Page 104 of Of Flame and Fate

“Yes. I heard your voice whispering in my head,” she replies. “I’ll always hear you when you need me to.” She smiles softly, as if Misha’s voice doesn’t sound possessed and he doesn’t seem ready to peel our flesh from our gnawed-off bones.

“Do you hurt?” she asks gently.

His stare falls to her belly. There’s no hiding her pregnancy from the world, not anymore, and especially not from Misha. “Yes,” he responds, his eerie baritone growing more forceful.

I clutch my arm against me. Right now, Sparky trusts Misha almost as much as I do. She quivers, shaking me and my words. “Celia,” I warn. “You have to move away from him.”

“It’s all right,” she says.

I think she’s speaking to me until she reaches out and cups Misha’s shoulder. “They’re gone,” she assures him.

Misha’s gray eyes turn cold and deadly. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

“By my hands?” he questions.

She nods. By now, she’s hurting for him. “Yes, just as Uri promised.”

He doesn’t seem satisfied. “What about her?”

Celia strokes the ends of his hair, very much in that motherly way she always touched Emme’s when she was sick or scared. “She’s at peace. No one will ever hurt her again. I promise.”

“I want to kill them,” Misha growls.

Celia’s eyes well with tears, her expression changing in a way that startles me. It’s not quite angry, not quite vicious. It’s simply in tune with those who seek and acquire revenge in blood.

This expression doesn’t belong on my beautiful sister’s face, not with the compassion and kindness she frequently demonstrates in our presence. But here it is, despite how the prospect of becoming a mother has softened her further.

I suppose revenge is yet one more thing that connects her to Misha. Like him, she knows it well.

“You killed them a long time ago,” she reminds him.

“All of them?” Misha asks, before she finishes the last word.

“Yes,” she tells him. “They’re gone, and now I need you to come back to me.” She inches closer, wrapping her arm around Misha’s neck and resting her cheek against his shoulder.

I don’t like his fangs this close to her throat. Not when he’s taken his share of her blood before. Yet as much as he likely remembers her taste, and what it did to him, the moment she sinks into his embrace, his eyes close and his fangs withdraw.

“Please, Misha,” she tells him quietly. “Leave your past where it belongs and come back to me.”

Misha’s breaths, so pained and shallow before quicken. I don’t move, too busy gawking and scared out of my mind that he’ll turn on her.

If he bites a pregnant mate,especiallythe alpha’s pregnant mate, any truce forged will be forgotten and the vamps andwereswill be at war. I think Celia’s counting on Misha to remember this, but I think she’s counting on their friendship more.

I fall back onto my heels close to where the faded images of the skulls continue to flash in and out. One by one, they sink into the ground, the lush sod swallowing them whole.

Celia doesn’t seem to notice them. Her full attention remains on Misha as she continues to speak softly, reassuring him that he’s safe and those who have harmed him are now long dead.

It takes a few minutes, and a few more, before Celia releases him and he opens his eyes.

Sweat drenches his skin, causing his long hair to stick to his face. Celia strokes the loose and messy strands behind his shoulder. “Are you back?” she asks him gently.

Vamps aren’t creatures you’re gentle with. It’s too easy for them to misinterpret kindness as weakness and target you as dinner. I almost remind Celia of this, but she and Misha have always shared a bond no one else can comprehend.

“Yes,” he says. He swipes his face, a gesture that seems foreign on someone so refined.

“What happened?” she asks.

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