Page 61 of A Bond Beyond Blood

Once again, a hearty meal alleviated the pain in my stomach, but I had yet to find something that did a goddamn thing about the pain in my heart.Pain over the girl I lost, the people I’d killed...

Seeing Jackie this morning had been the first glimpse of happiness I’d had in some time, fleeting as it was.Even with her anger, which I’d earned, seeing her had been the hit that I’d needed.

But I needed more than a glimpse and a few angry words.

I neededher.

She’d been myeverythingand I’d thrown her away.

Shoulders hunched and head tucked down, I strolled onto the avenue and headed in the only direction I wanted to go—and the one direction I should avoid.

But if I couldn’t be with Jackie tonight, this was the next best option, even though it would hurt like hell.

By the time I reached the front stoop, all the interior lights were off, but the Christmas tree still glowed in the window to the left of the front door.

Mom always kept it lit up all night long for Christmas, just like the tree at 30 Rock.

‘To help guide Santa on his journey,’she’d always said.

I’d given her shit for that over the years, explaining that I was too old for make-believe but not too old to feel the sting of the higher electric bill I split with her, but she’d always silenced me with one of her fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies and she’d always stood firm.

That was my Mama, sweetness wrapped up in a stubborn streak three miles wide, just like Jackie.

God, I missed them.

If I closed my eyes and breathed deeply enough, I could almost pick up on that hint of Mom’s chocolate chip cookies in the air.

Chapter Nineteen

Elias

Nudging the man with the toe of my boot, I frowned.Whoever that boy was to the Fiorino girl, he was trouble to the rest of us.To humans, he was a predator.To vampires, a beacon.One of our own without self-control or restraint, drawing attention to our kind every time he fed.

A rogue vampire was everyone’s problem.

Though I’d relinquished the throne by disappearing all those decades ago, I knew the treaty well, the laws that had been put into place to allow us to walk among the mortals.Those covenants didn’t just protect the humans fromus, but protectedusfromourselves.Should we challenge the rules, rebel against the treaty, we’d only put ourselves in danger.

---