Skye
Alex takes my trembling hands. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“How?” My heart races. Guilt and uncertainty tangle into a ball of yarn in my brain that I’ll never be able to unwind. “You don’t–you can’t possibly want this. Especially not now.”
“I do, and we’re going to figure it out. I’m more concerned about the fact that you’re about to go through a hybrid pregnancy.” He sits beside me on the bed, smoothing his hand down my back. “My great aunt Emory,” he explains, taking a deep breath. “She was a shifter, similar to you. Full shifter, though, and her pregnancy with my uncle Michael was… terrible.”
“How so?”
“I don’t have all the details given that this story was told to me as a teenager–something meant to keep me from pursuing shifters for their own safety, I suppose.” He grits his teeth, but I feel oddly light.
“Were you a major flirt or something?”
“No.” He laughs, winding his arm around my back and tugging me close. “I was not. If anything, I was awkward and terrified of women. My cousin Drake was the worst offender, but we were often grouped together for conversations like that.”
I lean into his side, smiling at the idea of Alex, now a world-renowned biologist and a man who oozes confidence, being what I imagine as a lanky, socially awkward teenage boy.
“Vampire pregnancies are an ordeal. The babies take a lot of energy, and most vampire women close themselves away for months with the care of physicians–especially in the early days. Emory struggled immensely.”
“I’ve been feeling unwell for a while.”
“I’ve noticed. I thought it was stress.”
“So did I,” I admit. “I’m sorry I didn’t voice it.”
“I should have picked up on it.”
“How could you have? With everything else we’ve been dealing with? It’s not your fault.”
“It feels like my fault,” he says, swallowing hard. “And I’ve fed from you recently. I should have sensed it. Fuck, Skye, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He turns me to face him, pulling me onto his lap. His hands rest on either side of my face, and his expression turns so serious he could slice through me with his gaze like butter against a heated knife. “You’re going to be very sick for a while. I’m shocked you’re not bedridden now, given how far along you are, but I promise you, Skye, that I’m going to do everything in my power to keep you safe. I love you. I am in love with you, and I have been since the moment I saw you. You are mine, and I will protect you and this baby.”
“What are you planning?”
“I will protect you,” he reiterates, and I have an overwhelming sense that something else happened that he’s not telling me. Did he talk to Kai, like I saw?
“Is this about Kai?”
“This is about us.” He leans forward, resting his forehead against mine. “The university isn’t going to be kind about this. You’re going to need an extended leave of absence. They’re already aware of our relationship, but things need to change now–quickly.”
I lean back, not sure I like the urgency in his tone. He’s… afraid of something.
And then it hits me.
“They’ll push me out of my position?”
“Yes, and I already have strikes against me with Alloway. The Beta of Aurorium is acting like I’m a suspect in the murders.”
“What are you suggesting we do?”
“Get married. Immediately. Tonight, if we can. I know the temple in Aurorium is always open–”
“You can’t–you can’t actually want this! You’re a prince, Alex. Aren’t there rules for you about this?”
“I haven’t been the Prince of Scarlet Thunder in thirteen years, Skye. That doesn’t matter now.”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
“I do. Fuck, I do. I want you protected–both of you. I want to marry you because I want to be able to call you my wife but also because, if anything happens to me, everything I have is yours. I don’t have much, but it’s enough to keep you and the baby going for a while. But I need you to listen to me now. You know the university is going to do what it can to push you out of your position once they know.”
My stomach curls. I feel heavily nauseous again but push it down. He’s right. I’ve had female colleagues who straight-up disappeared after announcing their pregnancies and showed up in industry positions in various cities across the Allied Kingdoms. The campus here isn’t conducive to family life, and that’s apparent at every turn. Most professors and faculty with families live in Aurorium and commute to work, but housing there is hard to find.
And my time here is limited anyway. Alex found that out recently.
His time here is limited as well.
“We have to consider you going back to Moonrise, at least for the duration of the pregnancy.”
I hate that he’s right.
Going home means telling my family the truth.
“I’ll marry you, but only because I want to. Because I love you, and I want us to be together, whatever that looks like. And I will marry you tonight because I know you’re plotting something you’re not telling me about, and you’re nervous about it.”
“Skye–”
“I can look into your head and find it–unless you want to tell me?” I hold his gaze.
“Kai made himself known tonight. Threatened me. Threatened us.”
“And what are we going to do about it?”
“I’m going to handle it,” he says sternly, but I don’t like the look in his eyes.
I don’t like it even when we’re standing outside the temple in Aurorium with a marriage certificate in our hands, our signatures still wet. Abby and Toby tagged along as witnesses, and while the moment we stood in front of a rather confused priestess felt like we were exactly where we were meant to be, Alex seemed off–distracted, his expression painted in shadows of determination and promises of death.
Because Kai is here, in the city, somewhere.
The next morning, Alex slides out of bed and leaves, murmuring something about needing to meet Toby in the lab and then settle our issues with the university. He kisses me, tells me to rest, that he has this, and he will make everything right for us.
And I know he will.
But I can’t sit around while he carries the burden of our uncertain future on his shoulders.
I move through the winding skybridges of the campus I thought felt like home once. Maybe it did at one point. Now, I feel suddenly suffocated within its walls, choked to death by social restraints that I’m afraid will haunt me and Alex for the rest of our lives.
I step into the observatory. It’s empty, just like I hoped it would be. I toy with my phone, tempted to call my parents, wondering how angry they’ll be to learn their daughter is pregnant and had a shotgun wedding and the ink on the license is barely dry, but that’s not what I’m worried about.
Alex is a being of calculated risk. He knows exactly the best course of action in any situation. He wanted to marry me to keep me and the baby safe. I understand that part. But he failed to voice that the real reason he wanted us attached from a legal standpoint is because he’s planning on killing Kai–and believes he’ll die in the effort.
I married him because now he’ll have the safety and protection of the royal family of the Allied Kingdoms, no matter what.
Because he’s not going to kill Kai.
I am.
I close my eyes and let my powers flare.
I’ve found Kai once before. He might be a beast of pure death, but he’s a stupid one. His mind is open and mine for the taking. He has no training in mental wards because he’s never needed it until now. My hatred of him, a stranger, runs so deep, I could find him anywhere. My hatred of him for what he’s done to Alex, for what his mother did to Alex, his family, and his kingdom, is the reason the entire brunt of my powers funnel and hone in on his location.
The silence in the observatory explodes into murmurs. I finally allow myself to be the mystic I know I can be, letting go of my restraints, and fold the stars into a weapon of my own design.
Kai is in the city, smoking a cigarette, watching the entrance of a grocery store. He watches a mother juggle shopping bags while two young children slide on the ice on either side of her. I dive into the vision, into his mind, peeling back layers of emotionally driven sparks of color to decipher his inner thoughts. He thinks she’d be an easy target. Her man is likely at work or hunting out on the ice. He can subdue her quickly. He can easily subdue a child. He’d be well fed.
“Can you feel me?” I ask him, grinning around the feeling of him jolting into awareness at my intrusion. “I found you.”
If I were more powerful, I could undo his mind from dozens of miles away, but I’m not. I just get glimpses from here. I need to touch him to take him apart.
“I’m coming for you,” I whisper into his head. He snuffs out his cigarette, smiling wickedly.
“It’s been so long since I’ve tasted a witch. Do your worst. I’ll be waiting.”
He turns into a shadow between two buildings. I let the connection drop. I have what I need. I can scry from anywhere to find him now.
I rise and move through the campus, jogging, my heart hammering. I have to do this quickly. I want to finish this before Alex and I have to face the consequences of our rushed actions. I want to free Alex of the burden he’s carried for almost half his life. He wants to protect me. I want to return the favor, which means bending myself into a being of death once again.
I’ve killed before out of hatred. I’ve ripped a mind apart. I’ve never forgotten how it feels.
I still have the keys to the old apartment I shared with Abby. I slip inside and find her sitting on the couch with her laptop propped open. Her lips part in shock when she sees me.
“Skye? Are you okay?”
My voice doesn’t sound like my own when I reply, “I need to borrow some clothes.”
“What’s going on?” She rises slowly, setting her laptop down. “You don’t look well.”
“I need you to do something for me,” I tell her, swallowing against a sharp knot forming in my throat. A sob, I think, because the truth of what I’m about to do is now striking me directly in the chest. “If Alex asks where I am, tell him I’ve gone out on the ice.”
“What?”
“Tell him I’m sorry, but if we’re going to have a shot at the life we both want together, I have to do this. It’s all for him.” I lick my lips. “And… tell him not to worry. I’ve done this before.”
“Skye?” She rushes me, but I hold out a hand. My fingers brush her collarbone, and that’s all it takes to subdue her. My powers flare through her head, forcing her to sleep. She slumps, and I catch her, lowering her back down onto the couch.
I can only hope Kai is the same–only much deader.
I put on her bright yellow thermals and equally obnoxious yellow parka. I slip into her best winter boots with pointed spikes. Then, I let my powers surge, and her apartment shifts form, fading in and out until the warm, sterile air turns to bitter cold wind and a landscape of pure ice.
Kai turns to face me, red eyes shining like dying stars. His fangs, twice as long as Alex’s, fully expand.
It was… almost too easy.
Somewhere in the aether, I catch glimpses of Abby waking up and crawling on her hands and knees to the coffee table where she left her phone. She calls Toby, barely able to speak, but begs him to find Alex. She tells him I’m in trouble, that I’ve gone out onto the ice.
The visions fade. I look around while Kai approaches me, drinking me in with his cold-blooded eyes. The campus is only ten miles away. Alex is fast. He can cover that distance in minutes.
I have minutes to finish this.
I turn back to Kai.
But I miscalculated.
Alex was right when he told me Kai was powerful. He was right when he told me vampires could outrun me in a breath.
Kai has me on the ground in a single second, and before I can even touch him, his fangs sink into the base of my throat–and rip.