.”

“Including us.” He takes a step toward me, then stops, as if remembering his commitment to give me space.

“I trust you to figure this out, Tamara. Your way. Not mine or your father’s. Not the council’s. Yours.”

The words hit me like a physical force.

Trust.

Such a simple concept, yet so foreign in my current existence.

Everyone wants to contain me, study me, use me, tempt me.

No one trusts me.

Not even me.

Well, apparently one person does.

Costin.

“Why now?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“What’s changed?”

A hint of awe creeps into his voice.

“You found balance between your natures. You did what no other hybrid has ever done. And…”

I’m not sure how to process his admiration.

It feels dangerous, like believing in it might lead to disappointment later.

“And?”

“And I…” He hesitates.

“I care for you.”

That’s not what he was going to say.

I can see it in his eyes.

“What if the balance was temporary? I don’t know if I can do it again. You see what happened afterward. I blacked out. I don’t remember doing any of this.”

“But you did it once.” He takes another careful step closer.

“That’s more than anyone thought possible. You’re getting better.”

“Including you?”

He hesitates, then nods.

“Including me.”

His honesty stings, but I appreciate it.

There’s been too much manipulation in my life lately.

Too many half-truths and hidden agendas.

“I need to sit down,” I mutter, feeling suddenly exhausted.

Costin gestures to the loveseat along the wall that miraculously survived my destruction.

I make my way there slowly, my muscles protesting with each step.

When I finally sink into the cushions, the relief is immediate and overwhelming.

In the wall behind me is a secret passageway.

I lean my head back, listening

Costin remains standing, as if unsure whether to join me or maintain his distance.

“You can sit,” I tell him.

“I won’t bite. I don’t think.”

A wry smile touches his lips as he takes a seat at the opposite end of the couch.

“Wouldn’t be the first time if you did.”

The memories of our violent couplings flash through my mind.

I recall the feel of my fangs in his neck, his in mine, blood and desire mingling in a primal dance of possession.

I look away, embarrassed.

“I haven’t exactly been myself.”

“You were exactly yourself,” he counters softly.

“Just a different part of yourself.”

I turn back to study him, trying to reconcile this measured, patient Costin with the possessive vampire who claimed me as his.

“The sire bond,” I begin hesitantly.

“I feel it all the time. This pull toward you. This need to please you, to obey. It scares me.”

He nods, unsurprised by my admission.

“It’s meant to. It’s a survival mechanism. It ensures new vampires remain loyal to their sires, learn control, don’t expose our kind.”

“But it feels like...” I struggle to find the words.

“Like I’m losing myself. Like what I want doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What you want matters very much,” he says firmly.

“The bond exists, but you are still your own person. I won’t force you to stay with me.”

I blink, surprised by the declaration.

“You won’t?”

“No.” His voice is quiet but resolute.

“If you choose to go, I won’t stop you. Though I hope you choose to stay.”

“Even if it would hurt you?”

“Even then.”

I search his face for signs of deception, for the subtle tells that have marked so many conversations in the supernatural world.

I find none.

Just open vulnerability.

It’s a rare sight in a centuries old master vampire.

“Where would I even go?” I ask, more to myself than to him.

“The wolves want to use me as their Alpha. Elizabeth wants to experiment on me. Leviathan wants to make me his necromancer queen and breed a hybrid army. The council wants to study me like a lab rat.”

“You have options,” Costin says.

“Do I? Because it feels like I’m just trading one cage for another.”

He’s silent for a long moment.

“What do you want, Tamara? Not what others expect. Not what duty demands. What do you want?”

The question hits me harder than it should.

What do I want?

Has anyone ever actually asked me that?

“I want...” I start, then falter.

The truth is I don’t know.

What I want has never really been an option.

Not in my whole life.

I know what I thought I wanted.

I fantasized of being normal, away from the supernatural with others like me.

I thought I wanted a life with Paul and Diana, but that was a mistake.

Our time together only led to disaster.

Even if I wanted to take that path, it’s no longer an option.

It’s never been an option.

I realize that my wanting to be normal is like a turtle wanting to be a bird.

Sure it might be able to come to the surface, breathe air, and look at the sky, but a turtle will never fly.

Even when I was human, I would never be normal.

The truth seems too simple, na?ve even.

“I want to be free. To figure out who I am now. What I am. I want to make my own decisions.”

“Then that’s what we’ll work toward.” He says it like it’s that easy, like we can just decide to change the rules that have governed supernatural society for millennia.

“And how exactly do we do that?” I can’t keep the skepticism from my voice.

“One moment at a time,” he answers.

“Beginning with trust.”

I laugh, the sound brittle.

“Trust isn’t exactly in abundance around here.”

“Then we build it.” He shifts slightly closer.

“I trust you, Tamara. Now you need to decide if you can trust me.”

The sire bond pulses between us, a living reminder of our unequal connection.

But beneath it, I feel something deeper and more genuine.

The feeling was there before I turned, in the way he looks at me.

“I want to,” I admit softly.

“But I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of being wrong. Again.” I gesture vaguely at myself.

“Look at my track record. I trusted Conrad, and he tried to kill me. I thought I could protect Paul and Diana, and I almost got them killed. I trusted my own judgment about what I wanted, and now I’m this monster. And now I think I can beat centuries of supernatural will and my destiny?”

“You’re not wrong for wanting freedom,” he says firmly.

“You’re not wrong for fighting against a destiny others tried to force on you. I have seen enough of your life to realize that fate is just a course we have been put on. All these prophecies, all these things you’ve had to overcome, and look at you. You beat them all. You’re going to beat this. I have never seen a stronger being.”

His words touch something raw inside me.

A wound I didn’t know was still bleeding.

I look away, blinking back unexpected tears.

“Or more beautiful.” Costin moves closer, slowly, giving me time to object.

When I don’t, he reaches out, his cool fingers brushing my cheek.

The touch is gentle, respectful, nothing like the possessive grasp I’ve come to expect.

I want so many things in this moment.

The wishes fill my heart with hope and dread at the same time.

“I can’t undo what’s happened,” he says quietly.

“I can’t change what you’ve become. But I can promise you this, whatever comes next, whatever you decide, I will stand with you. Not as your master or your sire, but as your equal.”

I look into his eyes, searching for the truth.

The sire bond hums between us, but it feels less like a leash and more like a connection.

A bridge rather than a chain.

“Equal,” I repeat, testing the word.

“Is that even possible with this between us?”

I gesture to the invisible thread I feel linking us.

“I believe it is,” he says.

“If we choose it to be.”

Choice.

Such a simple concept.

So much of my life has been dictated by the machinations of beings more powerful than me.

The idea that I still have choices feels like a fantasy.

I lean into his touch, making my own choice.

His palm cups my face, cool against my skin.

I close my eyes, allowing myself this moment of vulnerability.

When I open them again, Costin is watching me with an intensity that steals my breath.

Not the predatory hunger I’ve seen before, but something deeper and more honest.

The mask of the master vampire has slipped, revealing the man beneath.

It’s a man who has waited centuries for something he never thought he’d find.

“Did you mean what you said to me?” he whispers.

“When?”

The mask doesn’t come back.

His eyes search mine.

“When you were dying, you said that you loved me. That you always have, even when you were trying not to.”

I vaguely remember.

“You haven’t said it since. I don’t blame you. I know you can’t forgive me for what I’ve done to you.” He strokes my cheek, caressing me softly as if he’s scared I’ll pull away.

“I’m still angry about what you did,” I whisper.

“Breaking your promise and turning me against my will.”

“I know.” He doesn’t try to defend himself.

Doesn’t make excuses.

Just accepts my anger as valid.

“But I’m trying to understand it,” I continue.

“Trying to see beyond my own pain to what you were feeling in that moment.”

His thumb traces the curve of my lip.

“I was selfish, terrified of losing you. I won’t apologize for saving your life, but I am sorry for taking your choice from you.”

The honesty in him breaks something open inside me.

For the first time since my transformation, I feel the full weight of what I’ve lost, what I’ve become, what still remains an uncertainty.

He puts his forehead against mine, and I feel him tremble.

There is something to the moment calling me into my memories.

All of his careful control and centuries of power mean nothing.

He’s as broken as I am.

“I’ve loved you your entire life. And I will love you for the rest of mine.” His lips don’t move, but I hear his voice echoing from the past.

The agony in it breaks my heart.

“I can’t watch you die. Not like this. Not when I’ve finally found the one soul in centuries who makes me feel human again.”

How could I have forgotten those words?

I had begged him to let me die.

The pain had been overwhelming.

I feel echoes of it now as I look into his eyes.

“You could never be a monster.”

My heart stutters in my chest.

The wolf venom had been taking over.

I wasn’t going to survive the transformation.

I was too weak from Elizabeth’s spell and losing the amulet.

“I love you,” Costin had whispered as he lifted his wrist to my lips to give me his blood.

I should resist the memory.

Should maintain my independence, my anger.

Instead, I let myself collapse into him.

“I love you,” I repeat what he said in the memory as I died.

The emotions I felt in that moment come back to me.

They had been so pure, untainted by the monster I now carry.

How could I forget that moment?

Costin pulls me against his chest, his arms encircling me in a hold that’s protective.

“Do you mean it, Tamara?” he whispers.

“Only me?”

I can sense he’s trying hard to be possessive, but it goes against his nature.

He wants to know if I still have feelings for Paul.

I care for Paul.

He’ll always be that fragment of a dream.

“Only you, Costin,” I say.

The vulnerability terrifies me.

I should feel embarrassed by this display of weakness, but I don’t.

Instead, I feel lighter, as if poison has been drawn from the wound in my heart.

“Thank you,” I murmur against his chest.

“For what?”

“For not trying to fix me again. For just being here.”

His arms tighten fractionally around me.

“Always.”

The word hangs between us, weighted with promise.

I lift my head to look at him, suddenly very sexually aware of how close we are, of the current of energy flowing between us.

But it’s different from the desperate, violent need that has driven us before.

It’s deeper, built on more than the sire bond and physical hunger.

I reach up to touch Costin’s face, mirroring his gesture.

His skin is cool beneath my fingers, familiar yet strange to my heightened senses.

He remains perfectly still, letting me set the pace.

“What happens now?” My voice is barely above a whisper.

“Whatever you want to happen.”

For once, I believe him.

The choice is truly mine.

I could pull away, maintain the distance between us.

Or I could bridge it, on my terms, driven not by supernatural compulsion, but by my own desire.

I choose the latter.

When I kiss him, it’s nothing like our previous encounters.

No violence, no struggle for dominance.

Just a gentle meeting of lips, a question asked and answered in the same perfect moment.

He responds with equal gentleness, his hand coming up to cradle the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair.

The bond sings between us, but beneath it runs something more fundamental, more human despite our supernatural natures.

The kiss deepens slowly, like ice melting into warmth, revealing what was always beneath his frozen surface.

My hands slide up his chest to his shoulders, feeling the strength contained in his lean frame.

When we finally break apart, his eyes have shifted, red bleeding into the iris.

But there’s control there too, a careful balance between the vampire and the man.

Are you sure?

, his eyes seem to ask.

I nod, more certain than I’ve felt about anything since my transformation.

“I’m choosing this,” I say.

“I’m choosing you.”

He lowers his mouth to mine once more.

This time, there’s no restraint from either of us.

The kiss builds into a desperate hunger.

Violent but not destructive.

His hands roam my body, relearning the terrain, finding places that make me groan into his mouth.

I do the same to him, exploring the planes of his chest, the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders.

When my fingers find the buttons of his shirt, he lets me undo them one by one, not rushing and never taking control.

The destroyed library fades into insignificance.

All that exists is us.

My werewolf blood keeps my temperature naturally warmer than his.

When my torn shirt joins his on the floor, the air raises goosebumps on my skin.

I don’t fight the new parts of myself.

The bond is always there, humming beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, even when I pretend to ignore it.

The change I feel inside when he touches me is not the painful, bone-breaking change of the wolf or the driving hunger of the vampire.

It’s deeper and more fundamental.

It’s balance.

Costin’s love centers me.

We take our time.

Every touch feels like a conversation.

When he lowers me onto the couch, his body covering mine, I feel no fear about losing myself.

There is only anticipation and desire.

Our bodies join and I can’t help the loud sigh of relief that escapes me.

His body moves within me, gentle at first, then building to a more furious rhythm as I urge him on.

My nails dig into his back, not to draw blood but to anchor myself as pleasure builds.

The sire bond amplifies each sensation into a kaleidoscope of feeling.

I can sense his pleasure as well as my own, creating an endless loop of desire.

But unlike before, I don’t lose myself to the beast within.

Perfect balance.

The pleasure is too much.

Our climax builds and when release finally washes through us, it’s a revelation.

I cry out softly.

Afterward, we lie tangled together on the couch, my head on his chest, his arms around me.

Neither of us speaks, content to exist.

I float on the edge of reality, not wanting to come back.

I listen to his heart, the slow, steady rhythm different from the frantic pulses that have haunted me since my turning.

“What are you thinking?” he finally asks, his fingers tracing patterns on my shoulder.

“That I should be more worried about having sex in my parents’ library,” I reply, surprising a laugh out of him.

“Is that all?”

I crane my neck to look up at him.

“I’m just taking your advice and facing one moment at a time.”