The terror and the guilt and the regretful sorrow were a combination that had my own fear rising up to meet it.
Whatever my mate had seen, it was bad, and she was about to try something that scared her. Something dangerous. Something that could cost us everything.
“What is it? What are you going to do? What are we walking into?” The questions spilled out of my mouth, one on top of the other. She usually wasn’t given a ton of time with her visions. Whatever they warned her of was going to happen very soon.
She was quiet, and I couldn’t have that. I need to know so that I could help. “Tell me. Please. Trust me to help—”
“You can’t help me. No one can.” Her voice was hollow and empty, but she was wrong. She was so fucking wrong.
“Please. I can help—” I stopped talking when I realized that she wasn’t even looking at me.
Tessa was staring out the windshield, and her eyes still had that post-vision glassy look to them. She was trying to search for an answer, and I had faith that she’d find something—some answer to whatever we were about to face. But it’d be better, easier, we’d be stronger if she’d just use her words.
Or show me through the bond.
Or do something other than just sit there when everything was about to go to shit.
“Tell me how to help you. Please.” I was desperate. “If we’re about to go into a fight—”
“Tessa?” Claudia’s voice was hesitant. “Talk to us. What are we walking into? Are there others in the warehouse with Axel? Or are—”
“I can’t.” She gripped my hand, and her fingers felt like ice. “I can’t. If I tell you—any of you—the worst happens. I saw it five times on the way here. Five times. Five visions. Five deaths.” She swallowed. “There’s only one thing I haven’t tried, and that’s what I have to do. I’m so sorry. Just…I’ll be okay. I think.”
What was she talking about? “You think?” The fear I’d been feeling started to strangle me.
The warehouse came into view, and I slammed my foot on the brake, throwing the car into park.
“You think!” I asked again. “What’s happening?” I thought my heart had been racing before, but I’d been wrong. It wasn’t just my hands shaking—my whole body was vibrating with the real terror of facing something impossibly horrible.
Because I knew my mate. If there was some way around this, she would tell me. But I wasn’t giving up hope. Not yet.
Claudia undid her seat belt. “If you saw it, we can avoid it. You know that. We’ve talked about that. What are we facing?”
Tessa didn’t think her visions were a gift when we met, but we knew better now. We all knew what they could do. Especially over the last seven months. We’d faced a lot of fights, and she always saw something to give us the upper hand. She always saw something to get us through. They’d been the difference between us walking away from a battle or dying. Over and over and over again.
But I’d never felt her feel this defeated before. Not ever.
“Tell us.” The power Lucas threw into those two words was enough to have me turning to him.
He was holding his mate’s hand. His witch but human-fragile mate’s hand.
Tessa shook her head, and as she did, I felt her pulling away. The bond we had squeezed shut. Tight. So tight. Until I couldn’t feel anything from her.
She shoved me out.
She shoved me out on purpose?
She’d never done that. Never, ever on purpose. Not since I met her.
Tessa thought our bond formed only after she agreed to let me date her. That day we’d taken a walk in the bed of the creek. But she was wrong.
The bond between us had been instantaneous. I felt her emotions since the second I saw her. The second her gaze met mine in front of her parents’ house, it had been done, over, forever. I’d been hers since that moment. She was it for me.
I never meant to bite her, but I didn’t mean not to bite her either. I knew I would eventually turn her. She was my destiny. She was my mate. That’s how it was going to be, but I didn’t mean to do it in the way that I’d done it. Without permission. That was something that I’d never forgive myself for.
But now she was shutting me out, and I couldn’t have that. “Open it again. I can’t walk into a fight without being able to feel the bond. You can’t ask me to—”
She pressed her lips against mine. Just a barely there-and-gone brush. “I’m going to ask you to do something crazy, and I need you to say yes. If you don’t, we all die.”