“I need you to come back to me, Viri.”
I want to tell her that I’ll never leave her. Even if I must leave this world, my ghost will haunt her. I am the moth. She is the flame. If I die, it will be because her light burned me up.
“Viri, I love you.”
My brothers had tried to explain how powerful those three words were. They had only ever been letters to me, and I was never good with my letters. The statement is made up of vowels, giving them a soft sound.
Those three syllables land heavily on my ears. They sink into my heart with a thud. They fill my lungs with a whisper of air. They move the dark clouds from behind my eyelids. I know my eyes are still closed, but on the other side of my lids, I begin to see the light.
The hardest part is lifting my eyelashes from their resting place on my cheekbones. It takes all my might to raise them just a fraction. But it’s enough. Through the hairline bars of my jail cell, I see the light dawning.
I see the bright beam of light that is Zahara. I reach for the light.
Chapter 29
Zahara
He’s still. He’s so very, very still.
I watched Virius in his daytime coma-like sleep more than once. His chest always rose and fell—eventually. His nostrils always flared with the intake of breath—eventually. His arms would come around me and pull me close to him—always.
Looking down at him, I see he is pale, lifeless. His chest is sunken in. His proud nose looks as though it has collapsed. His arms are inanimate objects at his sides that do not rise to take hold of me.
“Viri, can you hear me?”
I wrap my arms around him. He is cold to the touch. Not like ice. More like that flabby cold when a limb goes numb. I rub his skin vigorously, trying to get warmth back into him.
“Viri, I need you to open your eyes.”
There is a flutter of movement. Not in his eyes. I turn my gaze away from his face and look southward.
Yes, there it is again. Movement in his pants. The front of his pants writhes and coils slowly, like a snake.
It’s Frankie. Frankie is alive and well. That has to mean Viri is, too.
“I need you to come back to me, Viri.” I place my hand on his groin. It pulses under my touch. But only once. Still, it’s enough to let me know he’s there.
A gasp goes through the gathered shifters and vampires. I don’t care what they think. I only care about him, and if this will stir him enough to bring him back to me, then so be it.
“Viri, I love you.”
“He needs blood,” says Gaius. “We need to get him home and get him a blood bag.”
A growl rips through the cave. The sound is so terrible and fearsome that every shifter—including Itzel, who is in Hadrian’s grasp—drops lower and shows their neck. I look around for the source of the monster, only to realize the roar came from me.
“He drinks no one but me,” I say before tearing a fang into my wrist.
Another gasp goes through the gathered shifters as my blood drips onto Virius’s lips. I pull his lips apart to get more of my life-giving essence inside of him. Hell, I’ll rip open my heart if it will bring him back to me.
His lips wrap around my wrist. The tip of his tongue slides across the slit of my wrist. Its velvety smoothness against the flesh of my veins is just as erotic as when he suckled on my intimate flesh. It’s more satisfying because it’s a sign of life.
And then, finally, he pulls.
His chest rises. His nostrils flare. His hand rises, and he presses my wrist to his mouth.
His eyes do not open. However, he continues to pull from me.
“Viri, that’s enough,” says Gaius.
He doesn’t hear, or he doesn’t listen. He pulls again.
“That’s not what’s supposed to happen,” says Itzel. “That bloodsucker is going to kill her. They both need to live, for the child.”
I want to laugh at her protests. If I do decide to have a child, it will not be born with a job. It will not be born shackled to a fate it has no control over, like both its parents.
That’s only if we both live. Because if Virius doesn’t come back into the light, I will live the rest of my life in complete darkness. How could I not, when he was my source of warmth?
But it would seem that will not be my fate. It will not be our fate.
Virius will not die. I feel that as he pulls at me again. I feel my life going into him, bringing him back to life. In return, I feel myself dimming ever so slightly.
One more pull, and I’m sure I will faint. I don’t try to tug my hand away. I don’t try to stop him.
I had planned to take his life from this man. But in the short days that I’ve known him, he’s given me a reason to truly live. If this is the cost, I’ll pay it. I’ll give him my life.
I take a deep breath, likely the last one I’ll ever take, and wait for the next pull.
Viri’s eyes flash open. They are no longer dark. They flash back at me, like a cat’s.
His smile is bloody. “There you are.”
“There you are,” I whisper as I press my forehead against his.
“Everything went dark all around me. But then there was a tiny spark of light. It was you. You are my sun. You’ve set me free.”
I cup his cheek in my hand. The warmth is returning to him now that my blood is in his veins. He is alive. Like, truly alive. That metallic note of vampire is fading from his skin.
