“I will find them, I will. If there’s some way you can help Sam in the meantime, please, just do what you can.”

“It will be painful, Sam,” warned Lena.

“I don’t care, do what you can.” The pain was quick in coming. It was exactly like the pain I had felt earlier, but this time I could move and I could scream. And I did scream. The entire time, Jared spoke to me telepathically. The pain was so bad that his words were pretty much background noise, but still it helped to hear his voice.

What felt like hours later, the pain vanished abruptly. Somebody thrust a NST into my hand, and I drank it all in one go.

Lena patted my arm. “I’m sorry about the pain.”

“Don’t be. I’m just grateful for any help anyone can give.” And I truly was, because after everything that she had told me, I was at risk of shitting my pants.

Antonio stepped forward. “I think it may be best to keep Sam’s problem very quiet. Currently, a lot of the vampires are nervous of a Sventé being their source of protection once I have given up my position. The only thing making them keep an open mind is that her gifts are so powerful. For them to find out that her gifts are no longer under control, that she may actually lose them…”

Jared cursed, now pacing in front of me again. “If only you’d had some kind of vision, Luther…It’s kind of odd that something this serious wasn’t—” He stopped at the shifty expression on the tribute to Gandalf’s face. “What do you know?”

“Jared,” Luther implored; his expression pleaded with him to understand.

“You had a vision,” Jared immediately realised. When Luther exchanged a look with me, Jared glanced at me and narrowed his eyes. “And you knew he’d had a vision.”

I didn’t deny it. He was always going to find out at some point. I’d just kind of hoped for more time.

Jared came to stand in front of me. His voice was strained with anger. “Let me get this straight. You knew something might happen, but you went to the bungalow with me anyway.”

“I cannot interfere with people’s paths, Jared,” Luther insisted.

Jared twirled around to face him. “Really? Okay, let’s look at this path she’s taking. She has unbearable pain, she’s losing control of her gifts, and two guys did something to her that made other vampires deformed and crazed! Explain to me how that path is a good thing.” He advanced on the Keja vampire until he was almost nose-to-nose with him. “You need to tell me what you know, and you need to do it now. I don’t want to hear any of your cryptic bullshit. Tell me! Tell me so that I can f**king fix it!”

Luther’s small smile was gentle and apologetic. “I’m sorry, Jared. You know that I would do so if I could.”

I honestly feared that Jared might hit him, but instead he snapped, “Fuck it. Fuck all of you.” Without even a glance at me, he teleported away.

(Jared)

Of course I’d known that lazing on a sun lounger on the empty beach wasn’t going to calm me, but I’d sort of expected to feel better after an hour alone. Apparently I was expecting a little too much from life lately. See, I’d expect that the woman I loved would have some sense of self-preservation, but no. I’d expect that if there was something I needed to know – particularly if it was somehow related to her safety – then I’d be told about it. And I’d expect Sam not to keep something so important from me, but, again, no.

Sure, I knew why she hadn’t told me – she’d known that my protectiveness would have hit critical levels and that I’d have done everything I could to stop her from going with me to investigate her weird dreams. Was that really so damn wrong of me, though?

I even understood why Luther hadn’t mentioned the vision. So many times over the years I’d seen him quiet and subdued, and I’d known he’d had a vision that he couldn’t share. Each time, I’d deeply sympathised with him. After all, his gift had to be more of a curse sometimes. But if that vision somehow concerned Sam, I was never going to be so understanding, and he’d known that.

So, yeah, I could understand why neither of them had told me beforehand. The question bugging me now was…why hadn’t Sam mentioned this afterwards? She wasn’t exactly someone who would care about risking my wrath. She’d snort and flip me off if I yelled at her. So why keep this from me? Why keep me out like that?

Unfortunately, none of that could distract me from the bone-deep fear circulating through me. Yes, the brothers had assured me that Sam wouldn’t become ill, but if their ‘equations’ weren’t adding up, then there was every chance that something bad would happen to her, even if they hadn’t meant for it to.

This whole thing sucked.

The scent that suddenly drifted downwind to me instantly made my blood boil. This was not what I needed. “I don’t know why you’re out here and I don’t care, just go.”

A very scantily dressed Magda sat gingerly on the lounger beside mine. “I sensed your anger and fear, Jared. Naturally I was going to come to you.”

The false concern in her voice nibbled at what patience I had left. “Not now. I really don’t want to have to deal with your shit right now.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I might wish to make amends?”

I snorted. “No, because you don’t. What you want is to play games. It’s what you’re good at.”

“You used to think I was good at a lot of things.”

“I also used to think that vampires didn’t exist.” I enjoyed watching that practiced sultry smile fall from her face.

“If I thought you were happy with Sam, I would wish you well” – Yeah, right – “but you’re not happy. You may seem it at times, but you’re not truly happy. A Binding is life-long. I would hate to see you trapped in a stale relationship.”

“Really? Strange, because that’s pretty much what you’d wanted when you Turned me all those years ago.”

Her eyes flared and her irises were suddenly glowing amber. “What we had was not stale. When I revealed what I was to you, I had two choices. Turn you at some point, or kill you – that is how it works, and you know that. I chose the first option and I do not regret that.”

“And that’s all it was? You Turned me purely to save me from death?” My words were dripping with scepticism. Magda wasn’t a stickler for rules. She would have gotten a kick out of risking punishment.

“Of course. You know this, just as you know that what we had was not stale. You may wish to believe that it had been, you may prefer to think differently, but you know in your own mind that it was not.”

“I know that you used me, just like you use everyone else around you. I know that, to you, I was just a toy. I know that you didn’t Turn me to save me, or because you cared; you did it out of spite, just as you Turned my brother out of spite. That’s what I know.”

“It wasn’t out of spite, but I can see why you might think that. I was hurt when you didn’t return to me. I panicked. I didn’t want to believe that you had stopped caring for me and I convinced myself that the only thing in our way was Evan being human. I used him to tempt you, yes, but not to hurt you. I would never have wished to do that.”

And wasn’t that the biggest load of shit I’d ever heard. If I hadn’t known her as well as I did, though, I might have fallen for that act. “Why are you here, Magda? Here at The Hollow? I know you don’t like that I’m Binding with Sam, and I know you get off on trying to separate us, but you have to know that your schemes won’t work. So why stay?”

“As I said, if I can be convinced that you’re truly happy with Sam, I shall no longer interfere. But if she continues to upset you as she clearly has now, well…”

I growled at the threat in her voice. “You stay away from Sam.”

Magda rolled her eyes. “These growls and warnings are wasted on me, Jared. You have a blood-link to me, you would never hurt me.”

She really believed that? Wow. “There are only three people in this world that will never come to any harm from me. Sam, Evan, and Antonio.”

“You do not wish to harm me, Jared,” she insisted, inserting authority into her tone. She might have Turned me, but she had no authority over me as far as I was concerned. “You were happy with me. Granted, I made a mess of things—”

“That’s putting it lightly, don’t you think?”

“—but before that, you were happy with me.”

Again, there was authority in her tone that was much like a subtle push. I looked at her curiously. “What do you think you are, a f**king Jedi?”

“You made love to me as no other man before, or after you, has done.”

I slowly sat upright on the lounger and swung my legs over the side, facing her. “Let’s get one thing straight, Magda. I f**ked you, but that’s all. Only with Sam has sex ever been anything more than that for me.”

Anger flashed on her face. “Perhaps it’s that way for you. But is it that way for her? Does she truly feel as strongly for you? If so, I have to wonder why you aren’t happy and why you are currently so angry.”

I knew she was playing mind games with me and it made me want to slap her – female or not. I almost did when she grabbed my arm. Instead, I shook off her grip. “Yeah, I’m pissed with Sam,” I admitted. “I’m pissed with her big time. In fact, I get pissed with her a lot, just as she does with me. But I still love her, and that’s not going to change.” I stood sharply, almost unbalancing the lounger.

“You say these things…but you have not totally opened yourself up to her, have you? You persist in holding back from her, even though it hurts her. Odd, then, that you claim to love her.”

But Magda was wrong. I wasn’t holding back from Sam, although that was how both women saw it. Telling Sam about my past would mean going back to that place in time in my head, and it would mean taking Sam there with me. I didn’t want her being touched by that shit.

Similarly, I didn’t want her to see the anxieties that lurked very deep inside me in spite of my efforts to get rid of them. I was broken in many ways, but I’d done a good job of hiding it, of denying it even to myself. It didn’t matter that I knew those anxieties were needless − when you were told things every single day of your childhood, those things had a way of embedding themselves inside you; lurking there, and appearing to torment you at your low moments. Knowing that none of it was true didn’t make it completely go away. And if your own mother couldn’t love you, it was so easy to believe that nobody else was ever going to.

I didn’t want Sam to have to hear about that woman. I didn’t want Sam spending even a second of her life thinking about her. It would feel like I was letting my mother taint her just as she had tainted my human life. Of course I wasn’t dumb; I knew that I would have to tell Sam everything at some point − mostly because she would never let it alone. Was delaying that such a bad thing?

Teleporting back to the apartment, I found Sam already in bed. I thought by her even breathing that she was sleeping deeply, but when I finally slipped into bed, one eye peeked open.

“You still angry?” Her voice was a little croaky.

“More angry than I’ve ever been about anything in my f**king life.” I was pulling her to me even as I said it.

“If I’d told you about Luther’s vision, you would have tried to stop me from—”

“Yeah, and as much as it pisses me off, I do understand why you didn’t tell me. But you could have told me afterwards, Sam. You could’ve, but you didn’t; that’s what hurts. On some level you were punishing me, weren’t you? You didn’t tell me because you wanted me to know how it felt to be shut out.”

I could tell by her expression that she hadn’t really considered that. After a few seconds, she sighed. “Maybe. But if I was, I hadn’t actually realised it. It does hurt me that you don’t share stuff, especially this thing with your mother, because it’s obviously something big to you.”

My arm contracted around her. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I would never want to do that. Not ever.”

“But you don’t trust me with the details,” she assumed.

I cupped her chin and tried to lift her face to mine, but she resisted. “Hey, hey, hey, look at me. Look at me.” Sighing, she did. “It is not that I don’t trust you. You, Evan, and Antonio are the only people that I do trust. I’m asking you to trust me here. I will tell you what you want to know. I will. Just don’t ask me to bring up this shit now. There is so much going on around us, interfering with our ability to enjoy our own Binding. Can we just shove this aside until afterward? Can we at least shelf this one thing?”

Could I at least have the luxury of not thinking and talking about the woman who had given birth to me, but done little else for me? That was the real question, but it would be revealing too much. Sam had a very curious nature and was drawn to mysteries. She wouldn’t be grateful to know only a few things. No, her curiosity would drive her to ask for more details.

“All right,” she eventually replied. “But you have to promise that you will tell me eventually.”

I nodded, wishing she hadn’t said that, and wishing she wasn’t looking at me with an expression that said ‘I’ll need more than a nod’. “I promise.”

“Good.” Abruptly, she sank her teeth into my chest. Her hand closed around my c*ck and she pumped as she drank from me, not stopping until I exploded over her hand. I was more than happy to return the favour.