Page 60 of The HalloQueen

“I was gone looking for you, Yusuf. I was trying to figure out where you were. I knew Monique had a temper, I knew she was likely to storm off and come crawling back, but you? You’d never left me like that before. I never questioned us. I thought of us all that you and I were the strongest, and Monique was the goddess you and I worked together to please. I didn’t -” I sighed.

Yus reached for my hand and I hesitantly let him take it, and we stared blankly out into the black water, “I’m sorry I caused you pain.”

“You did more than causing me pain, Yus. You derailed my entire life. I loved you. You were my spouse, my partner. Do you know how long I spent running around France looking for the two of you trying to make sure you were safe? I went to the fucking Coalition for god’s sake. I did everything I could to figure out where you went, and when they said you were up to date on your dues and wouldn’t tell me where the two of you were, I assumed that it was done and you didn’t want to be found. If you were taking the time to pay dues, you could have just as easily called me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Looking at our clasped hands, his dark skin against my pale, brought back memories of electricity and passion, but now it just harbored heartbreak. “I can’t do this again. I can’t. You know that, right?”

“What do you mean?” He asked softly.

“We can’t go back to the way we were. And I’m sure by now you realize that I underwent a bond-breaking ceremony with the Coalition.”

He slowly let go of my hand, digging his into the sand, and began fidgeting, “I felt it when you did. I didn’t know at the time which of you did it, but I knew the bond was broken. Then I realized I could still feel her and I knew that it was the bond with you that was gone.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Love, Monique is sick.”

My head spun to face him head-on, “Quoi?”

“Last I found her she was in Istanbul. I’d almost caught up to her when I found someone she’d fed from. They…they were dead in the street. They were killed transitioning into an Undead, Thomas.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? She’s with an UnDead?”

“I,” He paused, “I think she is becoming one, my love. I think she lost balance when the bond was severed and she was hurt without us and… I don’t know if it’s too late or not to save her.”

“Have you told the Coalition? Are they ready to help her?”

He shook his head, “No, I’ve told no one. I didn’t want to risk losing her if I was wrong. What if she fed and an UnDead just happened to follow her and finished the job?”

“That’d be a pretty huge coincidence, Yus.”

“I know.”

“So you haven’t seen her?”

“I haven’t spoken to her since the night she left. I’ve caught up to her twice, once in London and once in Capri, but I didn’t approach her. Capri was after the bond was broken and she was visibly different than she was in London. If she’d chosen to leave I wanted to see why; I wanted to see what she thought she’d find that was better than what we had.”

“Yus, you could have stayed with me. We could have gone together. You chose to abandon me just as much as she did.”

“I know.”

“You sold my home.”

“I know.”

“You never bothered to so much as call me.”

“I know. I know, Thomas. What do you want me to say? I was trying to fix this and I couldn’t get her back, so how could I come crawling back alone? Then you just went and severed the bond, and I couldn’t feel you, and I felt like I was going mad myself! All I had left after that bond was broken was my mission to find her. The bond with her only intensified.”

“I severed the fucking bond because it was better to be alone than it was for me to think that the two of you were off living happily ever after. Or fuck, Dead! I couldn’t have that nagging instinct raging inside of me to find you anymore. Not when you’d proven you didn’t want to be found.” My voice rose, shaking, remembering all the nights I woke up as my dreams played all the ways something could have happened to them. I clenched and unclenched my fists, struggling to take a deep breath, “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“We need to find her, Thomas. If she’s turning, I -we -have to try, and I need your help. The two of us are better together than apart - this last year only solidified that for me.”

“Yeah well, the last year solidified to me that you guys never cared about me. You abandoned me and didn’t care about our bond at all and were easily able to walk away from 200 years of our lives and disappear into the abyss.” The words came out smaller than I wanted. They weren’t spoken with the force or anger that I wanted them to. I wanted to scream at Yusuf, I wanted to shake him and make him realize the hell that I’d been through while they’d been gone, “I’m not going with you. Not now.”

He rested his elbows on his bent knees, “is this because of that woman?” I glared at him. “She stunk of you, darling. I smelled you from a great distance and thought I would find you, only to stumble into that mortal.”

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