Page 53 of The Alien in the Archive

Because, on some level, I know fate has a hand in this.

“Page,” I start—but then she growls and stalks in one direction, then another. She’s ranting now, pacing.

“Thorne, I kissed you,” she says. “And I know you don’t understand stupid human customs, but that’s a risk. I took that risk, and I thought…I don’t know, I thought you kissing me back meant things would change. Then, they didn’t, and I’ve been looking into how to help you and you just…you don’t even care, do you?”

Her voice cracks. I try to respond, but she’s not done.

“Jesus, Thorne…” She shakes her head. “You’re so busy wallowing in your self-loathing, in your…your martyrdom, that you can’t bother with me!”

“No,” I interrupt. “I see plenty, Page. I see someone who is too young and too human to understand what they’re saying.”

“Don’t you dare,” she snaps. “Don’t you dare talk down to me like that. I know exactly what I’m saying. I know exactly what I feel.”

She may as well have physically hit me, her words are so forceful. There’s no hesitation, no trace of doubt.

It terrifies me.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” I growl.

But I’m not moving away. I can’t. Her gravity is too powerful, impossible to resist.

“Maybe not,” she admits. “But I know what I want.”

I shake my head, trying to find the words to stop this, tostop her…but nothing comes to mind. The only thing I can truly hear is her thoughts, and they’re chanting, pulsing with a single word.

A word that won’t leave me be.

Mine.

Mine.

I don’t know if it’s because I drank her blood—if it was some kind of twisted Elixir ceremony, a mingling of Elixir and our DNA—but I think I’ve known it since long before that. Since she first stumbled into the Obscuary.

This human woman, born more than four millennia after I was…I was born for her, and she for me.

“I don’t care how old you are,” Page says. “I don’t care what you think you are. You’re not a monster, Thorne. You’re just…you. AndI. Want. You.”

Her words burn through every wall I’ve built around myself, every barrier I placed between us, every excuse I’ve made.

I can’t deny her any longer.

Without a word, my hands shoot out and grab her by the shoulders, my whole body shaking as I walk her backward. Her steps falter as the edge of the desk catches her, but she doesn’t resist. Page’s breath hitches as she looks up at me, eyes wide.

“Thorne…” she starts.

“Let me in, Page,” I growl. “Don’t hide it. Don’t hold back. Show me.”

For a heartbeat, she hesitates.

Then, something shifts in her expression.

The floodgates open, and I see everything.

Her thoughts slam into me, overwhelming and unrelenting. The way she’s pivoted from her research, to studyingme—the books she’s read, the people she’s talked to, the strange questions she’s asking. Finding a way to help me, to save me.

And the dreams…oh gods, thedreams.

I see flashes of them: her hands on me, my mouth on her, the two of us tangled together in scenes of complete and utter surrender. Heat and longing and the kind of intimacy that should terrify me.

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