I had a really bad feeling about what was about to happen next.
“And,” I croaked when I found my voice. “If I do?”
He pulled away his red eyes blinking slowly before he answered in a hoarse voice. “Then all is lost.”
Alex
THE RIVER WAS dripping red.
With blood.
Blood I’d spilled.
I let out a guttural cry as I fell to my feet and then I saw her. Hope. Across the river, she was laughing, smiling.
I reached out to her only to find that my hand wouldn’t move.
I yelled for her.
My mouth remained closed and even as my breathing slowed, I found I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She was perfection.
From the wide curve of her hips to the edges of her fingertips. I wanted to lick every inch of her.
I was at peace.
Simply watching.
Peace had never come without sex.
Satisfaction was a not a thing I was accustomed to unless I was joined with another human being physically.
It was nice.
I felt warm.
And then too warm as darkness started to spread like a cloud across the field she was standing in.
And then, I saw him.
White hair with strips of red, a sword in hand, bleeding armor of black, caked in purple immortal blood.
Bannik.
His smile was cruel as he approached her.
Demeanor changed, he looked like an angel, like an original, he looked as he did before he and his brothers fell from the mountains.
And I hated him for his perfection.
For his beauty.
Beauty that only the angelic race could possess.
Beauty I would never have.
And for the first time in my existence, I was jealous as he reached for her hand and kissed it.
“NO!” I screamed, my lips finally moving but no sound came.
Hope dropped her hand and took a step back as he took a step forward.
He would not have her.
He would not touch her.
I would kill him.
I would kill all of them.
Every last one.
I would both start a war and end it.
I would destroy the planet and everyone in it — if he took what was mine.
My body shook with a need for war.
It started in my hands as my blood shook, boiling to the surface, and then I remembered what happened the last time I felt this way.
Death.
My fault.
They had all died.
With a roar, I fell to my knees.
And then opened my eyes to Hope.
All I saw was her.
My thirst — was for her.
There was no hunger, only a thirst that I knew she could quench, a desperate need to have her.
We had somehow created a mental bond.
The physical had to follow, or we would both die.
“You must reach your full potential.” A familiar voice beckoned.
And if what I’d just seen was prophecy, Bannik would succeed. If I did not take her.
He would.
And just like history repeating itself — a child of the elves would die.
She would die.
The room faded away as I reached for her and mindlessly pulled every inch of clothing from her glorious body. She felt so hot.
Comforting.
She felt perfect.
I fought the urge to claim her without permission — the last thing I needed was her heart stopping.
I’d seen it happen.
Pleasure had the potential to kill — it was why sirens were considered so deadly to humans.
You could die of good.
Just like you could die from the bad.
Odd, how anything in extremes could be your utter destruction.
I held back.
And kissed her.
Then wished someone would have warned me how it would feel — the mating — the claiming.
Then again, if Cassius had warned me, would I have believed him anyway? Waves of pleasure assaulted me until I couldn’t see straight, until there were ten of her, and greedily I wanted all ten of the visions in front of me, I wanted to give endless orgasms, plunder until I was unconscious, until all anyone smelled on her was me.
“Do not die,” I begged, not recognizing the dark pleading in my own voice.
“And if I do?”
“Then all is lost.” I answered before claiming her lips again, tasting the salt of the earth on her tongue as her fingers dug into my biceps.
I distracted her with my kisses, numbing her to the fact that within minutes her life would never be the same.
With each kiss, I drew more and more of her memories into my consciousness.
Her lonely childhood.
Her adoptive parents.
Each with small tattoos on the inside of their wrists.
Each with light blue-green eyes.
I kissed deeper.
Harder.
“Teach her,” they begged.
“Love her,” they whispered.
“She is yours,” they exhaled.
And like dust disappeared.
Orphaning her.
A deep sense of loneliness filled my body as I shook for more of her memories, only this time it was as if I was blocked — I searched, prodded, and was met with only darkness, like she’d been sleeping for years, only to just now awaken.
Hope shifted in my arms, trying to move closer, her eyes wild with lust. It had never bothered me before. The lust.
I brought it out of everyone.
But for the first time in my life.
I craved more than that.
I craved her love.
Something I had been without — for as long as I could remember.
The memory of my mother’s words haunted me in that moment, the stab of pain as she drove the knife into my back — as my own father looked at me as an abomination and cruelly smiled when I fell to the floor covered in immortal blood.