Page 117 of Fanged Embrace
If I hadn’t been struggling to suck in a breath, I would have laughed in his face. If only he knew what I had been through, how I’d clawed and torn my way through life, how hard I’d fought to get here, and what I was willing to give up. He wanted to make me submit, to see me groveling at his feet, begging for him to spare my life.
He underestimated how desperately I wanted to see him dead.
With fast-fading consciousness, and every lick of flaming fury I could summon, I lifted the gun. Marcus’s eyes widened a fraction, but even as his fingers loosened around my throat, he was already too late.
“Fine by me,” I rasped out—and pulled the trigger.
Marcus's head snapped backward, top half exploding in a gruesome spray of blood and shattered bone. I barely got a glimpse of it before gravity took hold, and we both plummeted from the rooftop.
Everything slowed. Time, my heartbeat, my racing thoughts. I saw my reflection in the glass windows as I passed them. I saw Marcus’s body dropping like a stone. I looked away, and the air rushing past me jerked my head to the side. I saw the cityscape stretching out beneath me. From way up here, the world really was beautiful.
Wind roared around me, deafening, chilling, tearing at meas I fell in slow motion. I was weightless, suspended in the void, and my thoughts came crystal clear as I sifted through a lifetime of memories. They played like a film reel behind my eyes. I saw Dandelion, her tiny face, her chubby fists, her horrifying stillness after she drew her final breath. Every detail of my daughter, forever etched into the fabric of my soul.
And I saw River. Every delicate, precious memory of our time together, from our tentative start to our abrupt, frantic end—and everything in between. Our first kiss, and our last. Ice skating in the city, standing together in the rain. Quiet smiles over breakfast and grief-stricken tears shed in the comfort of her arms. The wind was cold but I remembered her warmth, the way she enveloped me completely, long, gentle limbs twining with mine.
I’d fought so hard for this, for her. For a better world for everyone who would come after me, and everyone I would leave behind. As the city rushed up to meet me, a strange calm settled over me. If this was my end, at least I’d faced it head-on. I stumbled along the way and I struggled immensely, but I walked the path to the very end. At least I had something real, something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for. A motivation beyond pain and grief and loss. Something left to save.
My heart clenched tighter and I closed my eyes, swallowing the ache that came with that sentiment. Because now, at the end of the line, as the city rushed to catch me in its cold, concrete embrace, I found myself wishing that I had more time. Time to tell River the truth, to open my head and my heart and let her know how much I loved her.
Tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, snatched away by the rushing wind, and I stretched out my arms. I didn’t fight it—I let myself fall. I let my head empty of everything but her, the soft ochre of her eyes and that smile of hers, the one that came easy and often. The soft brush of her lips on mine andher infinitely gentle hands. If this was the end, these were the memories I would cling to. Let the image of River, looking back at me, be the final memory running through my mind before the bitter end.
Except… it wasn’t the end. Because past the whistling wind and the blood rushing in my ears, I heard a distinct snap, like a whipcrack through the cacophony. A second later, my body jolted violently and breath was punched from my lungs as solid arms encircled me, yanking me from my final freefall.
I was snatched from the air in a whiplash motion, suddenly moving sideways when all I’d known was down. I gasped, disoriented and dizzy at the sudden shift in direction, as a familiar warmth coiled around me. My eyes flew open, and my vision blurred as the world streaked by.
Above me, River’s face came into view. Her dark hair had come loose and whipped wildly around her head, tangling across her cheeks and over her eyes. Her features were slightly warped—her arms, wrapped tight around me, felt strangely elongated, muscles more prominent under her skin. The slope of her jaw was sharper than I remembered and her fangs, visible under her parted lips, were noticeably longer. It was like she was caught halfway through some monstrous transformation, andstillshe wasn’t monstrous at all—not to me.
In that moment, River was terrifyingly beautiful, her glowing eyes burning in bright defiance against the darkening sky. Massive, leathery wings beat rhythmically at her back with a sound like thunderclaps that rang in my ears. My legs dangled helplessly, bumping clumsily against hers as we soared through the air. Sheer disbelief stole my voice away.
River was here. River had come for me. River wouldalwayscome for me.
My stomach dipped as we descended sharply, and I tilted my head against her chest to watch a vacant rooftop rushing upto meet us. She landed smoothly, thumping down on the rooftop with bent knees, cradling me in her arms, clutching me tight. My heart thrashed wildly under my ribcage, struggling to catch up with the whirlwind of reality. All I could do was hold onto her and stare, throat closing around the overwhelming rush of emotion that followed.
River remained hunched over me and her breath came ragged and slow. Her eyes fluttered open, and immediately cut to the left when a deafeningboomerupted from somewhere in the distance. I followed her gaze, and my eyes widened when I saw the helicopter—a blackened shape against the gray sky—going up in flames. It spun out of control, spewing smoke and fire as it careered through the air, and eventually collided with a water tower on a faraway rooftop. Another rumbling boom followed, and the tower collapsed, crumbling around the mangled carcass of the helicopter before the whole thing was concealed in smoke.
They’ll regret crossing me…
So that’s what Marcus meant. I had no idea how he’d done it or what kind of contraption he’d rigged to detonate, but he’d spoken the truth. He had anticipated their betrayal, and he’d set up a failsafe to punish them for it. His associates were gone for good—Not even their immortal bodies could withstand a crash like that; they all went down in a blaze of fire. I blinked at the blaze and the curling spire of smoke. I registered what that meant:
All of my enemies were dead.
My enemies were dead and River was here, and this wasn’t the end. I was granted the time I didn’t think I had, and I was not going to waste a second of it. River’s eyes slid back to me, stricken expression softening to faint relief. She was still breathing heavily, still silent. Her face was slowly morphing, slipping back into her regular features as she released theghastly form she’d been holding. Then she opened her mouth?—
But I spoke first. “I love you.”
I said the words in a frantic rush, blurting them out in a jumbled confession. Speaking burned my throat, sound scraping out in an agonizing gasp, but I had to say it immediately—because I’d held it in for far too long.
River’s eyes widened slowly, shimmering in the stormy gloom. Her breath hitched and her lips remained parted, words caught on her tongue as she stared back at me. “I?—”
“I thought I’d never get to say it,” I rasped as a fresh prick of tears blurred my vision. “So I had to say it now.”
Her hold tightened, her entire body trembling as she leaned over me. “And I love you.” She whispered it, the words coming out hoarse and thick with emotion. She crushed me in her arms, burying her face into the crook of my bruised neck, and I held on just as fiercely.
Then River hauled me back abruptly, eyes blazing, voice shaking with fear and fury despite the watery tenderness in her eyes. “Don’t ever,everpull a stunt like that again. My heart can’t take it.”
Before I could reply her mouth was on mine, kissing me like she wanted to devour me whole. She left no room for argument or apology, and I had nothing more to say. No words could convey what I was feeling, how desperately I had craved exactly this when I’d been tumbling head over heels towards a predestined death.
I fisted my hands at her back, hauled myself closer and kissed her in kind—and above us, the clouded skies finally relented. It rained.
