Page 139 of This Blood that Bonds Us

Today, I care only of slicing through the heart of My Love.

Hatred taints my soul. She leaves me vacant.

My lifeblood is my only existence left.

Only the next day, it was different.

She called me long before life. She will call to me in death, and I will answer Her every time.

Born to be Her love, but not the lover. I am Her Guardian.

Footsteps were coming down the hall. I flipped in one desperate last attempt until I landed on one of the last entries.

During a New Moon:

Sirius, my lifeblood, remember us—

As the door opened, I’d already placed the book back on the shelf.

Luke entered. The weight of seeing him again almost brought me to the floor. I rushed to pull him into a hug. After imagining it so many times, I expected it to bring me relief, for all that pain I’d felt for months to melt away, but he didn’t hug back.

He held me by the shoulders to look at me. “Tell me right now. Why are you here?”

“Hi, brother!” Presley came in and shut the door behind him.

I was trying to take it all in at once. The style of Luke’s hair made him almost unrecognizable, along with the gaunt, colorless look of his skin. He wasn’t shiny anymore, and that was just Luke. Presley’s clothes had changed too. I knew who it reminded me of, and I was too afraid to think of his name.

“Pres.” He let me wrap him in a hug, but it was brief. “Tell me you’re okay.”

A little more than a day, but it was torture not knowing for sure.

“I’m great! Seriously, this place is awesome.”

There was something different about him too. Presley was normally fidgety, but he was pulling at the skin of his nails and shifting from one foot to the next.

“Wait. What happened to you?” I knew the answer.

“I went to a church and drank some blood. Lots of it.”

It took a beat for me to register it.

“You drank Her blood? When? How?”

“You haven’t?” Luke asked.

I ignored him. “Pres, answer me.”

“I had another clue.”

“They lured you.”

“No! They guided me. Akira knew that I would follow the notes. He was right. This whole time, they knew Kilian was trying to get in the way of our destiny. This is fate. She told me so. She said that we’re late. That we could have been happier a lot earlier, and She’d seen it so many times, but we never showed up when we were supposed to. We kept Her waiting, but it doesn’t matter now because we’re all going to be together.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

Presley nudged Luke. “He might need to be mind wiped. Kilian’s got his claws in deep.”

“Pres.” I huffed. It was naive of me not to consider the possibility of him having access to more of Her blood, but I hadn’t, and he was already so different. I let out a breath to calm the anxiety building in my chest.