Blood Before Sunrise

His voice was hollow, emotionless. Too calm. My heartbeat kicked into high gear, pounding against my rib cage, and I felt as if I needed to swallow ten times more than usual. “Tyler-”

“Do you know how that feels, Darian, to have that light flipped on and then extinguished over and over?”

“I didn’t know.” God, what a lame-ass response. “When I left, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t.” His voice became hard. “If you had, you probably would’ve included it in your note.”

“If I told you what I was going to do, you would have tried to stop me. Or worse, come with me. I was trying to protect you.”

Tyler turned to face me, and the fist squeezing my heart constricted at the sight of him. He looked freshly showered and shaved. In fact, his hair was still a little damp, and he smelled of shampoo and body wash on top of his natural scent. His hair was a bit longer, curling at the base of his neck and over his ears. He raised his brows in question and those too disappeared into longer, curling, bronze-streaked locks. But what did me in was the look in those beautiful hazel eyes of his. His gaze was empty, dull, completely hollow, and I realized at that moment that what I’d done-leaving without a trace-had nearly killed him.

“Where did you go?” His tone was that of a demand.

“The Faerie Ring.”

“O Anel?”

I opened my mouth to speak, too astonished at his knowledge to put a coherent string of words together.

“What, Darian?” He became agitated, almost defensive. “You didn’t think I was smart enough to know what that was? I’m older than your friend Raif and twice as clever as that asshole who managed to gain your trust and lure you away. Fallon,” he scoffed. “The least he could have done was picked a better alias. It didn’t take long for me to figure out who-and what-he really was. Maybe if you’d checked one of the twenty or so voice mails I’d left you, you would have realized that I was already one step ahead of you. You knew I’d been talking to people. Investigating. You didn’t even give me enough time to confirm what I’d learned before you took off on me.” My eyes widened, and he gave me a bitter smile. “I guess you didn’t think I was strong enough to help you, so why should I be any smarter?”

“That’s not true.” Goddamn it, I needed more saliva in my mouth. It was too dry to even form words.

“That is true.” He sat down on the bed, crossing his legs at the ankle and his arms in front of him. The laid-back attitude he’d adopted put me on high alert. “You didn’t think I could hold my own with what you had going down. You lied to me, deceived me, withheld information I could have used to help you. And then, to top it all off, you left in the middle of the night with a cryptic note for explanation and fled the city with another man. A man you obviously trusted and held in higher regard than me.”

“Tyler, that’s not what happened at all. I was deceived. It was a trap.”

He pushed himself off the bed and walked toward me. I had to fight the urge not to cringe away from him, his expression was so dark. I’d seen fury boiling under the surface like that before, but never from Tyler. That terrified me.

“I thought I could prove myself to you,” he said, almost murmuring. “I thought if I gave you space and let you think I wasn’t just another user trying to control you, you’d learn to trust me. I bound myself to you out of love, and I prayed the gods would let you love me too.” He traced his fingers along my jawline, and I felt the tears welling in my eyes spill over onto my cheeks. I couldn’t bring myself to speak; the tenderness was killing me. “I should have known better,” he whispered. “I should have known you’d never let your guard down. Not for me, not for anyone.”

“Tyler,” I said as I fought to talk through the dryness in my throat, “I’m so, so sorry.”

A slight, sad smile curved his lips. “I know you are. But sorry isn’t good enough.”

“What do you want me to do?” At this point, I’d have done whatever he asked me to. “Just tell me what I have to do to fix things between us.”

“You were gone, Darian. I told you how it was for me, but you didn’t listen. It was like part of my soul had gone dark. After you left here, I could still feel you. You wouldn’t answer your phone, the PNT was looking for you, and I knew you were running. But at least I knew you were alive. Your wish made me damned near powerless. I couldn’t come for you even when I sensed you were in trouble. But then-” He paused, and his voice seemed to catch somewhere between his chest and his mouth. “You just disappeared. The light went off. Nothing. It was as if you’d never existed.”

My throat closed up; I felt as though I were suffocating. There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs. “I did what I thought was best for you. I would have died if anything had happened to you and you were already in danger-”

“You don’t get it, Darian.” He locked his gaze with mine, and I bit back a sob. “I knew you weren’t dead. After all, we’re bound. My life force is tied to yours. But at least with death there’s some sort of finality! There’s nothing worse than not knowing. And I had no idea where you’d gone, what had happened to you. Once…” He brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “Once I could’ve sworn I felt you reaching out for me. Right here.” He pounded a fist against his chest over his heart. “And it felt so real. But there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it! I couldn’t go to you. I couldn’t help you. No, I knew you weren’t dead, but I mourned you just the same.”

I couldn’t hold back the flood any longer. His calm voice, the way his gaze bored right through me, the pain in every syllable he spoke; it was just too much. My entire body seemed to compress against the emotion I was trying not to let bust out of me like a broken dam. “I love you.”

“But you don’t trust me. You don’t consider me your equal. You don’t think I’m strong enough to protect you.”

“No!” Was that my voice that had erupted into a high, keening cry? “Tyler, no.”

“I wish it weren’t true.” He dragged his hand through his still-damp hair, and my knees threatened to give out beneath me. “I wish to hell that weren’t true. But this will happen again. And again. You draw danger like a magnet, Darian. No matter how much I want to be your protector, you’ll continue to push me away.”

I shook my head. The words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t get my mouth to work properly.

“I think you need some time-”

“No!” The word exploded from my lips. “Damn it, Tyler, don’t do this! Get mad, yell at me, throw something! Set the fucking bed on fire and take a baseball bat to every lamp in the house. But do not say what you’re about to say.”

“I’m sorry, love.” He laid his lips to my forehead and stayed that way for a few moments before pulling away. “I think you need to decide what you really want. I won’t tag along after you anymore. I won’t sit at home and wait while you risk your life.”

“But the bond…” It was my ace in the hole. He couldn’t leave me. He’d bound himself to me.

“Is intact,” he said. “I told you, only you have the power to break it. I will protect you with my dying breath. If you need me, you know what to do.” He turned away, left me leaning against the doorjamb for support, and returned to his suitcase. He didn’t take the time to fold his clothes, instead shoving them in the case before stuffing the lid down and zipping it closed.

I was frantic to keep him where he was. He couldn’t leave me. He couldn’t. “Ty, please don’t go. Please, Ty. Don’t-God, please-don’t leave me.”

“I won’t be gone long,” he said, throwing my own words back in my face. I wished like hell I’d never written that damned note, that I could turn back time and undo it all. “I tried too hard.” He grabbed the suitcase and crossed the room toward me. “I tried to force you before you were ready. Maybe without me here, you’ll find the closure you need to let me in. I hope that when I come back, you’ll be ready to trust me, to believe in me.”

“You don’t have to leave for that to happen, Tyler.” My world was crumbling around me, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Stay. Please.”

“I love you,” he said as he leaned in to kiss me one last time. “Good-bye, Darian.”

His lips on mine caused a ripple of energy to flow over my body, and the room swam in a dizzy blur. I closed my eyes to steady my careening world, and when I opened them again, he was gone.