Page 83 of Fated In Blood

“You mean I moved like you?” I tried stabbing Blake in the thigh, but my hand shook too badly. Something was keeping me from hurting him.

I stepped back, my entire body trembling like I’d just run a marathon. “Did I disappear and everything?” Riordan nodded and some of my fury faded.

Okay, at least something good came out of this shitshow.

But I couldn’t even look at Blake. How dare he reveal this hideous failure I’d spent years of my life trying to forget, or at least put behind me. And while I’d suspected Mom had only brought me along because I was an asset, hearing those words come out of Blake’s mouth dredged up every old insecurity I’d ever had.

I swallowed hard. Being worthy…why was that something that always eluded me? Why did it mean so goddamned much, when in the end, respect changed nothing?

“You bastard,” Riordan muttered, staring down at my face for a long, tense moment. “You deserved to get stabbed. You’re lucky she was able to stop herself. I don’t know if I would have.”

“She’s fucking poison, Rohr,” Blake said quietly, as if I wasn’t even here, one hand gripping that little gold ring so tightly his knuckles were white. “She’ll tear us apart. Tear this entire clan apart if you allow her to stay. Send her away and we’ll figure out some other way to finish this.”

Riordan’s face was hard as granite when he turned to me. “You retrieve that knife and bring the weapon back here, and I will give you enough money to go anywhere in the world. You’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

A clearly disapproving Blake glowered, but when I opened my mouth, Riordan held up his hand. “I’m not done, Evangeline.”

He didn’t even compel me; that commanding tone made me shut up. “Once Tyrell is dead and your sister is free, I will wipe her memories, if she consents. Sometimes forgetting makes the transition easier.” He noted my look of confusion. “Once you’re bound to someone that powerful, if the mating bond is broken suddenly, especially through death, the consequences will be devastating to the surviving partner.”

“But they’re not bound. He’s controlling her like you control me.”

“Tyrell called her his mate. Even a monster like him wouldn’t use that term lightly.”

I started to hyperventilate. “You’re telling me that Angel wanting to stay with him…might not be an act? She might actually have…feelingsfor that desiccated bag of bones?”

“I’m saying…” Riordan glanced over at Blake, who walked to the weapons and began sorting through them. Riordan lowered his voice. “Vampire biology is a complicated thing. Sometimes mates don’t get to make that decision, sometimes it’s made for them. By fate or biology or fucking bad luck, I don’t know, it justis, and once the bond snaps into place, there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

“So let’s say my sisterismated to Tyrell. What would that mean?”

“There is a bond connecting them.” Riordan placed his hand beneath his chest, at the top of his ribcage where his heart was. “Right here. They always know where the other is at all times, can sense their emotions, their distress, their thoughts.”

“Like us? Are you talking about us?”

“No, what we have is different. I fed you and am feeding you, and as far as Blake…totally different sort of thing. What you and I share right now will fade over time, but I will always be able to call you back to me.”

The hair on my neck bristled.Like I was a goddamned dog.

He cleared his throat. “But when one-half of a mated pair dies, the other one will always have a hole where the bond used to be. An emptiness I’ve heard is excruciatingly painful. Some never recover and die after a few decades, some choose to follow their mate straight into the Pale so they are never separated, some manage to get through it and remarry but are never mated again.”

“Why is that?”

“Because mates are rare and precious and only come around once in a lifetime. There has never been a repeat mating that I know of, though there have been some second pairings that lasted for centuries.”

Fuck.

This was worse than any of my imagined scenarios. In all of those, once Tyrell was dead, Angel was free, except…she wouldn’t be. Not ever, from the sounds of it.

But she couldn’t stay with him. If Angel lived with Tyrell long enough, she’d become a monster, just like him. Something tickled at my consciousness, something Mom had said the night we’d run.

“They have plans for her, Evie, and you can’t ever let them get their hands on her.”

I’d always assumed she was talking about the vampires but…the oddest thought popped into my head. A ridiculous idea, one that couldn’t possibly be true.What if she was talking about my father and my uncles?

Trapping the oldest vampire in the states with a beautiful creature like my defenseless sister…that would be something they’d do.

Tyrell snatched her up, right out from under your nose, like he knew right where to look.

Blake’s taunting accusation took on a more sinister edge when I thought about the sheer impossibility of Tyrell finding us five hundred miles away from here, tucked into some tiny, forgotten town.

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