Bewitch(65)

“I’m sorry... I caused so much hurt and I didn’t mean to.”
“Antoine will be fine and Snow will recover.”
She lifted her head and shook it, her silvery eyes filled with sorrow that flowed through the connection between their blood.
“I wasn’t talking about them... I was talking about you.”
Payne looked at her hair. More of it was silver and he had a horrible feeling he knew why. She was marked now. Tainted.
“I’ve done terrible things to you too... why didn’t you tell me this would happen?” He longed to close the gap between them, run his fingers through her hair and tell her that he would fix it somehow. He would make everything right and he would take care of her if she would only let him. He would be a good mate, and would protect her and Luca.
The boy stirred, opening sleep-filled grey eyes, his expression soft and docile. When he saw Elissa, tears sprang into his eyes and he sobbed. She set him down on his bare feet, crouched and held him, rubbing his back as he cried into her hair, his little fingers buried in it, clinging to her. Payne clenched his fists and then took a step towards them, unable to deny his need to comfort them both.
Elissa looked up at Payne.
Several women appeared on the pavement beyond her, outside the theatre. Payne growled. The little boy tensed in Elissa’s arms. She gathered him closer and turned to face the newcomers.
Witches.
A blonde middle-aged woman moved forwards and paused with her foot in the air, close to the boundary of Vampirerotique. She set it down, glared at the stone steps and then up at the facade of the theatre.
“Elissa,” she shouted, loud enough for Payne to hear it through the glass.
Elissa took Luca’s hand, walked with him to the door and opened it.
Payne’s heart broke at the thought she might still leave.
The witches would hurt her if she tried.
“Leave this place of death.” The woman stared up at Elissa, flanked by six other witches, all of them dressed in traditional dull black dresses. They were here on business then. “We have come to take you home.”
Elissa looked back over her shoulder at him. In the low light, he couldn’t see the silver in her hair, and that meant the witches couldn’t either. Didn’t they know what he had done to her or were they just trying to fool her and lure her out so they could hurt her? Was it as she had said and he had thought, and the spell that cloaked the incubi den had severed her coven’s connection to her, so they hadn’t felt what he had done to her there and were unaware of it?
Payne stared straight into her eyes, unable to put voice to everything he wanted to tell her. It hurt too much. He could see in her eyes that she longed to go with these witches. She wanted to believe that they would accept her even though he had tainted her, ruined her. She didn’t want to be with him, and he couldn’t blame her. He could only blame himself.
He had never thought he would find another woman to love, a second chance at having a destined mate. He had never thought he would find a woman that he could love without fear, safe in the knowledge that her feelings and desires were her own, and that she would never turn on him. The phantom’s words still haunted him. They had all come true. What had that female seen in his future?
Would Elissa stay with him?
Or would she leave forever?
Elissa looked at her coven.
She took a step back towards Payne. He couldn’t believe it, not even when she stopped beside him and slipped her free hand into his, clutching it tightly.
“You would align yourself with wretched bloodsuckers rather than your own kind?” The blonde witch looked as though she wanted to tear Elissa apart for it but she made no move to take the steps and enter the theatre.
They were scared. They knew who lived in this theatre and they feared entering it.
More of Elissa’s hair turned silver and Payne knew the witch had noticed it when her eyes narrowed and she spat on the stone steps, muttering something black and foul.
Payne moved in front of Elissa, protecting her as he always would. The witches glared at him and disappeared one by one, but it wasn’t over. Elissa’s hair had marked her for all to see as tainted and if she ever returned to the fae world, to her home, the witches there would see it and inform her coven. They would wait for her to leave the safety of vampire territory and then they would come after her.
And he would be there to protect her.
Wherever she went, he would be there for her.
He turned to face her. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to Antoine and ask if you can stay here until I find you somewhere you will both be safe.”
Elissa frowned. “I have found somewhere like that already.”
She had?
Was that why she had been leaving?