However, there is one little thing that is pestering me beyond imagination, and I need to go and sort it out. I make a detour and head towards Devon’s room. I knock loudly on the door and he opens it a few seconds later.
“Hey,” he says.
I take him by the shoulders and push him back into his room, kicking the door closed behind me. “Well?” I ask with my hands on my hips.
“What?” he asks me, baffled with my sudden appearance.
“Don’t play dumb, Dev. Do you want me to bite you?” I ask.
“God, yes,” he says quickly, and I advance on him with a wicked smile.
He holds his hands up to stop me. “Wait,” he says.
“What for?” I ask. “I want this, don’t you?”
“I want you to bite me, Lizzie. But I don’t want you to turn me,” Devon says with cheeks as red as Santa’s suit.
“Excuse me?” I shout at him. How could he refuse me?
“For starters, we aren’t even sure if it will work. Secondly, I like being a half Dragon-twice-removed. I’m not sure I want to go back to being a Vampire,” he says carefully.
“But you will still have your powers,” I say, confused and upset.
“You don’t know that. You are different. The rest of us, not so much. I’ve made up my mind,” he says and crosses his arms, trying to stand up to me, but I see the waver in his gaze.
“Seriously?” I scoff and clench my hands into fists to stop myself from grabbing him and doing it anyway. “You know what you are giving up?”
His face almost crumples. “Yes, I do know: the chance to be your charge again, to have a special bond with you. But I don’t need it, Lizzie. I am still here, I still love you more than words can say, and I know you love me too. We don’t need it,” he whispers and curls my hair behind my ear.
“Seriously?” I ask now, err, seriously.
“Yes, completely,” he says with a smile.
“But,” I say as the tears prick my eyes. I really wanted him as my charge again. I wanted that bond with him.
“But nothing,” he says and kisses me softly. “I am happy as I am now.”
Well, I can’t argue with that…only there is now a huge problem. I deliberate with myself about whether to mention it, but as usual, my face gives me away.
“What?” he asks in dread. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” I reply. “Yet.” I twist my fingers and my clever boy has it all figured out already.
“No,” he says. “Lizzie, you can’t. Don’t do it, please.”
“I have to,” I wail at him. “I have to go back to the past now and see if I can set a different course.”
“To what end?” he bellows at me and he is as furious as I have ever seen him.
Geez, what is his fucking problem?
“To change all of this!” I bellow back and the tears that were threatening to come finally arrive, pooling out of my eyes. “All of this shit that I have been through, Devon. I don’t want it. I want to go back to fix it!”
“How?” he shouts at me. “To what point do you plan on going back, Elizabeth? To before you met Cole or to before you turned him on holy ground? Or maybe to before Constantine threw you out of a tower? How about to before Aelfric raped you? Or before Xanthe reverse-turned all of us? Or maybe to before you met Fraser, save yourself the heartache.” His blue eyes are blazing into mine and I gasp at his harshness. To mention Fraser to me under such circumstances is a cruel act that I would never have pegged him capable of. He is truly against this.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, it has nothing to do with this,” he apologizes. “But don’t you see that wherever you try to change the last two years, you will fuck it up? You will lose your child, both of them! And selfishly, you will put me back into a situation I am well rid of. Do this and you will regret it,” he says.
I blink at him, speechless for once in my life. I have no idea what to say to that. He is right, no matter what I try to change about the last two years, I will end up without my children. I am not so sure I can do that.