“She doesn’t want to be found. She’s happy with how she is, and she wants nothing to do with us.”
“Then why the hell come back?” Delaney questions.
“She needed something from me.”
“What?”
At Cole’s question, I turn to him. “Two decades ago, I lost my mate, Allison.”
He nods. “I remember hearing about that.”
“You only heard a very small portion of what happened,” I admit. “The bond between mated vampires is the strongest over all other supernaturals. If one dies, so do you.”
Cole looks from me, to Delaney, then back to me again. I know he’s thinking of what very nearly happened when she lost him for a brief time. Despite not being vampires, losing Cole almost killed Delaney.
“When Allison died, the bond tried to rip my soul right out of me.”
“What does any of this have to do with Bronywyn?” Drex asks.
“I’m getting to that.” The reply is snapped, rude, but I don’t apologize. “I went to Bronywyn because I thought I was going to die, and she sedated me. While I was out, she bonded herself to me, using magic. Using her blood and a spell, she linked us. Mated in every way except romantic,” I add.
“Which is what has been changing you,” Fearghas, the self-proclaimed fae big brother to the Astor sisters, comments. “I don’t know how we missed it.”
“It’s not a common thing,” I tell him. “As far as I know, Bronywyn and I are the only ones like that.”
No one speaks for a moment as their gazes remain on me. That is until Delaney looks to her sister and narrows her eyes. “You’re being awfully calm about this. You hate when people keep things from you.”
“I already knew.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t my secret to tell. I imagine I wasn’t even supposed to know, but Elijah let it slip.”
“I only told Elijah recently,” I admit.
“Why keep it hidden?” Delaney asks.
I glance over at Elijah. “At first, it had been due to my loyalty to Elijah. As you all know, they’d been close once, and it felt wrong. But once he met Rainey, it became more about a connection between the two of us. Something that tethered Bronywyn and me together when I’d felt alone for a long time. I suppose I didn’t want anyone to offer to help find a way to break it.”
“She also would have been an exploitable weakness for you,” Walker says from the corner.
“She would have.”
“Is this bond the reason she’s back?” Cole steps forward and rests a hand on Delaney’s lower back.
“Yes. The bond is growing weak without our blood exchange, and if it doesn’t happen soon—”
“Tarnley.” Delaney covers her mouth with a hand.
“You’ll die,” Rainey fills in the blank.
“Yes.”
“Will she?” Elijah asks.
“I don’t know,” I reply, honestly. “She said she could feel the bond weakening, but I didn’t wait around to find out.”
“You didn’t feed from her?”