Page 59 of The Baritone's Rival

“Someone decided that my stepfather had gotten too ambitious. We were never certain who, although there were some obvious candidates. He’d risen too quickly in the Madison coven, jumped over vampires who’d been waiting years to move up the ranks. So they killed him.”

Trent gasped, swallowing his tears, and Oscar stepped forward. Trent held up his hand to stop him.

“I didn’t know him that well. If I’m honest, I wasn’t that sad. I was excited that maybe we would leave the covenhouse. But…”

“But a vampire and their mate don’t survive when the other one dies.”

“No…” Trent’s whisper was almost imperceptible. Then he slid down. He collapsed to the floor, his legs crossed and his back against the wall.

Oscar stayed frozen in place. As much as he needed to be there next to him, Trent wanted physical distance.

“But it’s not instantaneous,” Trent continued. “It would have been so much better if she had just…died. Instead, sh-she lost her mind.”

Trent buried his head in his hands. Oscar had never felt so helpless. This man was his mate, the one person he was supposed to protect and support at all times. But the walls between them had been too great, and this final barrier…Oscar worried it would be too much for Trent. That it would break him.

After a moment, Trent raised his head, his eyes red from crying.

“At first, it was small things. She had trouble remembering my stepfather was dead. She’d ask where he was. She couldn’t focus. But then she became violent. My stepfather had turned her when they married, so she was a full-fledged vampire. She would wander the halls. She attacked other vampires out of nowhere, covenmates, friends of hers. But she was a brand newvamp. She didn’t have the strength to take on any of the other vampires in the coven.”

Muscle movement rippled through Trent, a tremor starting from the ground and shaking his body. “So she went for me.”

He hugged himself tight, squeezing his eyes shut. The hurt was so raw and so intense, and Oscar could feel it in his gut. His mate was in pain.

“I almost died. Luckily, someone came in at the right moment and pulled her off me. They had no choice. They did what they had to, and even if I’d been against it, I was too injured to know it was happening. They took off her head and burned her body.”

Oscar couldn’t help himself. If Trent stopped him, so be it, but the pain was too intense to not at least try. He lowered himself to the ground and wrapped his arms around his human.

Trent collapsed into him, burying his face in Oscar’s chest. It was astonishing, this man who was stronger than any Oscar had known, being this open, this vulnerable. All he could do was be there with him.

After a few moments, Trent lifted his head and spoke. His tone was quiet, his shaking voice showing the deep fear that still lived in him.

“Oscar, I…I want to trust you, so badly. I want to believe that we could be something, that we could be mates. But everything in my body wants to run away at the thought. My past screams out that being here, being with you, can only end in grief and death. I don’t know how we could escape it.”

Trent mumbled those last words into Oscar’s shirt, and Oscar was struck with how like a lost child he was at that moment. Oscar loved how ambitious Trent was, how put together he was. But right then, he needed someone to take care of him. Oscar’s soul yearned for both parts of the man: the tough and the fragile,the driven and the vulnerable. He’d do anything to be withallof Trent.

He ran his hand through Trent’s hair, watching his long fingers wend their way through the tousled blonde locks.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” Oscar said. “We don’t have control over so much. But we have control over this: we are here together, now, in each other’s arms. That can be enough.”

Trent looked up at Oscar, his eyes wide and his cheeks marked by the evidence of tears. There was an emotion there Oscar had never seen before in Trent. Hope.

Oscar basked in his mate’s beatific expression, not wanting to say more for fear of breaking the moment. He cradled Trent’s face in his hands, his fingers gently brushing away the last of his tears, lightly running over the bandage on his cheek that covered his injury from the attack in the cabin. The man was perfect.

He hadn’t realized how desperate Trent was until he opened his mouth to speak.

“Oscar, please…I need you to kiss me. Please.”

Chapter 20

Trent

Trent had nothing left. He had let light shine in on the darkest parts of himself and dragged his fears into the sun. There was nothing left to give. He was empty.

Or so he thought.

When Oscar’s lips touched his, the cold vacuum that had opened inside of him, that had been growing there since the day his mother died, suddenly began to warm. It wasn’t an instant fix, but there was an ember there where before there had only been icy darkness.

That warmth was Oscar’s lips. Oscar’s hands. Oscar’s desire. Oscar’s need resonated within Trent, rumbling in his chest, a deep quake that unmoored him and grounded him simultaneously.

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