Page 39 of Queen of Darkness
Aaron stared at me. “I’m saying I want to be. I’ve made no secret of that. The real question is, Jo, doyouwant to be one?”
Chapter Twenty
“With me, of course,” he added hastily a moment later, trying to break the tension.
I giggled. I couldn’t help it. The sheer obviousness of his statement just struck my funny bone. As if I’d been considering being in a full-fledged relationship with anyonebuthim! There wasn’t even another man in my life. Who would I even consider? Fenrir?
Was he actually concerned that I might be developing feelings for Fenrir? Just because he helped me learn about the darkness inside me, the Hunger, and how to fight it? Was hejealousof that?
For a moment, I thought about toying with him, of pretending, but I quickly chucked that idea out of my mind. Now wasn’t the time for that, nor did Aaron deserve it. Not right now.
“You don’t have to answer right now,” he said. “Please, don’t feel that pressure. I can wait.”
He left off the implied, “I’ve waited long enough already, what’s a bit more.”
I turned away from him, stepping deeper into the room. “This is where it happened, isn’t it?” I asked.
Aaron silently followed me in. “Yes,” he whispered. “This is where I tried to stop her. And where she kicked my ass.”
“I take it none of this damage was done by you throwing her around.”
He snorted, a deep sarcastic noise. “I wish. I’d love to regain some of my pride and say we duked it out, and she happened to get lucky. Trust me, that would have saved me a lot of ridiculing once the truth made its way out. But no, none of this was done by me.”
Sliding past me, he moved to stand next to the destroyed bed. “I was here,” he said somewhat distantly. “She was across from me. We were arguing. I’d just told her that I had found out about the deaths of female vampires, how she’d gone insane with power.”
“What happened next?”
Aaron closed his eyes. “I watched her heart break,” he said softly. “She must have thought I would go along with her. I don’t know if she was just insane or truly loved me that much to think I would ignore it. I don’t know, and I never asked. It doesn’t matter. She stared at me as I told her that I couldn’t support this, and she began to cry. Telling me that it was for the best. That she’d … that she’d done it forus, out of some sort of sick, twisted sense of devotion to me.”
“What did you say back?”
“Uh, I told her she was insane if she thought I would go along with that.” He winced.
“I take it that didn’t go over so well?”
Aaron gestured around him. “Whatever gave you that impression?”
“Probably the one in the wall there,” I said, pointing to a human-sized outline in the stone wall. “That impression. Made by you flying across the room into the wall?”
Aaron stared at me. “Notthe type of impression I was talking about.”
I laughed. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.”
He nodded slowly. “She told me I had to do it if I loved her. So, I told her that I guess I didn’t love her. Not the person she’d become.”
I sobered quickly. “I’m sorry.”
He waved it off. “I should have seen it sooner. The way the power had twisted her, warping her mind into something different. The woman I loved was long gone, had been gone for decades, if not more. I was too blinded by my love for her to see it.”
“So, you hit her.”
“Oh, yeah. I clocked her full in the face the instant I decided I had to stop her from going any further,” he said. “I’ll always remember the look on her face as she flew across the room. The shock and pain.”
He wasn’t talking about the pain from his blow. But rather the hurt of betrayal, I sensed, from the one she loved turning on her.
“Then, she came at me and flung me around, beating me until I was a hair from death,” he muttered. “Not my most pleasant memory.”
I moved to where he still stood at the foot of the bed. “You did the right thing,” I whispered, wrapping him up in a hug. “And I respect you for that.”
