Edge of Dawn(75)

No! Her mind screamed in anguish. Or maybe she’d actually screamed her horror out loud. All she knew was the incredulity, the bone-deep grief, that overcame her as her vision-self collapsed atop his dead body and began to wail.

It couldn’t be true.

It could not possibly end like that for them.

She could never bear that level of pain.

She would rather die along with—

The mirror flew out of her hands and crashed into the nearby wall, raining shards of broken glass.

She jumped at the shock of what just happened, the abrupt startlement yanking her out of the vision’s unbreakable hold.

Kellan loomed over her, seething so fiercely he shook with the depth of his feelings. Heat rolled off his body in palpable waves. His eyes were throwing sparks, his lips peeled back from his fangs.

“What the hell were you doing?” His voice was pure thunder, more furious than she’d ever heard him. “Mira, goddamn it. Tell me you didn’t try to—ah, Jesus.”

He looked away from her now, turning his head away from her naked eyes. Still shaken, still raw with the grief from the awful things she’d just witnessed, Mira scrambled to put her lenses in. By the time she had, Kellan had sunk down to his knees on the floor in front of her.

“Mouse, for fuck’s sake. Why would you . . . What in God’s name were you thinking?” He took her upper arms in a tight grasp, trembling. “Look at me, baby. I need to see you. I need to know you’re okay.”

She lifted her face to meet his blazing stare. His face blurred through the tears filling her eyes. “I’m . . . Oh, God, Kellan! You were right. The vision. The judgment. All of it.”

“You saw,” he murmured, and his grip went a bit slack then. “You used your vision on yourself. Mira . . . why?”

“I had to know. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t make myself believe it . . . until now.” Her voice caught, scraping in her throat. “I saw everything, just like you described it. And there was something more. Oh, God. Kellan, they sentenced you to death and then I saw you. You were—” She couldn’t speak the word. On a sob, she fell against him, exhausted and hurting. “I can’t bear to lose you. Not again. Not like that.”

He gathered her close, wrapping his muscled arms around her. “I don’t want to face that reality either. If I could keep you with me, hold you forever, I would.”

She nodded against his warm chest, wishing desperately for the same thing. She needed to feel his arms around her. She needed to feel his heartbeat, his breathing, his body’s strength and heat. She needed to feel for herself that he was with her, whole and hale. He was alive.

As she clung to him, her gaze drifted over the broken mirror and scattered, glittering splinters on the floor nearby. A new grief tore at her. “Your grandmother’s mirror . . . Kellan, I’m sorry. It’s ruined because of me.”

“I don’t give a damn about that,” he whispered against the top of her head. “All I care about is you. You can’t even be sure of the damage you’ve done to yourself tonight, Mouse. Do you realize that?”

“I had to know,” she said, her outstretched hand drifting over one of the shiny pieces of glass. She plucked it from the floor and held it between her fingers, regretting that this one surviving memento from Kellan’s past had been destroyed in his desire to protect her. “I wanted so badly to prove that you were wrong about what you saw. I just wanted some hope—even a little bit—that we would be together. But it was worse than I imagined. It was so much worse than anything I want to believe.”

She didn’t realize she was curling the razor-edged shard into her fist, until she felt its jagged edges biting into her palm.

But Kellan knew.

He’d gone still, his muscles immediately tense, his body taut like a cable. He drew away from her only slightly, enough that she could see his nostrils flare with his intake of breath. The embers that had been sparking in his eyes a moment ago had now turned into red-hot coals bisected with the thinning vertical slits of his pupils. He growled, a rumble that came up from his chest, vibrating into her bones. “Mira . . .”

He took her fist in his hand and pried it open, let the glass tumble out to the floor. Blood covered her palm, tiny rivulets trickling down her pale wrist. He stared at those dark crimson trails, and the curse he hissed through his fangs was raw, though not with anger.

He transformed even further, his face becoming starker, wilder. Otherworldly. She had seen him in his true natural form before, but never like this. This was Kellan Archer fully Breed, primal and thirsting, a formidable male predator with his sights set squarely on her.