Page 134 of Taming His Vampire Mate

And now, after all these years, I finally had my answer.

Yes. It was worth it. It was all worth it.

With Jeremy’s cool and unmoving hand in mine, and Michael holding my other, I let the tears I had been holding spill at last.

“Come back to me,” I whispered, my voice more broken and ragged than I had ever heard it before. “Please come back to me.”

The only reply was the stillness and silence of the night.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN || JEREMY

“Hi, Jeremy.”

I blinked, startled to find myself sitting cross-legged on a fallen log in the forest. It was nighttime, but I could see clearly. The air glowed blue, oddly luminescent. Bone-white fog threaded between tree trunks I knew almost as well as I knew myself.

I felt no fear—only a strange freeness. A lightness I had never known before.

Peace, I realized. Rock-solid, absolute tranquility that sank deep into my bones. Because here nothing mattered. Not time, not pain, not anything.

I was finished. Complete.

Smiling faintly, I looked up to see who had spoken.

Ian stood only a few feet away. Just as I remembered him: shaggy dark hair, scruff along his jaw, his lithe body more compact than mine. But his eyes… they weren’t mischievous this time. They were deeper. There was gravity to him I had never seen before. His skin seemed to glow, as though he was made of light.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came because you’re here,” he replied softly. “This is an in-between place, Jeremy. No one ever does this part alone.”

His meaning was impossible to mistake. I realized I had no idea how I’d gotten here—or how long I’d been sitting on this log.

Peace slipped from me. Unease rose in its place.

“I’ve died,” I said tonelessly, the sound of my own voice strange in the air.

Ian hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Your mortal life is done.”

“And you’re here to help me cross over?”

“I’m here because you need me to help you through this.” He let out a long breath, studying me.

That was strange, wasn’t it? If this was the afterlife, why would either of us need to breathe at all?

He smiled ruefully, familiar enough to conjure a hundred memories of when I had loved him with everything I had. “Old habits die hard. And speaking aloud is optional here, by the way.”

I frowned. “I can’t hear your thoughts.”

“You would, in time. If you stayed.”

“If I… stayed?”

“I didn’t come to help you cross over. I came to help youchoose.”

A cold ripple ran through me. There was something important I couldn’t remember. “Choose what? I can’t stay here forever, can I?”

“Actually, you could, if you wanted. Some do—when they’re afraid of what waits beyond, or when they can’t accept that they’ve died in the first place.”

“Ghosts,” I murmured.