The outline of his fingertips stays on my skin long after he’s released me.
Gold rings his topaz eyes and the bruises beneath both stand to attention against his dusky skin.
The cut over his eyebrow has knitted together in a long pink line.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I murmur.
“I’m not fighting with you. I’m fighting for you. I don’t want you to break yourself for me. It’s not worth it.”
Fire erupts inside my chest and I straighten. “What do you mean, it’s not worth it? Do you not want to save yourself?”
He shakes his head. “Not at your expense.”
My heart thuds out an uneven rhythm. I cough, the argument softening before it truly begins.
Grayson rests his hand on my knee in a comforting weight, a powerful warmth.
Like his handbelongson me and it’s his right to touch and claim.
I want it to be.
My own hands have lingered too long on him. I could tell him I’d be fine. Not to worry about me. To let me do this because I want to.
The words are too paltry. They won’t mean much given our circumstances.
Grayson sighs and constricts in on himself. “If I lose myself, I want the last thing I remember to be you.”
His eyes flutter shut.
He doesn’t want me to break myself for him? It’s too late. It’s out of my control. It happened, right now, with his confession.
I’ve never been that for someone. I’ve never been the sacred thing they hold close to their heart, nothing like how he speaks about me.
I finish binding his other wounds and by the time I’m through, Grayson weaves in and out of consciousness.
Ten long, excruciating hours later, we pull into the witch’s driveway on Willow Grove Lane. Sunrise peeks over the horizon as they lead us into the house to sleep or to donate blood in their attic turned chemistry lab.
Sleep is the last thing on my mind. After handing over a vile of opaque liquid, which I can only assume is their vampire venom, Lacey and Colt settle in for the day someplace they don’t need moss or dirt to block the sun. Part of me is curious how they were able to extract it—like one does with a snake?—but the other part of me is content with keeping it a mystery.
Yikes.
Grayson forgoes the shower to pass out. And after donating my blood, I lay at his side, settling along his contours, my mind racing.
His lips open slightly in sleep, a sight I could definitely get used to, as if he’s ready to tell me a secret. We were given RJ’s room while the witches started immediately on the cure.
What will it feel like to accomplish the impossible?
Better yet, what would life be if I were a normal person, a normal werewolf with a boyfriend like Grayson? We could walk outside without worry or fever or voices of madness in our heads.
My jaw clenches and my senses go wild like someone dumped a bucket of icy water over my head. An insistent tickle at the rear of my skull has me sitting up and pushing a curtain of limp hair out of my face.
Someone’s here.
The room is shadowed, the curtains shut to give us a better shot at rest.
Grayson hasn’t moved, sprawled on his back on the mattress with a slight compression at his side where I fit perfectly.
My senses scream at me to sit up and pay attention. I slowly push my legs out from under the blanket, casting a single look at him before padding out of the room.