Forever Broken

“Why not?” Laurent asked quietly. “And please do not tell me it is because Paul is my Coeur de Sang. If he does not wish to be with me, I will not keep him against his will.

I love him too much to see him miserable.”

“It has nothing to do with the way he feels, mein liebling. It is simply the fact that you cannot break an incomplete bond. It is too tenuous to grasp—the connection is too unstable to sever.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do then?” Paul was still pacing and looking extremely agitated. “I mean, what the fuck?” “You must complete the bond. Only a completed blood bond may be severed…or nurtured, whichever you choose.” Nana frowned at them both. “But if you choose to complete the bond and keep it, you must be wary. Though it will bring you closer and allow you, Paul, to call your inner wolf again, it will also make both of you terribly vulnerable.”

Laurent bit his lower lip—as if Paul needed another reason not to keep their bond intact. But he had to know the details. “How, Nana? Is the bond of a Coeur de Sang different from a regular blood bond?”

“It is.” She nodded gravely. “You will have the benefits of a regular bond—the ability to speak using only your minds, the ability to feel each other’s emotions—but it will run deeper than that. If you picture it like a cord tying you together it would be like a thick rope or a steel cable as opposed to a thin string, which is the usual connection.

That is why the blood bond of a Coeur de Sang never dies on its own—it feeds off both of you like a living thing. It is as though you were planting a beautiful tree together that has to be watered with your blood.”

“Watered with our blood?” Paul stopped pacing and stared at her. “Fucking great.

What the hell else happens? How does it make us vulnerable?” he demanded.

“You can be hurt through it,” Nana said quietly. “If you are hurt, Laurent will feel your pain. And vice versa, of course. But the greatest danger is that if one of you dies, the other will too. The link between you will take you down into the grave with your beloved.”

“What? It can fucking kill you?” Paul eyes widened. “I don’t believe this!”

“The dangers are many but the beauty of a completed bond is indescribable,”

Laurent said desperately. “Think of always being perfectly in sync with the one you love. Of never being alone. Of—”

Paul held out a hand to stop him. “Look, ’mano, I’m sorry but this just isn’t for me and I don’t think it sounds too fucking safe for you either. I think…I think we need to do what we have to do to get rid of this thing once and for all and try to forget it ever happened.”

“Do you really think I could forget you?” Laurent asked him in a low voice. “Do you think there will ever be a night when I look up at the moon and don’t remember your voice in my ear, your hands and mouth on my body, mon amour?”

“Hey, take it fucking easy, okay?” Paul threw an uncomfortable glance at Nana who was still sitting quietly, completely unperturbed.

“You don’t have to pretend that you and Laurent aren’t lovers, my dear,” she said to Paul. “Otherwise, you could not have even a partial bond.”

Paul’s face went red. “It’s not that way. Uh, not completely, anyway. I mean—”

“Now is not the time to discuss these things.” Laurent rose and reached for the other man’s hand. After a long moment of hesitation, Paul allowed him to take it but he didn’t look happy about it at all. Laurent stifled a sigh. It seemed that Nana’s information and the blunt way she had delivered it had set his relationship with Paul back several crucial steps. He looked at his old nurse. “Can we stay here for the day, Nana? We can be on our way by tomorrow night.”

“Nonsense.” Nana stood up too and put her hand on Laurent’s arm. “You’ll stay as long as you wish, mein liebling. Did you not say that you have two weeks before your father thinks to marry you off?”

Laurent nodded. “I did.”

“Well then, it’s settled.” She clasped her hands together and smiled at him. “You can stay with me in my basement. I’ve just had it renovated into a lovely guest quarters and you two can be my first guests. That way you can take your time deciding what to do.”

“But say we decide to complete the bond. Once we complete it, how do we break it?” Paul demanded. “How do we get out of it?”

“Is that really all that you care about?” Nana fixed him with a look so fierce that Paul shifted uneasily and looked down at his feet. “Do you know, young man, that once a blood bond is broken it cannot be restored? Would you throw away Laurent’s one chance at happiness as well as your own so easily?”