Page 119 of Bitten By Bloodmoon
Tension fills the air between the four of us. Emeric hesitates and then says, “I’m going to do a sweep with the others. But you should do this quickly. We don’t have much time before we’ll be found.” He looks directly at me when he says it, like I don’t already know the stakes. Then he runs into the woods that surround the small clearing, shifting as he jumps between two trees.
Ambrose is also dressed in a dark suit with a golden yellow tie. He looks good, too. We look like we’re all about to go to a party, not a ceremony that could cause the deaths of any one of us.
“Ready?” he asks me.
I look from him to Nyx. “Yes.”
Nyx stands on my left, Ambrose on my right, as we walk toward Florence. We all stop at once in front of her as she turns to face us.
With a wave of her hand, a soft, bed-like mat appears in front of us.
Suddenly, my heart is beating out of my chest.
“Breathe, Lumi,” Nyx says.
I take a long breath as I feel Ambrose give my hand a gentle squeeze. I forgot about joining as humans before being marked as a wolf.
I look at the two men I’m being forced to choose between. But it’s not really a choice. Mates are not about free will. They aren’t about making a choice. They sure as hell aren’t about love.
I link my fingers into both of their hands as we step forward—the three of us, stopping just in front of the bed that Florence has created.
She looks over all three of us and then back to me. “It’s time to choose. Who will you allow to mark you? Who do you think is your mate?”
“I love you. But choose him, not me. Live, survive, he’s your mate. He’s the only one whose mark you can survive,”Nyx says in my head.
“Now who’s being the martyr?”
“I’m not being a martyr. Just facts. If you choose me, I won’t accept you. I’ll reject you.”
I grind my teeth together.“You don’t get to choose for me, Nyx.”
“I’m not. I’m just telling you that I’m not a choice. So choose Ambrose or don’t mark. But I’m not going to be the one to kill you, and we both know that if I mark you, you’ll die because we aren’t mates.”
Without warning, Nyx vanishes—uses his vampire speed to disappear into the woods.
I look at Ambrose, who isn’t at all shocked by what Nyx just did. “You two planned this together?”
“Nyx doesn’t want to watch us together. He’ll be in the woods, protecting us.”
I shake my head. “I thought it wasmychoice.”
“It’s never a choice, and you know it. I’m your mate. Every seer says so. You know it in your heart. Complete the ceremony. Break the curse. Live. We can figure out what tomorrow brings together. Please, Lumi.”
“Only if you make a blood deal with me first.”
His eyebrows jump in surprise, but he says, “Anything.”
I look to Florence, who is staring at me intently. I can’t chance her knowing what I’m about to say, even if Ambrose trusts her. But I make sure to close off the part of my mind that lets Nyx in when I speak.
“Nyx triggered his vampire curse when he used his mind control to command me to shift into my wolf. He’s going to lose his mind, go slowly rabid until he wants to do nothing but kill mercilessly. He won’t let himself get to that point. He’ll have someone kill him first.”I bite my lip, preparing myself to say the next part.“I’ll accept you as my mate; I’ll complete the marking ceremony with you if you make a blood deal with me that we break the curse for the vampires, not the wolf shifters. We save him.”Tears hang from my eyelashes, but I refuse to let them fall. I have to do this. I don’t have a choice. Ambrose is my mate. Every seer agrees. He’s the only way to break the curse.
But Nyx—I love him. If I do this, I can protect him. I can keep him alive. I can save him.
“How do we do that?” he asks.
“The strongest between us gets to choose who the curse is broken for, which would be you. So when the time comes, you choose to break it for the vampires.”
“You love him?”
