Chapter 67

Cold air rushes into the house and the hair over my skin rises. It's as if death itself has walked in through the front door, on this night of all nights. And maybe it has. She's here—my mother—she looks a bit different. But, the moment her gaze lands on me, it morphs, heavy with a sudden storm of emotions.

"Aurora?" Her voice is a whisper and it barely makes it to me.

"Mom," I step forward, forgetting there's blood on my neck. It's too late when I realize. "What are you doing here?"

The blood, evidence of Zade's violent hunger, catches her eye, and she rushes toward me in panic. "Aurora, what did he do to you?"

Horror creases her face. Fear etches into her very skin. She grabs my arm and for a moment, we both are caught in the gravity of what she has always feared. A chill leeches onto me. I can feel it coming, the worry, the tension, the fear. I never wanted her to know, I never wanted her to be right in this. In anything but this.

With a jerk, I step back from her and pry my arm away. Distance is my shield. "It's nothing, Mom."

"Aurora—"

"Mom, please. Just go—why are you even here?"

"He's hurting you!" she yells, breaking through the normal front I've fought so hard to maintain.

"No, Mom. He's not, okay? Just please, go. Now. Please." This cannot be happening right now.

My eyes flicker behind her, and I see Zade coming down the stairs. My mother hears him too and she turns around in front of me. I watch him come closer to us, his eyes meeting my mother's. She stares at him with disgust before wrapping her hand around my wrist.

"Come with me, Aurora. Now. I won't leave you here," she insists, her eyes pleading with me. "Not with him."

I shake my head but before I have the chance to subject, Zade gives his own input.

"You should go with her."

His unexpected agreement startles me, and for a moment, I'm frozen, confusion clouding my thoughts. How could he ever agree?

I look at him, really look at him, trying to find the trap in his words, the catch. In his silence, there's an unspoken message, a painful realization—he's willing to let me go.

"No, Zade—" I breathe, tears blurring my vision. I pull my hand away from my mother. "Mom, please go."

She corners me to the wall. "Look at yourself, Aurora. Look what he has done to you. He's hurt you and he'll only keep hurting you. Please, Aurora, come with me before anything more happens. This isn't love."

"Stop. Please," I beg her, my voice breaking while my eyes follow Zade leaving the house and going outside. "Just go home, Mom. Please."

I run from her as she yells my name over and over again, but I don't hear her voice when my own heart is beating so loudly. Bursting out of the door, I search for Zade and find him walking into the garden, further away from me.

"Zade!"

"Go with her." He doesn't turn to face me, doesn't take back his words.

"I don't want to go with her," I catch up to him, grasping his arm to stop him, forcing him to face me. "Why are you even doing this? Why would you ever let me leave?"

"You were willing to go last time." His sharp words cut through the air and he stops.

"But I stayed, Zade. Despite everything, my choice was here, with you. I want to be with you, I don't want to go anywhere." I plead, holding his hand and gripping it tightly, hoping that he'll take it back, all of his words.

"But you'll want to. You're better off without me. It's better if you leave with your mother because I will only hurt you."

"And this won't hurt you? Tell me that me leaving will not hurt you, Zade." I say, tears spilling out of my eyes, running down my cheeks.

Zade goes silent. He's quiet for a few brief moments, and then he speaks out, his voice cold. "You were ripped away from me once. I went through it, Aurora. I know the pain, I've lived it, I've suffered in that agony for years. I can bear it again."

My lips part. I hear his voice and sense the hurt. But it's not only his, it's mine too. It's mine too. And I can't go. Not now, not when everything is so broken. I can't leave him.

"And you want me to go through this? You want me to go through what you did?" My voice cracks and I step forward, closer to him. My hand moves away from his arm and trails up to his chest. It rests over his pounding heart, and I stare at him. But he doesn't say anything in response. "I want to be with you, Zade."

He grabs my wrist and pulls my hand away. His gaze is harsh and unforgiving. "You don't, not really. I'm a fucking monster. No one wants to be with me."

His grip on me is tight, it reflects the despair in his eyes, a silent war between his self-hatred and the part of him that aches to believe in the possibility of redemption. It's a hopeless struggle and I see it now. I see the truth that he hides in the dark corners of his mind.

"I do," I confess. "I don't care. You don't scare me, Zade. You stopped, you didn't hurt me, you stopped when you knew it was enough. Look at yourself, you're not even tempted for my blood even when it's right here, so close to you."

I move nearer and hold his hand, bringing it to my neck. My breath hitches in my throat and I feel him touching me, his thumb pressing against the bite marks. He looks at the dried blood, but his gaze doesn't linger on the wound, rather, it travels up to my face.

"If you couldn't control yourself, you wouldn't have stopped. I'm not scared of you, but you're scared of yourself, you've been scared of all this—of me leaving, and that's why you're telling me to go. You're scared of doing something that's going to drive me away. But I'm not leaving," I shake my head, holding his gaze. "You've been punishing yourself for what happened so long ago, for taking it too far to the point where we were parted. And that isn't far, Zade. None of this is. You became a villain of your own imagination. You're not one, I don't see you as one."

I touch my hand over his cheek and caress his face gently. His eyes narrow, but the anger that had taken over him has disappeared.

"You see something in me that I can't," He says, his voice rough with emotion. "You look at me and see someone worth saving, even now."

"Yes. Because that's what you are, Zade. Worth saving. Worth loving. You always have been." I breathe, stepping closer. My fingers curl into his hair, and I lean closer, letting my forehead touch his.

"After all that I've—"

I stop him before he finishes, "No. You don't get to rewrite my feelings for you based on your fears. You don't get to decide you're too far gone when I'm standing right here, telling you that you're not. No one gets to decide that, not you, not your mother, not my mother."

My voice lowers as I hold his gaze, and I brush my hand over his jaw.

"You're asking for a miracle, Aurora."

"No. I'm asking for a leap of faith. I'm asking you to trust in us, in me, in yourself. To believe that our future can be different, that we can build something new from the broken pieces of our past even if I may not remember anything from it. I've heard you, I've seen the way you've struggled and suffered, but I've also felt your love. It's what drew me in, it's why I'm still here, it's what made me fall in love with you all over again. When you love someone, you never truly stop, even if the memories of the love are gone."

He stares at me, and for a moment, I think he's going to let me go, push me away. But he doesn't.

Instead, he confesses what he has been burying within himself for a very long time, "I'm scared, Aurora."

It's the most vulnerable I've ever seen him. This confession is his white flag, his surrender to a love that he doesn't want to lose. It's more than a confession—it's a summoning of my soul to his, a call to stand with him at the brink of what's to come, to leap into uncertainty together, hand in hand, heart in heart.

I hear him now.

I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer. He falls into my embrace as if he belongs there, as if my arms are the walls that shield him from his own fears. His head rests on the crook of my neck and I hold him tight.

"I know."

"Promise me." It's a silent cry, a question, a demand.

My eyes fill with tears, and I inhale. "I promise, Zade."

The End.

Thank you for sticking with me till the end. The ending is bittersweet but the book is open-ended. It leaves the future unknown, for you, for me, and for the characters. I loved writing Zade and let me know below if you'd like to read this book entirely from the perspective of Zade beginning from long before he met Aurora again, or if you'd like to read bonus chapters of him!

And before it goes into the process of editing, please let me know if you'd like to see something different or changed throughout this book. I'd love to make it the best version of itself!