But as he paced and as Alesia’s shouts finally grew fewer and fewer, he knew one thing for certain, that he didn’t want to go back to his life without her. He loved her and he needed to be with her and it sure didn’t help that he’d been celibate since they’d broken up.
He didn’t know how to make this work, but he wanted to bond with her, more than life itself.
But how he was going to persuade Alesia to get on board, he had no idea.
***
Alesia slipped into her work jeans, red t-shirt and thick-soled diner shoes. Using Zephyr’s blow dryer, she even achieved a fairly decent look for her hair. Her shoulder bag had disappeared—probably left behind in the gravel parking lot during the attack.
Above all, however, the earlier feel-good from the sex had disappeared entirely in the face of her new, horrifying reality.
A blood rose.
How could she be a blood rose? From what she understood, only the most powerful women in the Nine Realms had that capacity, which didn’t exactly describe her.
But was that really true? Or did she have more ability than she thought? More potential?
After all, she’d seen the red wind of the Invictus before the first pair had arrived and as far as she knew, very few realm-folk could do that. Add to the equation that she’d actually knocked a power-enhanced Invictus vampire out of the sky with her battle energy, and maybe, just maybe, she possessed greater capacity than she’d ever thought possible.
But what was she supposed to do with this information? Was she supposed to bond with Zephyr?
And while the physical part of her did the happy dance at the sheer notion of getting to share his bed full-time, the rest of her cringed. He held an opposing view about what should be done with wraith-pairs and she saw no way around that, since deep in her heart, she hoped that one day her mother would be found, rescued and rehabilitated.
Alesia, and the fae part of her, was absolutely sure that one day her mother would come home.
She sat down on the long bench at the foot of the bed, and called for Zephyr. They needed to talk, get everything out in the open.
Zephyr appeared in the doorway and the mere sight of him filling her with tremendous longing. But she could never be with a man who slaughtered wraith-pairs, something she had to make him understand.
She would have opened the subject, but he spoke first. “I want us to form the blood rose bond.”
She blinked. “What?”
He then paced the east side of his bedroom and spoke for a long time about things Gerrod had told him, about how all the mastyrs in the entire Nine Realms would be after her, how he couldn’t bear the idea of her servicing other men in that way, how she’d be tempted, and on and on.
She finally covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop it. I can’t listen to this anymore. I won’t bond with you and I certainly won’t bond with any other mastyr, most of whom are warriors of one kind or another, just like you. I reject everything about being a blood rose.”
When she opened her eyes, he was standing over her.
He spoke softly. “I didn’t intend to overwhelm you. But I need you to understand that you’re vulnerable right now.”
“Well, you’ve made that clear, but please back off.” She lifted her hands up and patted the air.
He took several steps away from her and finally she could breathe again.
Glancing toward the east window, she saw that the dusky part of the evening was almost gone. “I’ll need to be at the diner in a few minutes. Will you fly me there?”
“Alesia, you can’t be serious. You can’t go back there, not yet anyway.”
“Why the hell not?” She rose to face him.
His eyebrows dipped. He looked mad as hell. “Because they’ll be back, all three wraith-pairs, if not here then at your diner, that’s why. They’ve marked you as someone dangerous and they won’t stop until you’re dead.”#p#分页标题#e#
She shook her head. “But, why?”
“Because you used your battle energy against that vampire.” His voice was softer as he said, “Listen, I want you to know that I’m so sorry about your mom. I had no idea and I wish like hell you’d told me sooner. Given what happened to you, I can see that I must have sounded harsh, even unkind, on the subject. And now I understand why you broke up with me.”
She lifted her chin. “But it doesn’t change anything with you, does it?”
He frowned. “The truth is, I don’t know.”
She’d never been more shocked. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
“I’m not saying this lightly, but if I’d been in your shoes, if I’d seen my mother carried away by a wraith knowing she’d be forced into an Invictus bond, I’d probably have spent every single minute of my life hunting for her, trying to rescue her.”