Her adoptive parents.
Each with small tattoos on the inside of their wrists.
Each with light blue-green eyes.
I kissed deeper.
Harder.
“Teach her,” they begged.
“Love her,” they whispered.
“She is yours,” they exhaled.
And like dust disappeared.
Orphaning her.
A deep sense of loneliness filled my body as I shook for more of her memories, only this time it was as if I was blocked — I searched, prodded, and was met with only darkness, like she’d been sleeping for years, only to just now awaken.
Hope shifted in my arms, trying to move closer, her eyes wild with lust. It had never bothered me before. The lust.
I brought it out of everyone.
But for the first time in my life.
I craved more than that.
I craved her love.
Something I had been without — for as long as I could remember.
The memory of my mother’s words haunted me in that moment, the stab of pain as she drove the knife into my back — as my own father looked at me as an abomination and cruelly smiled when I fell to the floor covered in immortal blood.
“Alex,” Hope gripped my face with both of her hands.
My breath came out in heavy rasps, like I was choking on my own memories and couldn’t focus on anything except for the terror of never being wanted.
Or loved.
Or cared for.
And then there was Hope.
She kissed me softly then.
On the corner of my mouth.
I ran my tongue over the spot where her lips had touched and was met with the salt of her tears.
She was crying.
No.
I reached up and touched my cheeks.
Those tears were mine.