Page 171 of Let It Snow
His attitude gets on my nerves.
Out of pure irritation, and maybe out of the draining guilt I’m trying to escape, I furrow my brows and snap, "I could destroy the whole world just to save him."
Yeah, I said that. Out in the open. Funny, it brings me a certain kind of relief, a bitter one, but it’s there.
Bay closes his eyes, almost satisfied by what I’ve just admitted, as if he expected exactly this.
"That wouldn’t be love."
A dry laugh bursts from me. "I know. It would be obsession. Sickness. Never mind. Judge me all you want. It is what it is."
He takes a step back, tilting his head.
"Can’t say I don’t relate, Summer. To a point. But never over the bodies of innocents."
"It was revenge," my voice cracks. "It was rage, fury, in that one terrible moment."
Bay steps back again.
"Oh, well. That’s how it is with True Mates. But no single person is worth more than the whole world."
My eyes fix on him, filled with a kind of grim triumph. I have something to tell him.
"We’re not True Mates, Bay."
"Oh, but you are. Now."
Did I go deaf? I blink, my mouth falling open.
"What?"
Bay lifts a brow and smiles faintly. "Snow didn’t tell you? He told me yesterday, while you were out cold. When you were saving Winter, he used our dad’s energy matrix. Through that gate, he bound your souls together, mixed them into one."
I gasp.
"You’re crazy. That’s impossible. When Snow… when Rocco killed him, I didn’t die. It would’ve happened if we were Trues with a merged soul."
Everyone in our society knows what happens when True Mates perish. The energy coil between them tears apart, and in a blinding flash of light, they burn, and that’s the end of them.
Bay steps closer, moving out of the shadow.
"Oh, but you were dying when I saw you, Summer."
"What are you talking about?!"
"You should’ve seen yourself. You looked like a body burned alive, charred black, nothing but ash. You didn’t feel pain because so much energy was pouring out of you as the coil split open, that no nerve signal could have gotten through."
He steps even closer, his eyes narrowing, and I tremble like a leaf.
"But—"
"Did you notice that even when you focused on me, talked to me, the wave of destruction kept spreading? You weren’t in control of it, Summer. You were just… dying. The last, thoughpretty destructive song of a swan. You were burning through your energy, and since you had ‘a little’"—he makes air quotes—"more of it than normal humans, it took longer for it all to drain out. But by the time I was talking to you, I might as well have been talking to a corpse."
The shock hits me so hard I stagger, catching myself against his car, my palms slick with sweat.
What the hell. What is he talking about?
Dark spots begin to spin before my eyes, and my back goes cold, as if someone poured icy water over me.
