It’s like another dream.
But when I turn around, Rory is standing right behind me, and unlike the dreams that leave me grasping for air, he immediately grabs me in his arms and kisses me. Really kisses me.
His arms tighten around me and I wrap my tongue around his as it pushes into my mouth. My head is overwhelmed with all the emotions that I feel screaming for my attention as I completely lose myself in Rory’s embrace.
“Alright, Romeo,” I hear Kaleb call from the car. “You don’t get to claim her yet. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Rory pulls away from me but lets his face linger near mine for a moment so that what he is about to say is heard only between the two of us.
“I’ve been strong, and calm, and level-headed enough for all three of us,” he says. I can hear the ragged breaths that he takes between every few words. “But I cannot bear to think of a life without you Sabrina. Promise me that you will not ever, ever be with anyone else. Please, I need to hear you say it.”
Rory looks at me as though his whole soul is exposed. Vivian was right; even the strongest men can be broken by love. For the first time, I really feel the love that Rory has for me, and I can see it on his face as if he is incapable of hiding it anymore.
“If what Romulus just said is true …” he says, his voice dripping with desire and hope, “then it’s finally possible. We’d never have to be apart.”
He pulls me even tighter. “Promise me.”
He waits on my words as if they can control him and I feel a surge of longing come over me.
“I promise,” I say. “So long as you keep your promise to me, then I’ll never let another human touch me. So long as you turn me, I am yours forever.”
I expect him to argue.
I expect him to disagree.
But instead, he just grins.
Seemingly satiated, Rory exhales and takes my hand to walk me to the car. The other boys ride in the back of the Jeep and howl at the crisp, fresh air and the open moonlight.
In a few hours, the eclipse will be here, and I will be allowed to stay and be with the boys while they shift.
I will be allowed to watch the ritual that I was forbidden before to be a part of.
I sit quietly in the passenger seat of the car while Rory drives. My face is pressed to the glass as I watch the moonlight reflect off his bare chest. I wonder if his wolfish senses can tell how much I want him. All of them.
I can’t imagine ever wanting anything more.
26
Sabrina
You’d think that after so much time apart I’d be brimming with questions—that I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off of them.
But after the way they left, I keep finding myself reluctant. It hasn’t settled in yet that they’re back. That they’re here.
More than that, it hasn’t settled in that they’re here to stay.
Really stay.
With me beside them.
When we get back to the house, all attention turns back to Romulus. The puncture holes in his neck are so deep that I can see the dark purplish tissue of his exposed muscle. Amazingly, it’s already stopped bleeding and I can only imagine that it has something to do with how the wolf-blood inside him congeals differently than that of a mere man.
If it was me who was bitten, as I have been before, I’d be in the hospital instead of home.
There’s a slight musty smell to the house—a remnant of the emptiness that’s occupied it these last months.
Months.