Page 28 of Bite of Midnight
I cup her face in both hands, my thumbs catching the tears. I can feel her heartbeat echoing in me like it’s mine.
“Easy,” I whisper, wrecked. “You’re alright.”
She nods, breath shaking, lips parted. “I can feel you,” she says.
My chest pulls tight. “Yeah,” I manage. “You’ll always feel me now.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine, and there’s this look there, this quiet wonder that almost drops me. “I know you,” she says softly. “Really know you.”
The sound that rips out of me is not human. I pull her into my chest and hold her like I’ll never let go. One arm locked around her back. One hand at the back of her head. I could fight gods like this.
Her breath catches. Her expression shifts all at once through shock, awe, wonder, hunger.
“Yours,” she whispers.
“Mine,” I answer, and seal it with a kiss against her brow.
For the first time in a thousand years, forever doesn’t feel like a curse.
It feels like a vow.
Epilogue
CALLA
Everything and nothing has changed.
I still go to work. I still have my friends. I still drink too much coffee, curse at traffic, and show up five minutes late with wet hair and a breakfast sandwich in hand. But now, when I come home, it’s not to my tiny apartment or the hum of my ancient refrigerator.
It’s to Damien.
He moved me in the morning after the storm, after we cemented our bond. One second I was standing in my living room, wrapped in his jacket, and the next, I was watching him carry boxes into a mansion older than most cities.
He said I didn’t have to stay if it didn’t feel right. But it did. From the start.
Now, my clothes hang in his closet, my books clutter his nightstand, and he insists on making me breakfast even though he doesn’t really need to eat. (His pancakes are terrible, but I’d never tell him that.)
There are moments when I catch him standing by the window in the morning, sunlight spilling over his skin. For centuries, it used to burn him, but now it doesn’t. Not anymore.
He says it’s because of me. Because our bond changed him.
That my blood, my light, tethered him back to the world in ways he didn’t think were possible.
Sometimes I see it when he looks at me, the quiet wonder of a man who spent a thousand years in shadow and finally found the dawn.
The funny part is, I feel it too. I feelhim.
The bond hums constantly under my skin, a warm pulse that connects us no matter where we are. When he’s across the city, I can still feel his heartbeat echoing through mine. When he’s near, it’s like standing in sunlight, effortless, consuming, and safe all at once.
He calls me his miracle.
I call him my storm.
Brooke and the girls still have no idea. They think I’m dating a dark, mysterious “European art dealer” who happens to own a castle. Every time they tease me about it, Damien just smirks and tells them they’re welcome to visitanytime.
They have no clue how literal his words are.
Sometimes I think about that night, the masquerade, the balcony, the moment I saw what he really was, and I realize how close I came to running. But I didn’t. Something stronger than fear held me there. Something that felt like fate.
