Page 108 of The Silver Fox Vampire

He tried to raise his head, but it was as though his life energy had been drained from him.

“OLIVER! Look at me.” This time the sweet, urgent voice of his beloved forced its way past the anguish in his head.

With all his might, he finally straightened his spine.

“Don’t believe them.” Across the space, her gaze held his, and it was if she was gifting him her strength. Just as she had offeredhim her blood when he was wounded, she now offered him her love, her magick, her soul.

Something ignited deep within him, a flame, that grew by the second.

There was light, where moments before there had only been darkness.

Hope, where there had been fear.

Love, where there had been self-loathing.

“OLIVER!!!” Urgently, she called out his name a third time.

Her eyes begged him to listen. “Whatever you did, whatever happened in the past, it is not who you are. You are good through and through. And I love you, unconditionally. For eternity.”

Her words flowed into him, and finally, he was able to hear them. He was not the evil being he’d believed he was for so long. He had been lost, but just as Waldo had said, he was now found.

By all the gods in heaven, hedeservedClare’s love.

And just as she had saved him, he would now save her.

Rising to his full height, Oliver held up his hand, and the Hale ring shot out a beam of silver light that zapped Matteus right between the eyes.

Matteus recoiled, cursing, and released his grip on Clare.

She ran and threw herself into Oliver’s arms, her face upturned to his.

“Oliver. I love you with all my heart and soul. Nothing will ever shake my love for you. It is yours forever. If they stake you, they stake me too.”

“That—shall—not—be,” he gritted out, as his arms came around her, binding her close.

“Then you must bite me. Turn me.”

“Clare, NO!”

“YES. You must, Oliver. Trust me.”

She had said those words before … and he had trusted her then.

He must trust her now.

Suddenly, he saw it for what it was. What it had always been. All these years, his desire to bite her, to turn her, was not his addiction manifesting. It was not his evil—it was the purest, truest love.

She was his beloved.

His mate.

“Yes,” he murmured. “YES.”

“Do it. NOW.”

Over her shoulder, he saw Igor advancing, the wooden stake held high in his hulking arms.

It would pierce Clare first, then him.