Page 99 of Veradel
A light washes over his face so that I can make out the details. None of those harsh, angry lines scrunch his forehead anymore, painting a picture of peace over his expression. He laughs.
“That might be the first time you’ve ever said my name with any fondness.”
“Well.” I clear my throat and throw my hands in my pockets. “This might be the first time you’ve ever looked at me with something other than hatred and envy. Is this death? Heaven?” I look around. “Or hell?”
“Neither,” Gabriel says bluntly, offering nothing else.
“What do you want then?”
He glances around us nervously, eyeing the endlessness of this dreamscape I’m stuck in—nothing but darkness stretching in every direction. I don’t even know where the light is coming from, how either of us are able to see anything.
“To make amends,” he says finally, blowing out a breath. “For what I did.”
My tone and posture both soften despite myself, whether this is a figment of my imagination or not. “I already heard you tell Saskia sorry through the bond. You saved her. That’s enough for me.”
“No.” Gabriel shakes his head. “She might have never needed saving if I hadn’t betrayed you and the pack, and if I hadn’t…”
When he pauses for too long, I ask sharply, “If you hadn’twhat?”
“Well.” For the first time in his life—death, now—shame clouds Gabriel’s features. “I thought it would be better for all of us if she removed herself from you. Released you of the hold she has on you. I told her to prove that she cares about the pack and the humans by leaving you, but then when she tried to do that with Arad… I knew, in that moment, that it wasn’t the right choice. I tried to tell her no.”
In any other place, rage would have me pouncing on him, digging my canines into his neck and chewing right through it for that. But here, in this strangely calm and dark space, I find myself hauling in a deep breath.
Besides, I can’t kill him if we’re both already dead. And Saskiadidn’tend up leaving me.
Gabriel hangs his head.
“You were right. I can see that now. I was using any excuse to claim any kind of power I could put my hands on.” He runs his hand over his face. “In a way, I was no different than a Guardian—just in a different form.”
I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, but I clap Gabriel on the back and pull the asshole into a hug that we never got to do when he was alive. “Anyone can be a Guardian or a Monster. But you chose to change, in the end. That’s all that matters.”
Gabriel sighs, a pain behind his eyes still haunting him. “Don’t say that just for my benefit.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “We’re all capable of evil. We all hurt others at some point in our lives. I’m no exception. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grow and learn. Choose something differently the next time.”
The echo of silence that reverberates after I close my mouth is loud as hell. Because there won’tbea next time for Gabriel. His last act was just that—his last.
“Well, at least I can say my last act was a good one,” Gabriel says finally, and I replay the moment he threw himself in front of her. “A few minutes before my last breath, I felt myself slip into your pack, under your leadership, once again. And the moment I took that last breath, Saskia looked as if she was in as much pain as I was. You know what that means, right?”
“What?”
Gabriel smiles softly. “When a pack member dies, we can feel the pain of their soul slipping away. She felt mine, and I felt hers. Somehow, she’s become a part of the pack, too, even as a vampire.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “Now go back to her. She needs you as much as you need her.”
For a moment, we stand there instead, our arms locked around each other. Death tugs again, but this time, it doesn’t touch me. Gabriel jerks away from me, drifting backward, and smiles.
“The light, alpha.” His voice fades as the darkness begins to eat him. “It’s coming from you.”
I look down at my chest, finding a beam of what looks like moonlight, indeed, shining from where my heart should be. Pain begins to ebb back into existence, and I know that my wounds are healing rapidly enough to give me another shot at creating that better world.
“Well, it’s been fun!” I holler at death, still feeling it hovering somewhere just beyond my eyesight. “But maybe next time!”
Why? my dream seems to ask me, a faint voice like wind whistling through the darkness.Why choose the pain and heartbreak when you could simply… drift away?
Before Saskia, I wouldn’t have had an answer, but now the words spring to my lips as effortlessly as all the kisses we’ve shared and words we’ve exchanged.
Because I have someone to wake up for.
Ijust barely catch the tail-end of Arad’s cloak flapping in the breeze before he disappears through the doors leading to the outside garden.
