“I can’t sleep,” I say, crossing my arms across my chest. I lean back against the side of the window and try to avoid his stare.
“You could just talk to me about it,” Ezra says, and I hear him sigh.
There’s a pause between us, but I know exactly what he’s thinking. I can always read him just like he can read my mind.
“Erik.” He barks my name, and I look at him to see anger in his eyes. “If we don’t talk about this then we’re both going to be in a lot of pain one way or another. If you want to we can go to Bisho—”
“No!” I spit the word, cutting him off, and it echoes through the house.
This isn’t like me, but then again none of this is really something we’ve dealt with before. Normally I’m laidback and full of fun, and so is Ezra. We had a rough go in life before Bishop found us and welcomed us to his family. He may have made us into vampires, but he handed us the keys to a new life. We both swore that day to live it to the fullest and not to dwell on the bad things that happened to us. That’s why it makes it so much harder now to go to him and talk to him about this.
“I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t stand the pain. She’s out there, and I’m going to find her,” Ezra says, getting up from the window and walking away. I feel the same.
Even this kind of distance is difficult for us, but we’ve been pretending it’s all okay. Ever since we caught the scent of her, we’ve been on edge. That damn cotton candy is driving me insane and I have to find it. We have to find it.
Ezra is right that Bishop might have the answers, but what if the answers he has are the ones we don’t want to hear. He never told us if vampire twins can share a mate because he’s never seen a pair before. He only created us because he found us both near death and didn’t know what else to do.
We always had a bond ever since I can remember, but being made into a vampire somehow heightened that. Now when we’re apart for even a short amount of time it becomes uncomfortable. Since we scented the girl following us we’ve both been on edge with each other. Does this mean we’re about to break in half? I keep thinking in the back of my mind that we’ve just become each other’s competition to claim her as a mate. I know in my soul that I would lie down and die before I’d lay a hand on my brother in anger. But something primal in me has this need to protect, and if he stands between the girl and me, what will I do? Those are the thoughts that kept me from sleeping, and now I watch him storm away in anger. How does any of this make sense?
Before I can think on it too much I hear the water running in his room. He’s taking a shower and then I have a feeling he’s going to hunt for her. It’s been a week since the theater and when Valen told us about her snooping around. Now suddenly she’s gone and we can’t find her. How was she so close and I didn’t know?
We live alone in this giant house that Bishop designed for us. Our bedrooms are right beside one another, but there’s a third floor above us that we don’t talk about. The first time we saw it we were confused, but Bishop told us it was just in case. I’ve thought about the room upstairs for years and wondered if it was even a possibility. It’s a master that’s larger than the two of ours combined. There’s a bed bigger than I’ve ever seen and enough space for three.
Three.
I get up from the window and go into my room. I turn on the shower and decide to get ready. I won’t let Ezra go out alone just like he wouldn’t let me go out by myself either. There’s so much unspoken between us right now and so much happening within the confines of our family. Not only has Kane found his mate but she’s pregnant and now so is our sister, Ravana. It’s all happening at once and the reality that one of us has found our mate now is almost too much to wrap my head around.
This could all be in my head that I’m somehow mated to the same person as my twin. It could just be our strong connection, and now that he’s possibly found the one for himself I’m feeling that possessive instinct through him. There are a million different ways to explain what is going on between us right now, but I refuse to dwell on it. I’m afraid of all the negative scenarios, so instead I just stick my head in the sand and hope it all turns out okay. While I’m pretending, I know that Ezra is in pain and that’s the hardest part of all.