He moves fast, at vampire speed, except now I don’t see him as a blur. My eyes adjust to the movement, like a camera speeding up the frames, and I see him clearly as he approaches.
Then he’s in front of me, on his knees and he’s leaning forward, placing his hand at my cheek and I’m looking into his eyes and I see the eyes of the man I’ve loved for so long, since the very start, even when I didn’t know it.
Wolf. He’s my Wolf.
“Please, baby,” he says, voice broken, and that name does something to my chest, penetrates the shield. “I know I fucked up. I know I did and if I could take it back, I would. I got scared, I got so fucking scared of losing you and I acted like a coward. Because I am a coward. And my father would roll over in his grave if he knew that the brave little boy who tried to save him, ended up doing what I did to you.”
“I was already grieving, Wolf,” I tell him, the anguish just below the surface. “And then you…”
“I broke your heart.” He stares at me through liquid eyes, eyes that don’t hide an ounce of the pain he’s feeling. “I broke my heart too. And I’ll never forgive myself for it. That’s not who I was supposed to become. That’s not someone strong, someone to be proud of. I broke hearts and promises because I couldn’t imagine loving you and losing you and for that I…” he closes his eyes, taking in a trembling breath through his nose. “I don’t deserve your love. And I most definitely do not deserve this.” He nods at me.
I stare down at my hands. My hands that have been so familiar to me my whole life. I thought that maybe when I became a vampire my age spots on the backs would have faded, that all my little scars and bumps and whatnot would disappear, in the way that all of Lenore’s tattoos disappeared when she turned.
But my hands look the same. In a way it’s a relief. I’m still me. I’ll just be with these exact hands forever.
I glance at Wolf, at the softness in his gaze, at the face I love to look at so much. I’ll be with him forever too, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.
“Do vampires ever break up?” I ask.
His eyes widen for a moment, a flash of fear. “Yes. All the time.”
“Ah,” I say.
“It’s not so different from being a human,” he goes on. “You keep looking until you find the one. And once you find the one, you want to be with them for the rest of your life. And you do everything you can to hold onto them.”
“And am I the one for you?” I ask softly, almost too afraid.
He practically melts in front of me, now cupping my face in both of his large, strong hands. His hands have always been cool to the touch to me, but now they’re warm. So warm, like our blood is rushing to the surface of our skin to meet each other.
“Baby,” he whispers, eyes searching mine with such frantic intensity that butterflies are being unleashed in my chest, and he’s breaking through my new defenses. “You’ve always been the one. Always. Even before I met you, you have been the one, the one I’ve been searching for centuries for. I knew you were out there. I knew that’s what I was living for, living towards, that moment when you’d come into my life and suddenly I would have something worth living for. Before you, I was just aimless, wandering this planet, trying to find my happiness, trying to find out the reason why I exist.”
He looks away, eyes wet with memory. “It was such a lonely time. Just years, decades, centuries of loneliness, of being too scared to get close to anyone and yet wishing that I could just love. That I could find someone to love, who would love me back, and who would whittle this big, strange, sprawling life into just one thing.”
He spears me with his gaze. “You are that one thing, Amethyst. But you are not just one thing. You are everything. You are the moon and the sun and the stars and all the light in my life, and you banish this darkness and you reveal the shadows, and you show me that even the things I’m terrified of, things like death, that I can get through them all, especially if you’re at my side. You show me my fears and it’s only now, maybe when it’s too late, that I find the strength to face them.”
There’s a lump in my throat, my chest feeling tight.
Oh hell.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I might love him more than before.