“He made me promise,” she said, lunging to her feet in between Ginny and the door, fending her off with outstretched hands. “Put yourself in his position. He doesn’t want you to spend your life as a…as a-a—”
“Snack,” Elias pronounced. “A permanent one. Every day of your life.”
The ground shook under the intensity of Jonas’s next bellow. Dust puffed down from the ceiling, distracting her three friends long enough to allow Ginny to lunge for the door, shaking the handle. “Open it. Let me go to him.”
“Think first, sweetheart,” Tucker said, oh-so-casually laying a hand on the door to keep it closed. “He’s our friend. He saved our lives, once upon a time. We don’t want to watch him die any more than you do. But he made his wishes clear.”
Ginny’s mind went back to their conversation in the alley outside the bar. Before she truly knew what they were talking about. “Elias said he wouldn’t want to keep me away if he knew the separation was causing me pain.”
“Pain that will subside if he…” Elias paced down the hallway and halted, hands on hips. “When he eventually goes.”
Every snapping nerve ending in her body screamed at her to get inside the apartment, but she bore down hard on the impulse, attempting to break through the hold desperation had on her. Something inside of her was alive, like a current. And it ran directly to Jonas. But she was her own person. She was a single, solitary woman and in that moment, a trail diverged in front of her.
If she went one direction, her life ahead was a complete mystery. What did it mean to be the mate of a vampire? To quench his thirst each and every day.
She ignored the arousal and satisfaction that tried to make her rush. Instead, she imagined the consequences of embracing this life.
“Will I continue to get older?” she whispered.
Tucker looked down at the floor and nodded.
She absorbed that. “What happens to him when I die?”
“We don’t know,” Elias said, still turned away. “The few times in the past a vampire mated with a human…they were either executed by the King or…”
“Or?”
“Or their attempt to Silence them didn’t work.”
Ginny’s temples beat heavily, making her dizzy. She closed her eyes and felt Jonas’s presence inside the apartment, taciturn and heartsick and miserable. “Me too, Dreamboat,” she whispered, splaying a palm on the door.
What if she took the other path?
The one with the much clearer future?
She continued to work at the funeral home, surrounded by memories of happy times with her father, while never making more happy memories. Of her own.
The very idea of waking up in her bed every morning and knowing Jonas no longer walked the earth flooded her with burning acid. She fell against the door and wheezed through an inhale—and she knew. She knew that searing agony would never go away. It wouldn’t fade like the remnants of some crush. Twice now she’d experienced his pain. Hadn’t she? Yes. A connection like that didn’t die. Letting it die without a fight would be a travesty.
Furthermore, she wasn’t sure she could live without him.
Call it intuition, but she was no longer simply herself. Not merely Ginny. She bore the invisible mark of this vampire on her soul. This. Being together. It was supposed to be. Being without him wasn’t an option at all. It was taking a machete to the eternal ribbon of fate.
In the firmest voice she could muster, Ginny said, “I understand what I’m doing. Open the door.”
Without turning around, she could feel Elias, Tucker and Roksana exchanging looks. That didn’t concern her. She was focused on the man on the other side of the door. Now that she’d made the decision to live as his mate, come hell or high water, rightness settled on her shoulders and raised her chin. Whatever obstacles were to come, they would be together. And they would make each other whole.
Elias inserted a key into the lock, twisted and pushed open the door.
Jonas was nowhere in sight, but his scent slid down her throat like warm, minty chocolate, sweet and welcome. Instinct told her where he was—and the realization made her eyes flood with moisture.
“He’s chained in that room, isn’t he? With the silver?”
“On his order,” Roksana said. “We need to leave him chained, Ginny. Until he gets himself under control. He’s…not himself right now.”
“The control he must have exercised…” Tucker whistled under his breath. “To taste his mate and not only deny himself more, but make it home and lock himself up. It must have damn near killed him.”
Ginny’s heart twisted painfully. “Well his suffering ends now.” She squared her shoulders and strode in the direction of the back room—
Only to be felled by a wave of pain so astronomical, it made the first two episodes seem like a sneeze. In the center of the living room, she doubled over and landed hard on her right shoulder, screaming pitifully at the top of her lungs. Razors slashed at her insides and fire climbed her throat, needing, needing, needing…
Distantly, she heard chains rattling and Jonas’s broken shouting of her name.
Roksana dropped down beside Ginny, her expression tortured. “What do we do?”
Nothing. There was nothing they could do.
She had to do it.
She had to get to Jonas.
Now. Or something told Ginny the pain would overcome her.
Battling the blistering waves traveling through her middle, Ginny positioned herself onto her stomach and crawled on her hands and knees down the hallway. At some point, Elias ran ahead and opened the door—and revealed Jonas.
Or what used to be Jonas, anyway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Her prince was no more.
In his place was the embodiment of sunken eyed starvation. His manacled wrists were bloody and ravaged, hair sweaty and matted to his forehead. He was shirtless for the first time since Ginny had met him, but her perusal of him yielded no enjoyment. Lord no. He was gaunt, his muscles straining beneath waxy skin.
The wild look in his eye stopped Ginny mid-crawl, even though it hurt to put any kind of hitch in her momentum. How would she ever get moving again? Because no matter how feral Jonas looked, she would continue. She would go to him. If anything, his appearance made the journey more urgent.
Move.
Ginny slid a knee forward on the wooden hallway floor, smacking a palm down and pulling her throbbing body closer. She completed the movement twice more before she realized Jonas had stopped rattling his chains. A glance in his direction showed him down on his knees, watching her in horror.
“What is wrong with her?” Jonas boomed, making the floorboards tremble. He pulled on the chains with a desperate sound. “Ginny!”
“We think she’s feeling your pain.”
His breath left him in a shuddering rush. “No.” Slowly, his head started to shake in vehement denial. “No, she can’t be feeling this. I can’t let it go on. Elias, bring me a stake. Put it through my fucking heart.”
“Don’t ask that of me,” Elias seethed.
Jonas’s green eyes blazed over Ginny, his wrists restless in their chains. “She will suffer until I go otherwise. No. No, God. It could take weeks. Don’t you understand?”