Page 109 of Viper

“The first time we … I’m sorry, what?”

“It wasn’t in this life. It was in your previous one.”

She sucked in a sharp breath.

“Your name then was Everleigh,” he added, answering her unspoken question. “We fell hard. Fast. You were prepared to accept me, curse and all, if I left heaven to be with you. But things didn’t go as we planned.”

Her lips parted as she gaped at him. “Wait … you’re saying … ”

“I’m saying we were together in another life. You just don’t remember.”

Ella’s thought processes stuttered, her mind struggling to keep up. She knew souls were often reborn. But his claim that they’d encountered each other in her past life seemed so surreal. And yet, it made sense.

She’d always felt that he reminded her of someone—he’d been familiar to her from the start. The first time they’d locked gazes, she’d felt sure she’d looked into his eyes before. More, he’d never really felt like a stranger. She was comfortable with him in a way she generally wouldn’t be with people she didn’t know well.

And hadn’t she always felt that something was missing? Hadn’t there always been a sense of absence that had only disappeared when he came into her life?

Her breath snagged when she suddenly once more found herself recalling the wraith’s words …He will come for you.

It had meant Viper. Samael. The freaking Archangel of Darkness and Death.

No wonder the wraith had laughed its tits off.

Licking her lips, she gave her head a little shake. “Why … why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Where was the point in seeking her out only to keep her ignorant?

His head tipped to the side. “If I’d told you this right off the bat, how would you have reacted?”

Mostly with disbelief. And … “I probably would have thought it was a lie. That you were fucking with me for your own entertainment.”

“Because you didn’t know me. I needed that to change. Needed for you to feel safe and comfortable with me.”

“I’ve felt that way around you for weeks now. Yet, you said nothing.”

“Because, like I told you before, it’s all tangled up in everything else I haven’t yet shared with you.”

“Okay. Tell me more.”

“Before you, no one I came upon here on Earth ever remembered me after that first meeting. You did. I don’t know how, but you did. And you drew me in without trying.”

Peopleforgothim? Jesus.

“You became an obsession for me. To the point where there was no letting you go. You were the only thing I’d ever claimed as mine.” He pushed out of his chair and then walked toward her. “When you learned of the curse, you didn’t turn me away. But there’s more to it in my case. I hadn’t yet told you that—, you were taken from me before I had the chance.” The pain of that spiderwebbed through his expression. “Taken by people who were intent on me not paying the price for falling.”

She looked up at him as he halted before her. “What price?”

“I’m not merely doomed to drink blood, Ella. That’s not even the worst part.” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, tugged her to her feet, and then teleported her to the yard. He dropped her hand and flicked his own, saying, “Look around, Ella. What do you see?”

She scanned their surroundings a little uncertainly.

“Flowers? Fresh grass? Animals? Any signs of nature thriving? No. And you won’t see those things. Because of me.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Have you ever been at the pool hall, the club, or the dive bar when I was there andnotseen a fight break out? Of course you haven’t. And again, it was because of me.”

She gave another shake of her head. “I don’t understand.”

“The strix I’ve battled who bit me … they all died. Know why? My blood is acidic.”

---