Chapter 41

Grey was tracingthe curves of my back with his fingertips when I woke up. I was lying on my stomach, and he’d rested his cheek on my shoulder while he touched me gently. All I could see was the back of his head, his hair brushing against my cheek each time I breathed, but I was willing to bet anything that he looked peaceful. Just as peaceful as I felt.

“I’ve never seen anything like your skin.”

His voice vibrated through my entire body, and I smiled. Of course, he knew I was awake, even though I hadn’t moved an inch. He could hear my heartbeat just fine.

I raised my head a bit to see the time—not even ten a.m. Here I thought I’d slept the whole day.

Grey moved back and lay his head on the pillow, looking perfectly satisfied.

“What about my skin?” I asked, and before I knew it, he grabbed me and put me on his chest, so I was half lying on him.

Damn. So much more comfortable than the pillow.

“It’s soft. My fingers glide over it. Smooth.” And again, he continued to touch my shoulder as he held me tightly against this chest.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of his skin, feeling like home, which was fucked up all on its own.

A long breath left me. “Aliens.” And they’d replaced me, too, with a version of me that had no sense whatsoever.

Grey chuckled and his chest moved up and down, shaking me. Of course, I was smiling half a second in, because what the hell is the normal world?

“I’ll take it,” he said, planting a kiss on the top of my head.

“The Blood Call,” I said, more for my benefit than his. “The stupid Blood Call. It happened.” And I needed to be thinking about that, not the way his abs felt under my hand—and why the hell was I touching him like that?

“It did, yes.” His abs, those delicious looking abs, clenched hard when I went just below his bellybutton, tracing the hairs that went all the way down to his cock under the covers. I saw the shape of it, though. I saw it, and my insides clenched as well.

Heat between my legs.

“And? Talk to me.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Tell me what happened.”

Grey brought his hand that had been touching my shoulder up to my cheek and framed my face, blocking my view of his cock for a bit, for which I was thankful. “Your blood called. We answered. We came here and we bit you.”

The memories poured into my head like a floodgate had burst open.

Fangs. Naked chests. Blood coming out of me, feeling so incredibly relieving…

My hand rose to my neck to feel for puncture wounds, and they were there. I barely felt them, but they were there. I’d been bitten five times, and…

“Something was wrong.” I raised my head to look at his face. “Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

Grey flinched. “Not wrong exactly,” he said. “More like…something unusual.”

“Unusual how?” Because my mind was buzzing and my memories made no sense and I just needed him to spell it out for me, but he kept staring at my lips.

I grabbed him by the wrist and rose up even higher until my face was right over his, my hair falling like a curtain to our side, taking away some of the light from the lamps.

“Grey, unusual how?”

He looked up at me with those troubled eyes. “Your beauty haunts me, Autumn Hayes,” he whispered instead, and my eyes closed, my stomach doing a flip despite my better judgment. I lowered my head, holding onto his hand that was pressed to my cheek, and I kissed his palm like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“I would have never guessed you were such a romantic.” He had so many pretty words to say.

I wondered if Cynthia and Amita had heard it all before. His brides.

A knife twisted in my gut.

“Me neither,” Grey said, but I wasn’t smiling anymore. And I tried to hide my face, lower my head, but he raised it again. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. The Blood Call?—”

“Don’t lie to me, Fall. I can hear your blood. Tell me what’s wrong,” he insisted.

Ah, fuck. “It’s an invasion of privacy to be listening to my blood, you know,” I muttered, and I tried to move away, turn my back to him or something.

Except Grey, apparently, had a body made out of steel because his arms were wrapped around me and he didn’t let me move a single inch. And I pretended to try harder, just to see what he’d do, then pretended to be irritated that he didn’t let me get away.

Secretly, though, I loved it—and, no, I had no clue when I’d become this person.

“The others,” I said bitterly. “I was just wondering if you told your other brides the same things you’re telling me.”

And I was fucking jealousabout it. Not, I hate them jealous, no. More like I want to tie them up and set them on fire and watch them scream until they die jealous.

It was wrong on so many levels, I knew that. And it still didn’t make me want to watch the light die in their eyes any less.

“I haven’t. I’ve never told anybody what I tell you,” Grey said without missing a beat, and the asshole was smiling. “You’re jealous, baby.”

“Oh, you don’t say,” I deadpanned and pretended to try to move away from him again.

He still didn’t let me.

“I’ve never told anybody what I tell you, Fall, because I never wanted to. I never thought those things about anybody because nobody else is you.”

“But they’re your brides.” And we both knew what that meant.

He pulled me up and kissed me without a fucking warning, just slammed my lips to his and slipped his tongue in my mouth the moment I tried to argue.

Useless. Completely fucking useless.

“Not fair,” I muttered when he stopped.

“I like you jealous, but you don’t need to be,” he whispered against my lips. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, I’ve only ever been yours.”

His words rang in my ears, and I suddenly remembered Cynthia’s desperation that night during dinner. She’d been upset because Grey had refused to even let her touch him because he was busy or tired or he said he wasn’t going to be there for the night. She and Amita had been devastated because he refused to sleep with them.

Holy shit…

“So, you’re trying to tell me you haven’t been with anyone since I came here?” My voice shook.

“Exactly,” Grey calmly said.

I blinked at him. “Why not?”

“I told you—I didn’t want to. Nobody else is you, baby, and you are all I wanted.” Kiss, kiss, kiss. “All I want.”

“But you hated me.” The way he’d looked at me in the beginning said he’d hated my guts.

“Never,” Grey said, squeezing me to his chest until I couldn’t breathe. “Not for a single second.”

Well, fuck.

“So…” I shook my head, looking into his eyes that were so familiar now, like I’d known him across lifetimes, at his face that was so achingly beautiful to me I couldn’t stand to be looking at anything else.

“I’m yours now? I’m…I’m your bride?”

“You are mine, baby. Undeniably mine,” Grey told me, rising to kiss me again. “But the Blood Call was unusual last night. Your blood chose me…”

“But?” I asked, terrified, because I already knew the answer. I remembered it.

“But it also chose all my brothers.”

My eyes closed. Goose bumps rose on my forearm.

“Hey, look at me,” Grey whispered.

By the time I opened my eyes, he pulled me up to sit on his lap while he leaned back against the headboard. He wrapped me in his arms like I was a damn baby in need of cuddling, and unfortunately for me, I had no complaints whatsoever. I just wrapped my arms around his neck and held on tight.

“It doesn’t matter. This has happened before.”

“It has?”

“Twice that we know of. When a bride’s blood is compatible with all living Evernights, the bride herself chooses who she wants to be with—and you did.”

Ice in my veins. “I did.” I remembered it now. I remembered all of them with the marks, those black veins drawn all over their chests and necks like tattoos—the marks that had already faded on Grey’s skin. Not a sign of them remained anywhere on him.

My blood was compatible with all of them, but when I’d been asked to choose…

“I was delirious.” I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I was living purely on instinct, trying to cool the heat that was scorching me from within, and Grey’s bite had done that for me so well—better than all. His hand had been so cold in mine. He’d become my own personal heaven. I’d been so fucking desperate for him…

“That’s part of the Blood Call,” Grey said. “It’s not fair at all, but it’s the only way to let nature decide. The only way to take common sense and logic and overthinking and overanalyzing out of the equation, and function only based on our most primal instincts.” His hand cupped the side of my head and he looked at me like he was begging me to see inside his mind, to know what he was thinking. “Your blood chose me. You chose me. You were made for me, Fall.”

I shook my head, turning away.

This time, he let me.

“Valentine,” I whispered because I’d been so connected to the guy. Not attracted to him sexually, but he’d been my fucking salvation during the weeks I’d been locked up in this castle. He’d protected me. He’d given me that piano. He’d given me my freedom, despite the fact that I’d chosen to come back here to warn him.

“Valentine is a very cunning young man,” Grey said. I turned to look at him. “No, I’m not saying that because I’m jealous—though I am. Make no mistake, I’ve never wanted to kill a man more, but that’s not why I’m saying it.”

I got off his lap, feeling like I was suffocating already. “I think I need a moment.” I needed a million moments by myself to try to figure this out.

“Fall, he was never meant to choose you. I was,” Grey whispered, and he touched my shoulder, pulling me a little to face him.

But I couldn’t. I knew that if I saw his face again, if I saw those eyes, if I felt at home in his body like that, I’d have already lost the battle. “I just need some time to myself, okay?” I said, keeping my eyes squeezed shut, pulling the sheets around me as if I was suddenly aware that I was naked. We both were.

“Of course,” Grey said after a loaded moment of silence, and the next second, he was off the bed. I covered myself and kept my head down, feeling like I was carrying the whole world on my shoulders again.

I didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare make a single sound.

My God, I was breaking, and I had no idea why.

“You can change your mind, you know.”

At that, I turned to the door. Grey was right in front of it wearing his black sweatpants and a white short-sleeved shirt, his hand on the handle.

“What?”

Already he looked like the Grey I remembered, the Grey I’d grown so used to seeing every day in this castle. Not my Grey.

“You are free to change your mind about your choice. I won’t get in your way, I swear it.”

“Grey,” I said because he couldn’t possibly think that I’d regretted it.

How could he, when he claimed he heard my blood, when he claimed he knew when something was wrong or right?

But Grey said nothing, just slipped out the door in silence and left me alone with my misery, clutching the sheets to my chest tightly.

Fuck, I wanted to call him back so badly. Of course, I didn’t regret choosing him—he felt better than anything ever before. Better than playing my heart out on the piano. I had never been more whole, more me than these little moments I’d shared with him today.

“I don’t want to change my mind,” I thought I whispered to the empty room. “I just want to understand.”

But Grey didn’t come back, even though part of me was wishing that he would. That he was still by the door and that he’d hear me and that he’d be back on the bed with me, forcing me stay on his lap while I pretended I wanted to be away because I should.

I was all alone in the big room again, feeling a thousand times smaller, without a single clue what the hell I was going to do next.

The bathroom mirrorsaid I looked good. Better, in fact, than I ever had before. My skin was indeed smooth, cheeks glistening like glass. My eyes were wide and bright, more green than brown, and the red of my hair had never been more intense. It reminded me of flames, especially with the highlights Adam had put on me to add dimension, which now started from the middle of my head because my hair had grown so fast. The tips reached the small of my back, but it suited me. This whole look suited me. I couldn’t put my finger on what else was different about my face, though, but something was. Something that wasn’t too obvious. Something I felt rather than saw.

I had bite marks on both sides of my neck, but they’d mostly healed. The wounds looked like tiny dots, and the skin was just slightly raised as I ran my fingers over them, but they didn’t hurt. I had expected to be repulsed by the sight of them, by the idea that I’d been bitten, that vampires had actually sucked blood out of me, but I wasn’t. Instead, a pleasant chill ran down my back and the memory heated my cheeks up instantly. I’d liked it. I’d loved being snacked on by all the Evernights, especially Grey. It had felt incredibly relieving to be in their arms and to have them latched onto my neck like that, despite what I thought I should feel about it.

And when my eyes closed as I sat in the bath and rubbed my skin, I could feel them on me. I could feel my blood rushing out of me eagerly just like it had the night before. I could feel Grey’s hand on mine, and his lips, and his teeth—I could feel him everywhere on me, and fuck, I was turned on within seconds.

My eyes popped open.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” I asked the bathroom, but the bathroom had no answer.

I stood up from the tub, a bit panicked, struggling to understand these feelings that were so foreign, and at the same time felt like they’d always been there, but I somehow hadn’t noticed them until now.

Grey Evernight—what a fucking shock.

And Valentine.

I kept trying to think if maybe I’d felt something when he kissed me in the mirror room. I tried to recall that kiss, but the memory somehow merged with the ones last night, and within seconds, it was Grey over me, kissing the air out of my lungs. It was Grey touching me and biting me and sticking his tongue in my throat. It was Grey’s cock buried so deep inside me that I felt him in my soul, the pleasure?—

“No.”

I closed my eyes and I repeated that word over and over again—no, no, no, no, no. I had to stop thinking about it because I was already on my second pair of panties after the bath. And I was hungry. And I wanted to get out there and talk to Valentine, to Grey, to the brides, just to make sense of this whole thing somehow.

With those thoughts in mind and my cheeks still slightly flushed, I left the room and went downstairs, searching the hallways for Shadow because he was usually always there.

Not today, though. Today, I was all alone as I walked down the stairs of the fifth tower, and the closer to the ground floor I went, the better I heard the voices.

“…this far by following all the rules exactly as they are,” someone was saying—it could have been Romin.

“And we’re already late. We’ve talked about this before.” Emil.

“It’s evident that what we’re doing right now isn’t working,” said Tristian.

“Or rather, who we’re doing it with,” Emil said.

“Which isn’t to say that it’s anybody’s fault,” said Romin, and when I reached the first landing of the stairway, I stopped. If I got closer, they’d know I was there. They’d hear my heart—and fuck, I wanted to hear what they were talking about. Curiosity was a monster inside of me already. Couldn’t resist it if I tried—and I most definitely wasn’t trying.

“It’s because Rassin had all of us during his lifetime. We know how it works—if we manage to produce a single Evernight heir, I’ll be fucking happy,” Emil said.

“We will. Of course, we will,” said Romin. “But to do so, we must be smart. We must utilize every possible option that we have at our disposal.”

My heart was beating in my ears as if I already knew exactly what they were talking about, even if I didn’t want to admit it yet.

Suddenly I was walking closer, farther down the stairs, the need to see them consuming me.

And I did. They were behind the corner on the other side of the wide hallway, all five brothers. Grey and Valentine were leaning against the walls, watching in silence as their brothers talked.

“Her blood is compatible with all of ours. It’s a sign,” Tristian said.

My knees shook.

“We should all be able to bed her until she’s with child,” said Emil.

“Because if we die without an heir, we all know what happens,” Tristian again.

“It’s for the Isles,” Romin said. “It’s our duty to protect the Isles at all costs.”

“And she could give us an heir,” Emil whispered, and about a million spiders crawled all over me, taking my breath away.

Silence.

My eyes closed and I begged my heart to stop beating so furiously. I knew they were talking about me. I knew exactly what they were saying—it was crystal clear. And I’d rather jump out the window from the top floor of the tower first, but?—

“So, let me get this straight,” Grey said after a long moment of loaded silence, the tension so thick in the hallway I could touch it. “You’re all coming at me with the noble excuse of saving the Isles because you want to fuck Fall, even though the law is perfectly clear on the matter. Is that it?”

“Grey,” Romin warned. My heart did a fucking flip.

“And you expect me to…what, exactly?” Grey continued, his voice calm, but so different from when he spoke to me calmly.

Thiscalm hid a fucking storm underneath. Thiscalm was a goddamn warning.

“You expect me to just say yes? You expect me to smile and nod and welcome you, my brothers, into the bed of my woman?” With every word he spoke, his voice became so much louder, so much more menacing, that I was tempted to be afraid, too.

None of the others said a single thing. I couldn’t see them very well, but they all had their heads down.

“She chose me, and you can’t stand it—which I understand. I’d have hated me, too, if I were in your shoes, brothers, but please get this through your heads: Fall is mine. She belongs to me. If any of you even looks at her wrong, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”

Oh, God…

“The Isles—” Romin started, but Grey wouldn’t let him speak.

“The Isles can rot in hell for all I care. I’ll set them all on fire myself,” Grey said, and I really, really wanted to believe that he didn’t mean it, even though he sounded like he did.

“You know very well what happens if we don’t have an heir,” Romin said, his voice dangerously low now, too. My heart skipped a beat. If a fight broke out between them, what the fuck was I going to do?

“And you know very well what happens if you go behind my back,” said Grey, stepping forward, right in the middle of them all with his chin up, perfectly at ease.

He locked eyes with each one of them for a second, then said, “Touch her, brothers, and you will die.”

It was a simple statement, and he said like he believed it with his whole being. Just a fact.

You will die, he said, to his own brothers.

I had never prayed so hard in my life for this to be over, for them to walk away so I could go down there and smack Grey in the fucking head until he came to his senses and thought clearly again.

Was he absolutely nuts?! Those were his fucking brothers!

Nobody made a single sound for a long moment, and even my heart slowed down the beating, afraid to be heard.

Then Tristian opened his fucking mouth and said, “Her pussy must be really tight if you?—”

That’s all the words he managed to say before Grey moved.

He turned to a blur and I was only able to make him out because my eyesight had improved drastically since I came to the Woods. He was in front of Tristian before anybody blinked, one hand around the back of his neck, the other on his jaw, squeezing tightly.

“Grey!” Romin called, but they all took a step back, arms wide at their sides, ready to attack.

I stopped breathing altogether as I watched Tristian hissing and trying to push Grey’s hands off his face but couldn’t.

Grey squeezed. The sound of bone breaking echoed in my head and Tristian fell to his knees. Grey didn’t let go of him, only kept squeezing and squeezing until blood spilled out of Tristian’s nose and mouth and ears. He slammed his fists on Grey’s face and chest and stomach, and he tried to get up again but couldn’t. His eyes were dark, his fangs extended, and he kept hissing like a damn snake, but Grey didn’t budge a single inch.

“Grey, let him go,” Romin said again, his tone a warning, but he didn’t intervene. He didn’t touch Grey, pull him back and get in between him and Tristian as he should have been doing. They all just watched and prepared to defend themselves.

“I’m not done breaking his skull yet,” Grey said, his voice slightly strained, and another popping sound reached my ears, shaking me to my core. He was really going to break his brother’s skull. Because of me.

I moved before I knew it.

“Grey, step—” Romin started again.

“Stop!” I called at the top of my voice, stopping halfway to them in the middle of the hallway.

They all turned to me—including Grey.

Fuck, he was furious. His eyes looked so dark they could have been black. He was fully clothed, and the tips of his fangs had just slipped down his upper lip. He looked like such a completely different person that, for a moment, I thought maybe I imagined the time I had spent with him. I thought maybe I’d gotten so delusional that I’d made it all up.

“Please, let him go,” I said anyway because, imagination or not, Grey was about to break Tristian’s fucking skull because of me, and I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. I wouldn’t.

Grey had frozen in place, and so had the others, though I couldn’t look away from him even for a second. I took another step forward, shaking so badly I was surprised my legs still held me. Tristian’s blood continued to spill from his mouth and nose, trying in vain to remove Grey’s hands from his face….

“Don’t kill him, Grey. Please, let him go.”

My voice shook, too. My heart beat in my ears. Grey stood perfectly still, his eyes widening, some grey slipping into them again. Please, I said to him in my mind, as if I was sure he’d hear me.

Then he moved.

Twisting his hands to the sides fast, he broke Tristian’s neck and the sound of it filled the hallway. Tristian fell on the floor on his side, and my heart fell with him.

But Grey told me, “He’ll live.”

He’d live. Tristian would live. He was not going to die today—not on my account, at least.

Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath. He’ll live, but I might just die of a goddamn heart attack.

Whimpers behind me, and I turned to see brides, five of them holding onto one another on the other side of the hallway just at the corner, watching. Crying.

“That’s crossing the line,” Romin said, taking a menacing step toward Grey.

Now I was scared shitless.

Was he going to attack Grey? Because he was stronger. That’s what the brides said—Romin was the strongest of all the brothers. What if he actually hurt Grey?

Oh, God…

“I agree, brother. He went way too far,” Grey said, still just as calm, waving his hand at Tristian’s body right there near his feet. “But don’t you worry—he won’t be talking for at least the next day. I’d say his lesson was learned.”

“You’re a fucking savage,” Emil told him.

“We do not kill our own,” Romin spit.

“Except he has already, hasn’t he?”

We all turned to Valentine. He’d been so perfectly silent until now that I was almost surprised to find him still there.

“He killed his own father. Our father,” Valentine continued, his voice bitter. Ice-cold.

My heart stood perfectly still.

Grey turned to him slowly, and I could no longer see his face. I wanted to call out his name so badly it hurt. Let’s just go back to my room. Let’s go back to bed. Let’s hide under the covers, just the two of us.

I wanted nothing more than to be where we were that morning.

“I did,” Grey said, his hands loose to the sides, waiting.

“That was different. He was challenged,” Romin said. “Rassin challenged him.”

He, at least, seemed a tiny bit calmer now.

Valentine smiled the way he used to do to me—mischievously, like he was a little snake hiding in the grass, waiting to jump at the first chance.

“Then I challenge him, too.”

I couldn’t fucking breathe.

“What?” said Emil. “Are you fucking nuts?”

But Valentine raised his head. “I challenge you, Grey Evernight, to a fair duel at the next dawn,” he solemnly said. “Do you accept?”

Both my hands were in front of my mouth because I didn’t want to scream now. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t articulate words, and all I’d do was scream if I allowed myself to let out a sound, and I didn’t want to.

I wouldn’t need to because Grey wasn’t going to accept. He knew Valentine was the youngest, and they fought with their dragons. He knew Shadow couldn’t even compare to Storm.

He knew this, but…

“Gladly,” Grey said with a nod. “I accept your challenge, Valentine Evernight. We fight at dawn.”

I hardly saw anything at that point.

I thought I called Grey’s name, but I couldn’t be too sure. All I remember was Romin turning to me, saying, “take her away,” and then there were hands on my arms, pulling me up the stairs. Whispers and cries and curses in my ear, and I walked and walked and walked, but I couldn’t really see where I was going. Where I was being taken.

A door opened and I was shoved inside—“Stay there!” a woman said. Could have been Rachel.

The door closed with a loud bang. My legs gave up on me and I slid down the wall, arms wrapped around my head.

I stayed there, cursing my fate, for a very long time.