I stood, placing my palms on the table, towering over everyone. "You'd repeat history for your own selfish reasons? Is that what this is? I'm trying to save lives, Cassius! This has nothing to do with her!"
"Which is why your eyes," he said calmly, "continue to go black, why your blood boils beneath the skin that covers it, why your heart is in perfect cadence with hers. Yes, I can hear it, even from this far away, though I can't directly find her. Know this… I will."
"Unless you get her alone, you have no chance." I sat, half-tempted to toss my coffee in his face and tear his throat out for good measure.
"She'll come to me of her own accord. When you fail — and fail you will — she'll come to me. They always do."
My body shuddered with the onslaught of past memories. "You brainwashed her."
"I offered her a solution."
"You gave her death."
"I didn't say it was a good solution." Cassius shrugged. "Remember this, I've been damned to earth to help your cause — to help the immortals and humans keep balance. When you fail, it's my head — not yours."
I rolled my eyes. "It's been over five-hundred years since we've had a visit from one of the archangels. I highly doubt they're going to do it now. There's nothing special about her." That was a lie.
"I smell your doubt, vampire." Cassius growled my name pushed back the chair and stood. "Have your fun, try to win her affection, but know in the end, it will be me who has to save everyone."
"Has anyone ever told you that you have a god-complex?"
"I come by that quite naturally, I assure you." He nodded and walked off, calling behind him, "Do your worst, Ethan, or maybe I should say… try your best?"
"Ah, so may the best man win and all of that." I laughed. "Yet you forget. Your very essence will kill her."
"We don't know that for sure." He raised one hand and lifted the opposite shoulder in a seemingly casual shrug. "And I'm willing to take that risk. In order to save us all, I would take that risk every time. I wonder… would you?"
I swallowed and looked away, knowing he'd hit me at my weakness. Because I'd seen the signs with Ara and had ignored them because I'd thought I loved her, and in the end, I'd still refused to give her up, forcing his hand. Humiliation ate away, pinching my chest.
"This evening? She'll be in attendance then? Since the mating is… complete?" he asked, toying with his keys.
"She'll be there."
His grin was menacing. "Lovely."
Right.
He walked off.
And I stayed, planted in my seat, wondering if history truly was repeating itself, and if she wouldn't have been better off dying by Cass
ius's hands — dying in a blissful state — than living with someone who apparently had no capacity for love… or who, for some reason or another, was unlovable.
And that was the crux of the matter.
Regardless of what I'd done, my mate had never loved me back. Had never looked at me with the same adoration as I'd looked at her.
My love had destroyed her.
And in the end, I truly had no one to blame but myself, for being selfish enough to have hidden the truth from Cassius until it had been too late — selfish enough to have wanted to keep the child who hadn't even been mine.
Love, in all my experience, was just that — selfishness wrapped up in a pretty little bow.
I took one last drink of coffee and stood, just as a few giggling girls walked out of the coffee shop. They stopped. Their hearts, however, picked up speed as they glanced at me and blushed.
I didn't have time to placate them. Instead, I growled and stomped off in the other direction.
Stay alert.