He had to hold back his own howl of agony. He couldn’t let her hear him, couldn’t let her know he was there.
She didn’t know he was still there.
She couldn’t feel him any more. She never would again.
But he could still feel her. The one thing he couldn’t burn was his own mind. Despite the smoking, blackened chasm between them, she was still his mate.
He knew the depth of her pain. Could sense her confusion, her terror. Could sense how she sank to the floor, clutching her head, fragments of scorched memories whirling through her mind like burning leaves.
“My mate, my mate, my mate!” Rose screamed, and he knew that she didn’t even remember his name.
She didn’t remember him at all.
It felt like every bone in his body was broken. He made himself stand anyway. Made himself walk away from the terrible sounds of his mate’s grief.
Even though she didn’t know who he was, she still wept for him.
But not forever. She would mourn the mate she’d never known, but eventually, she would move on. She would find happiness. She would heal.
He never would.
He’d burned the mate bond.
There was nothing left but ash.
Chapter 15
She stared down at him, and it was like she could suddenly see through time. She saw him twenty years younger—hair sandy-brown without a hint of gray, face unlined by grief. Still solemn, still controlled, but with his fire burning close to the surface, lighting his features with warmth and power.
She knew that face. Knew his name. Knew who he was.
“You’re Blaze,” she said, numbly.
His face reflected her own dumbstruck disbelief. For a moment, he just gaped up at her, eyes wide with shock.
Then he whispered, “You remember.” His open-mouthed astonishment transmuted into pure, shining joy. “You remember!”
He was still holding her, still inside her. She leaped off him as if he’d burned her, scrambling backward from the man who was suddenly, terribly, not her Ash.
“No, Rose, wait!” He sat bolt upright, reaching out to her. “I know this must be confusing, but—”
“Don’t touch me!”
He stopped at her shriek, hands freezing in mid-air. She scrabbled further away from him, chest heaving, until her back pressed against the wall. Her head was like a shaken snow globe, whirling with fragments of memories.
Memories that she’d forgotten.
“You made me forget you.” She clutched her head, trying to make sense of the flashing images. “You burned my memories, you burned my mind. You made me forget you!”
“It was the only way.” His hands were still outstretched, fingers open toward her, trembling. She’d never seen his face so raw and unguarded. His eyes shone with an emotion too deep to name. “I had to burn every trace of myself from your mind. It was the only way to stop Corbin from being able to find you. It was the only way to keep you safe.”
She huddled into a ball, shaking with shock. “I would rather,” she said, her voice muffled in her arms, “have died.”
“It was the only way to keep you safe,” he said again. “Rose, oh, Rose. You truly remember me?”
She scrunched her eyes shut against a barrage of impressions—a frost-covered window, a blazing inferno, walls of a building falling away from rising wings. The scent of scorched cloth, the sweet burn of his touch. Cinnamon and cream, a laugh, fire turning snow into steam. His voice in the dark. The heat of his mouth.
Blaze.