When a slow smile touches the edges of the shadows in her eyes, I know I made the right choice. I reach out and pull her onto my lap, relishing the feel of all of her against all of me. I glance down and run my finger along the promise ring I gave her, remembering the vow I made that day, the trembling conviction in my voice as I said those fateful words, and my chest tightens.
“You know,” she says, pulling my gaze back to hers, “you said if I ever guessed what promise you made, you’d tell me. I think I’ve figured it out.”
I raise one eyebrow. “Do you now?”
She nods. “You promised to bring me breakfast in bed for the rest of my life.”
I snort-laugh. “Doubtful. You are a brat in the mornings.”
The first real smile I’ve seen from her in what feels like forever lightens her face. “Hey, I resemble that.” Then she laughs at her own joke, and I can’t help myself from joining her. It’s so fucking nice to see her smiling again.
“I know…” she continues, pretending to ponder alternatives. “You promised to let me win every argument?”
I give a full belly laugh at that ridiculous suggestion. She loves arguing with me. The last thing she’d ever want is for me to roll over and just let her have her way. “Not likely.”
She stills then, blinking up at me. “Are you ever going to tell me?”
She’s not ready to hear what I promised before I even knew she would ever love me back. So instead I joke, “Now where would the fun be in that?”
She fake punches me in the shoulder. “I will get it out of you one day.” She runs her soft hand along the stubble on my jaw, her eyes turning serious again. “I have forever to keep guessing, mate.”
And just like that, I’m on fire.
“I love you,” I whisper and lean down to brush my lips across hers. Once, twice. But Grace is having none of it. She reaches up and holds my head between her palms, her lashes fluttering across her cheeks just before she demands everything from me. My breath. My heart. My very soul.
When we’re both breathless, I lean back and hold her gaze. I could get lost in the depths of her warm brown eyes for an eternity.
“I love you,” I tell her again.
“I know,” she teases, repeating my words from earlier.
“That smart mouth is going to be the death of me,” I murmur and start to kiss her once more, thoughts of picking her up and carrying her over to my bed dancing through my head. But she stiffens, and I know my thoughtless comment about dying reminded her, reminded us both, of everything we’ve lost, could still lose.
My heart nearly stops when I see the tears filling her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
She gives her head a quick shake, like I shouldn’t be beating myself up over my slip, but, well, not going to happen. Then she bites her lip, her chin quivering as she tries to hold all the pain she’s feeling inside, and for the billionth time, I want to kick myself for always speaking first and thinking second when she’s near me.
“Babe, it’s going to be okay,” I tell her even as everything inside me turns to liquid. Bones, arteries, muscles, all of it just dissolves in the space from one breath to the next, and all I’m left with is what I’d be without Grace. An empty, bleeding shell.
“What can I do?” I ask. “What do you need—”
She cuts me off by placing her small, cold fingers against my mouth.
“Luca died for nothing. Flint’s leg, Jaxon’s heart, everything… It was all for nothing, Hudson,” she whispers.
I pull her back into my arms, hold her while the anguish of what we’ve survived works its way through her system, her shaking now becoming my own as I know I’m out of excuses.
In this moment, while I hold the girl I love—the girl I would do anything to save—I know my time has run out. The cold hard truth I’ve spent the last hour doing my bloody best to ignore slams into me and steals my breath.
It’s all my fault.
Everything. Every agony, every death, every moment of pain Grace and the others felt on that island—it’s all my damn fault.
Because I was selfish. Because I didn’t want to give her up yet. Because I was weak.
I’ve spent my life running from a destiny my father always wanted for me, but I realize now I have no choice. It’s coming for me whether I want it to or not, and there isn’t shit all I can do to avoid it. Not a second time. Not with Grace’s happiness at stake.
And when I finally surrender to my fate, I’m afraid it will destroy us all.
1
Sometimes Two Rights
Make One Very Big Wrong
I want to be anywhere but here.
Anywhere but standing right here, in the middle of this too-cold room that all but reeks of pain and misery and a heavy dose of antiseptic. I send Hudson a quick smile before turning to face the rest of the gang.
“What do we do first?” Macy speaks softly, but my cousin’s question echoes through the destroyed clinic, bouncing off the empty walls and broken beds like a gunshot.
It’s the million-dollar question, the billion-dollar question. And right now, in front of Macy and our friends, I don’t have a clue how to answer it.
To be fair, I’ve been in shock since we showed up at Katmere and found it ransacked, with blood-spattered walls, wrecked rooms, and every single student and professor missing. And now to find out that Flint’s leg couldn’t be saved? I’m devastated, and the fact that he’s trying so hard to be strong only makes it a million times worse.
Now, an hour later, I may be cleaner after my shower, but I am still reeling from the devastation of it all.
Even worse, as I look from one friend’s face to the next—Jaxon, Flint, Rafael, Liam, Byron, Mekhi, Eden, Macy, Hudson—it’s clear they’re as shaken as I am. And no one seems to have any more clue than I do about what happens next.
Then again, what is there to do at a time like this, when the entire world as you know it is ending and you’re caught in the middle, watching it crumble brick by brick? At a time when every wall you shore up just leaves an opening for everything else to collapse around you?
It’s not the first time we’ve suffered loss these last few months, but it is the first time since my parents died that everything feels truly hopeless for us all.
Even when I was alone on the Ludares field, I knew things would be okay—if not for me, then for the people I cared about. Or fighting the giants with Hudson—I always knew he would survive. And when we were on the Unkillable Beast’s island, fighting the vampire king and his troops, I still felt like we had a chance. Still felt like we could somehow find a way to defeat Cyrus and his unholy alliances.