A cool, damp cloth brushed across my forehead and Eric’s gently smiling face came into view. “You’re awake.”
“You’re alive.” I clutched his hand with what little strength I could summon. “I watched you die, you and Gigi.”
A breath shuddered out of me and the fear of losing him, the fear of losing them both, rippled through me. I reached for their bonds and sagged into the mattress. They were back, safe and sound and whole in my mind, right where they should be. Goddamn Eric and his fucking mind tricks. I don’t know how he’d hidden the bonds, didn’t care, but I recognized the threat. Next time, he wouldn’t hide them. Next time, he’d sever them clean in two, excising the festering limb to save the body.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Asleep in her room. You were getting restless.”
“Then you should’ve let me out of that hellhole vision.”
His head tilted to the side. “Only part of that was me, Jase. I showed you what would happen if I had to break your bonds with me and Gigi. You dreamed up the rest on your own.”
I stared at him. “You know what I saw, though.”
“I know what you did to yourself in the place between places, and I know what you’re doing now. The resentment and the anger and the budding hatred, all of that will lead to a very dark future for the three of us.” He wiped the cloth gently along my skin, cooling my heated flesh, washing away the stickiness of dried sweat. “It’s so useless, so unnecessary. She loves you, always has, always will, and I love you, too. Why can’t you see that?”
I mustered the strength to move and rolled toward him, onto my side. “I do, Eric. I know how much you both love me, but it’s not like the jealousy thing is rational. It’s not like I can control it.”
“Can’t you?” His lips thinned and his hand fell away. “Did you learn nothing from your sojourn?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and buried my face in the pillow under my head. “Goddamn you. Why can’t you just tell me instead of prancing around everything like it’s a fucking class you’re teaching and I’m your slowest student?”
His soft laughter washed over me, easing some of my frustration. “If you didn’t want to be challenged, you shouldn’t have bonded with me.”
I peeked at him, not at all mollified. “I bonded with you because you needed me.”
“And you needed Gianna,” he said mildly. “Remember how it was then, when the three of us first came together?”
I did. Those few short weeks between Gianna learning she was pregnant and the night of Selena’s attack had been the best of my life, the best of all our lives. We’d had everything then, love and friendship and a new life growing in Gigi’s womb, and the promise of the family that meant so much to us all.
Why had I let that dream go? Why had I lapsed into jealousy now, when I’d never felt it before?
“The answers are in you, Jason.” Eric wadded the cloth into his hand and stretched out beside me, facing me. “Look into your heart and find them, please. If not for yourself, then for us. Without your strength, without your love, Gianna and I will never survive.”
Another vision fluttered across the edges of my mind, sturdy links of a chain, unbroken from the past into the present, one a gleaming cornflower blue. Cracks appeared in the surface of the shiny metal of that single link. It stretched and strained, reforming, remolding, and still, the metal cracked and popped, its tensile strength reduced to a brittle, dry chalk, no match for the burden of supporting the entire chain.
If you fail, so do we all.
The blue chalk snapped and shattered, and the chain fell away, its two ends floating apart in ever widening waves.
The vision faded and I opened my eyes. “I’m sorry, so sorry. I wish…”
He leaned forward and touched his mouth to mine. “I know. You’re only human, Jase, no matter what else runs through your blood. But you need to work harder on this, dig to the bottom and figure out what’s wrong before it’s too late, for all of us.”
He curled around me, this slender man who held so much of my heart, and comforted me with the depth of his love. What he was doing, he did for us all, for the family we’d started that long ago day, for the future we craved, one where no one dared threaten us. He planned and he strategized and he forged alliances and gathered his strength, and I was a part of it all, a pivotal part. I knew that, had known it since we’d formed the glorious beauty of we.
My love for Gianna, my inability to reign in my jealousy, left me vulnerable. I was the weakest link in Eric’s plan, me, with my massive size and brawn, with the discipline I’d honed my entire life. Eric’s house of cards rested on my shoulders. If I broke, he and Gianna and Willow broke with me.
I pulled him close and let his strength seep into me, and prayed it would be enough to carry us through whatever future we faced, together.
# # # # #
Thank you for reading The New Vampire (The Vampyr, Book 3). Please consider leaving a review for it at your favorite online retailer.
About the Author: V.R. Cumming lives in the rural South. She writes non-fiction under her legal name and paranormal romantic fiction under another pen name. To learn more about upcoming publications, visit her website or Facebook page and subscribe to her mailing list.
The Vampyr Series
Book 1: The Vampire’s Pet
Book 3: The New Vampire
Stay tuned for more stories set in the world of the Vampyr!
Book 2: The Vampire’s Favorite
Book 4: The Master Vampire
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