The Shadows

by J. R. Ward

  "Selena, don't cry." There was a Kleenex box on the bedside stand and he traded holds so he could snap one free and dry her cheeks. "Oh, no, not sorry. You can't be sorry for something like this."

  Her inhale was ragged. "I didn't want you to know. I didn't want . . . worry."

  "I wish you'd told me."

  "Nothing to be done."

  Okay, wasn't that a knife right between his fucking ribs. "We don't know that. Manny is going to talk to some of his human colleagues. Maybe--"

  "I love you."

  As her words hit him with all the slap of an open palm, Trez coughed, gasped, sputtered, and wheezed at the same time. Great response. Just really fucking masculine--reminding him, absurdly, of that synthesizer in Ferris Bueller when the little shit was on the phone with his classmates.

  What the hell was his problem? The female he was in love with, the one he wanted above everything in the world, lays the Three Big Ones on him . . . and he turns into a giant bodily function.

  So romantic.

  Then again, at least he didn't let loose in his Levi's.

  "I . . ." he stammered out.

  Before he could go any farther, she squeezed his hand and shook her head back and forth on the pillow. "Don't have to tell me back. Wanted you to know. Important . . . for you to know. No time left--"

  "Don't say that." His voice grew strident. "I need you to not say that ever. There's time. There's always time--"

  "No."

  God, her pale blue eyes were ancient as she stared at him. Even in her perfectly unlined face, with her beauty shining through in spite of her condition, that exhausted stare of hers made her seem geriatric.

  It was so unfair. Her in that bed, him kneeling fit and fine next to her--with no real way to share the health he had in abundance. Sure, when she'd been in cardiac arrest he'd been able to bring her back, but he didn't want to just drag her away from the brink. He wanted to cure her.

  He wanted . . . years with her.

  And yet, just as the thought hit him, he realized that was never going to happen: Even if her destiny changed, his wasn't going to.

  "I love you . . ." she breathed.

  For a moment, he felt himself hit his own brink, his heart and soul trembling on the edge of falling into her words, her eyes, her everything that made her female and mysterious and wondrous . . . but then he reminded himself that she had nearly died, was half-awake at best, and probably had no idea what she was saying.

  Plus Doc Jane had announced that he'd saved her life. Which may or may not have been true--but given the drama, gratitude could make anyone feel something she wouldn't have ordinarily.

  Or maybe fan the flames of affection into a temporary emotion that was much stronger.

  "Don't have to say it back," she murmured. "Needed you to know."

  "Selena, I--"

  She held up her other hand, palm forward. "No need to go further."

  There was a resonant silence, but only in the room. In his chrome dome? His brain was live-wire spastic, all kinds of thoughts and images pelting his consciousness like his gray matter had gone monkey and was throwing poo all over its cage.

  Refocusing on her, he told himself to get a grip and try to help her.

  "Would you like to feed?" He held up his free hand, flashing his wrist. "Please?"

  When she nodded it was a total relief, and he scored his flesh with his fangs before stretching up, bringing his vein to her mouth. At first she barely latched on, doing little but swallow. In time, though, she began to take some control, sucking at him, drawing what he had to give deep into her.

  He got hard.

  He couldn't help it. But it wasn't like he had any sexual drive. He was too distracted by worrying about her, wondering if, at any second, her body was going to give out again.

  Stable, Doc Jane had told them. She was as stable as anyone could be a hundred and twenty minutes after total molecular collapse. But at least the second sets of X-rays had been nothing short of miraculous. Whereas in the first ones there had been all kinds of bone in what should have been the movable parts of her joints. Now, according to both Doc Jane and Manny, things were more "anatomically appropriate."

  No one knew where the bad stuff had gone. Or why it had left. Or when it would be back. What they did know for sure was that where there had once been no movement, now there was.

  After quite a while, Selena's lips grew lax and her eyelids sank low. Retracting his arm, he licked the puncture wounds closed and then rested his forearm on the mattress and put his chin on it.

  "How did you find me?" she asked in a sleepy voice. "I fell when I was up in the Sanctuary. . . ."

  "Someone came and got me."

  "Who . . . ?"

  The Scribe Virgin, he thought to himself as she let out a soft snore.

  "Selena?"

  "Yes?" She tried to rouse herself, lifting her head and forcing her eyes wide-open. "Yes . . . ?"

  "I want you to know something."

  "Please."

  "No matter what happens, I'm not going to leave you. If you want me around, no matter . . . where this goes, I'm going to be right by your side. If you want me to be, that is."

  Her stare roamed around his face. "You don't know what you're saying--"

  "The hell I don't."

  "I'm going to die."

  "So am I. But I don't know when and neither do you."

  Her luminous eyes glowed with a complicated emotion. "Trez. I've watched my sisters go through this. I know what--"

  "You don't know shit. With all due respect."

  He got up and went to the base of the bed. Pulling the sheet and blankets out from between the mattresses, he looked under it at her feet.

  "What are you doing?"

  With a gentle hand, he tilted one of her ankles up so that he could look at the sole. "Nope."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "I don't see any expiration date stamped on here." He did the same with her other foot. "Not here, either."

  He put the covers back down. Retucked them. Stared up her body at her--and tried to escape the fact that the very flesh he coveted could potentially be what separated them forever.

  Except then he remembered the news iAm had given him out in the hall.

  Shit, it wasn't like he didn't have his own set of roadblocks.

  "I'm not leaving you," he vowed.

  "Didn't want to tell you about all this." Her eyes watered up, the tears turning those blue irises into gemstones. "Didn't want you to know and feel sorry for me."

  "I don't feel sorry for you."

  "Don't do this to yourself, Trez. Just . . . just know that I love you and let me go."

  He came back up to her. "Can I have your hand?"

  When she turned stiffly on the bed and extended her arm, he took her palm and put it between his legs, on the rock-hard ridge that was punching out at his fly. The contact made him hiss, his fangs descending in a rush, his hips rolling.

  "This feel like pity to you?" he gritted out.

  Fuck, he had to step back. He'd pulled this crude move only to prove a point, but instead, he found himself ready to come, his body all zero-to-sixty in a nano.

  "Trez . . ."

  "I'm not saying we have to get sexual. Not at all. But I am not here because I feel sorry for you, okay?"

  "I can't ask you to stay."

  "You aren't. I get to pick this. I get to pick . . . you."

  As he spoke the words, he realized, holy shit, that was true. For once in his life, he felt like he was choosing something--and in a weird way, that was good. Even though this was sad, sad stuff, it felt liberating to be all, This is mine.

  This . . . situation . . . was something he was going to take ownership over for however long it lasted, wherever it took them both.

  Assuming Selena wanted him here.

  In the silence that followed, he looked around at the bare walls and knew he had to get her out of the hospital room. Sure, the place was close to the medical staff if
she got into trouble, but it was hell on the mood, a depressing stretch of You Are Sick.

  Trez refocused on her again. "Anything you need, I'm here for you, okay? If you want me."

  After a moment, she croaked out, "I want you."

  "Okay, then." He exhaled in a rush, and then held up his forefinger. "One thing. No expiration date, deal? We go into this like you're going to live forever."

  Her expression shifted into disbelief, but he just shook his head. "Nope. That's my one rule."

  He wasn't stupid. He'd listened to what those other Chosen had said, looked at the X-rays, watched over her contoured body. He had an internal conviction that he was going to lose her, and most likely sooner rather than later. But the gift that he could give her? The most important thing--hell, maybe the only thing--he could bring to this?

  Hope.

  And he didn't have to believe she was going to be cured to have it, to share it, or to live it.

  Be present. Love her until the end. Never her leave her side until the last breath.

  That was how he was going to honor her with his heart and his soul, even though he wasn't worthy.

  "No expiration date," he said. "We live each night as if we have a thousand of them ahead."

  *

  Selena blinked away another round of tears. On so many levels, she couldn't believe Trez was standing over her hospital bed, staring into her soul with a kind of purpose that suggested his will alone could keep her alive and healthy for as long as he wanted.

  "I don't think we have a thousand nights, Trez," she said.

  "Do you know that? For certain?"

  "No, but--"

  "Then why waste a moment of the time we do have thinking like that? What's it going to get us? Seriously, how is it going to help--"

  "Will you get in bed with me?"

  He cleared his throat. "You sure about that?"

  "Yes. Please."

  She admired how smoothly he moved, getting up on the high mattress, shifting around, helping her make room for him. And as if he read her mind, he arranged her in his arms so that she was on her side and her head was on his chest.

  Ragged. Sigh.

  From the both of them.

  "I'm relieved," she heard herself say. "I wanted you to know, but . . ."

  "Shh. You need to sleep."

  "Yes."

  Closing her eyes, she could sense him on a different dimension now, his blood working its way into and through her system, strengthening her after the episode. In her mind, she calculated exactly when the last freeze had occurred. Thirteen nights. The one before that? Sixteen.

  But maybe, if she wasn't offering her vein to anyone, she'd have even more of a reprieve. And maybe the strength he just gave her through his blood would help her fight off any episodes, too.

  "I stayed away," she said, "because of all this. Not because of you. I don't care about your past. I just want you to know that."

  Trez began to rub her back, his large palm circling. "Shh. Just try to rest."

  Selena lifted her head. "You need to let me say this. You need to hear it and believe it. I know that you backed off because you thought that I . . . judged you or something. But I pulled away because of all this, not because you've been with a lot of . . . humans. And not because of your betrothal, either."

  He closed his eyes in a wince. Then shook his head. "I gotta be honest with you. The last thing I want to think about right now is--"

  "I don't think you're unclean, Trez."

  "Please. Stop."

  She took his hand and squeezed, trying to get through to him, feeling a pressure to say everything all at once, get it all on the table. His theory about a thousand nights was a good one for mental health purposes--and he'd come to the same conclusion she had: she didn't have a date and time stamped on her. But she had lived in this reality since the first episode those many decades ago, and her trajectory for survival was that of a car heading off the road and skidding into a ditch.

  There was no living through this.

  "I have to get this out, Trez. I've waited a long time to talk to you. I'm not losing my chance."

  Dimly, she recognized that she was speaking with more emphasis, feeling more like herself, recovering even further thanks to the gift of his vein.

  "You're a male of worth, and I think I fell in love with you the very first--"

  Trez exploded out of the bed, and for a split second, she thought he was going to keep right on going, bursting out through the door and away from her and her dumb-ass illness. And for a moment, he paused in front of the exit.

  But then he just started to stalk around the room.

  "Why is it so hard for you to accept that?" she wondered out loud. "That you're a good male. That you're worth--"

  "Selena, you don't know what you're talking about."

  "You're prowling around this room like you're being hunted. So I'm pretty sure I'm onto something."

  He stopped and shook his head. "Look, this is about you. This . . ." He waved his hand back and forth between them. "This is all about you. I'm here for you and your needs, whatever they are. We're going to keep me out of it, okay?"

  Selena pushed herself up higher on the pillow. The strain on her elbows and shoulders made her grit her teeth, and she needed to catch her breath as the pain took its sweet time in fading.

  But it was better than being frozen stiff.

  When his eyes narrowed with concern, she said, "No, I don't need Doc Jane. Honest."

  As he rubbed his face, she looked at him properly for the first time. He'd lost some weight lately, his cheeks hollowing out so his jaw seemed even more pronounced, his eyes sunken deeper, his lips appearing fuller. And yet even so, he remained an enormous male of the species, his shoulders three times the size of hers, his chest and abdomen carved with power, ropes of muscle running down his arms and his legs.

  He was beautiful. From his dark skin to his black eyes, from the top of his shorn head to the soles of his booted feet.

  "You are so very worthy," she murmured. "And you're going to have to accept that."

  "Oh, really," he countered wryly. "I'm not so sure about--"

  "Stop it."

  Trez stared across at her and then frowned. "You know, I'm not sure why you're going on about this. No offense, but you nearly died in that other room. Like, how long ago? Feels like ten minutes. My shit is not important here."

  Selena glanced down at her body. She was wearing a hospital johnny that was pale blue and had little darker blue spirals in a repeating pattern. The thing tied in the back, and she could feel the knots biting in where her bra strap would have been if she were wearing one, and down lower, at the small of her back.

  It seemed strange to think that things in her body were functioning with relative normalcy now. And the reality that they wouldn't keep at it for much longer brought a stunning clarity.

  "You know," she murmured, "I've never considered the fact that there might be a good part to having a mortal disease."

  "And what's that," he asked tightly.

  She swung her stare back to his. "It makes you unafraid to say the things you really mean. Honesty can be scary, unless you have something even more terrifying to measure it against--like the prospect of dying. So I'll tell you exactly why I think your 'shit,' as you put it, is important. Whatever is driving you, whatever is causing"--she motioned in a circular pattern, encompassing his entire body--"or caused that void that's inside of you? I think you used all those women to try to run away from it. I think you fucked those humans for all those years as a distraction--and the fact that you don't want to acknowledge this? It makes me worried that you're just going to use me as an even bigger, better way of avoiding yourself. What could be even more seductive or effective if you don't want to deal with your own issues than one specific female with a deadly disease?"

  "Jesus Christ, Selena, I don't think like that. At all--"

  "Well, maybe you should." She tilted her head, another conclusion hitt
ing her like a ton of bricks. "And I'll tell you one more truth. Whether I have a thousand nights or two nights? I want them to be with you--but only in an honest way. I don't want to be your new excuse, Trez. I want you here, I want you with me, but I need it to be real between us. I don't have the energy or the time for anything less than that."

  In the long silence that followed, she waited for his response. But no matter how awkward things got, she wasn't recanting a word.

  She had said exactly what was on her mind.

  Kind of liberating, actually.

  SIXTEEN

  Abalone was not accustomed to violence. Not in the outside world, and certainly not in the house where his daughter slept and practiced her singing lessons and ate with him.

  As Rhage all but air-mailed Throe to the ground in front of Wrath, Abalone smothered a gasp with his palm. It was entirely unmanly to show any kind of shock in front of the Brotherhood, and he prayed that none of them noticed.

  They certainly did not appear to. Their concentration was on the blond-haired, simply-dressed male who was, for all intents and purposes, naught but a throw rug before the shitkickers of the King.

  Wrath smiled, baring fangs that seemed longer than Abalone's fingers. "Don't wait for me to help you up." As Throe began to pull himself up on his knees, the King tucked his arms over his chest. "And don't ask for the ring. I'll be tempted to crack you in the face with it."

  Once he was on his feet, Throe brushed himself off and straightened his shoulders. He wasn't close to Wrath's size, but he was far from a lightweight, his body more a soldier's than the whip-thin figure that males from his class tended to favor.

  "I have done nothing to deserve a presentation of your ring," he said in a low, grave voice.

  "Well, what do you know, something we agree on." Wrath's wraparound sunglasses tilted toward the sound of Throe's voice. "So, my boy Abalone says you have something on your mind."

  "I have left Xcor and the Band of Bastards."

  "You want a commemorative stamp," Butch muttered.

  "Can I stamp him with the grille of my car?" Rhage tossed out.

  Wrath's brows tightened over the bridge of those dark glasses, as if he didn't appreciate his males chiming in. "Change in direction for you, isn't it?"

  "Xcor's goals are no longer my own."

  "That right."

  "It has been a long time coming." Throe glanced over his shoulder, and Abalone would have preferred not to be the object of his regard. "As my distant cousin recalls, I am not from soldier stock. Through circumstances beyond my control, I was forced to take advantage of Xcor's dubious kindness. He required me to repay him with a tenure of service. As you know, having found me bleeding in that alley many, many months ago, his methods for ensuring loyalty are not conversational in nature."