Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10)

by J.R. Ward

But she fit. Differently, yes, but the lock and key of their bodies was undeniable.

“I encourage you to bring every weapon you have to bear in your own defense.” Read: Use that symphath side of yours, girlfriend.

But the thing was, she was used to the chronic suffering. The only thing worse than it would be having to acclimate to this kind of hell all over again. She didn’t think she could go through that—

She had assumed the practice was a quaint holdover from some earlier time. Not so. This private space here with Tohrment was the basis of exchanges such as that. In fact, she could imagine aeons ago, in the wild, a male returning with something freshly killed and doing likewise. It made her feel… protected. Valued. Special.

Shit, sometime in the last year he must have developed a conscience or something.

He reviewed everything he knew about the situation, starting from the ground floor, building the logic tier by tier, reconstructing where they were.

awoke with a strange conviction hounding her. Kind of like she’d swallowed her alarm clock during the day and the thing was going off in her belly. Intuition. Anxiety. Dread. No snooze button on that shit. As she went and took a shower, she continued to be dogged by the sense that forces unseen and unknowable were coalescing, that the landscape was going to shift, that the chess pieces of various people were about to be moved by hands not their own, to places not part of their strategies.

want a piece of you and me together. I want a reason to go on living if you don’t—because that’s what I’m going to have to do. I’m going to have to keep living.

Bottom line, he was staring down the barrel of countless centuries with no real home, no true family, no blood of his own.

“I was part of you self-destructing once, and I remember all too well the blisters that came from digging your grave. I’m not doing that again. I can’t.

Even if I could fall in love with you, there’s nothing about you to get truly attached to. You’re just a ghost who’s not really here… any more than I am.

Her anxiety was such that it spooled out tension like a wool spinner, the twisted threads reaching up to encircle her throat and winding down to constrict her gut.

That totally-put-together was false, however, nothing but external trappings of composure that just made her appear even more brittle.

“I’m surprised you’re not doing this more on the computers.” Saxton discreetly covered his work with yet another leather-bound volume. “The inefficiency of taking notes by hand gives me time to think.”

“I think it’s beautiful.” “Tha’s okay, you can be honest.” “I mean what I say. You are a highly functional female. You like things to work well, and you don’t like to waste time. This is a beautiful space for you.”

and as she stood there, she was so powerful, secure, strong… She would bow before no male and no one, and wasn’t that wonderful. Wasn’t that a blessing beyond measure. “I am so proud of you,” Autumn said, turning around to face the female. “I want you to know that I am so very, very proud of you.”

the gleam of the gunmetal was very much like the light in her daughter’s eyes: a promise of violence.

“Gift wrapping one’s words does not change the nature of truth.”

As his epic anger faded and his emotions smoothed out, his thoughts became as a band of travelers, passing through sections of his life, wandering around the landscapes of different eras, doubling back for the reexamination of peaks and valleys.

And as he held the only son he had, he spoke in a low, clear voice.

“Are you sure,” she said roughly. “Are you certain you want to do all this?” “Yeah. It’s time. Holding on to it hasn’t brought her back and never will. But at least it can help the females in this house—so none of it’s wasted. It’s important to me that the things we bought together, had together, used together… aren’t, you know, wasted.”

She might be the conduit, but his actions were the electrical charge that was going to stop his heart.

It was more accurate than what had been before, though. False order, preserved out of a refusal to move on, was a dangerous kind of lie.

She’d gone from madam to maid by her own choice, pitching herself between the two extremes of unqualified superiority and self-enforced inferiority.

“I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not a servant.” “That’s what you need to find out—what you like, where you want to go, how you want to fill your nights. That’s life—if you’re lucky.” “Instead of possibility, I see only emptiness.”

Even though his assessment of my character and my flaws is correct, I need not have that elucidated again, even gilded by syllables of ‘I’m sorry.’

The kid had been a star throughout the whole process, never faltering in the grim work of dismantling a lifetime’s worth of keepsakes, mementos, and collections. So hard, this was. On the both of them.

In many ways, time had no meaning, but it did have an effect: The longer she spent mulling over things, the more clearly she saw herself, her earlier realizations no longer a shock, but instead something she steeped herself in.… Something she began to change herself with—

“I came here to talk about you, not her,” he said softly. “That’s kind of you, and know that I am turning the conversation onto you not because I feel like a victim of some unrequited romance that has ended badly, but because our relationship in this era has always been based upon you. Which is my fault, but also the nature of the cycle we have completed.” “Cycle?” She rose up, wanting to put them on equal footing. “Just as the seasons come full circle, so have we. When we first crossed paths, it was all about me, my selfishness, my focus on a tragedy I had lived through. This time it was all about you, your selfishness, your tragedy that you had lived through.”

Because it’s hard when you’ve loved one person with everything you’ve got, and she’s gone, and someone else comes and treads all over her territory in your heart.”

Rhage snapped out his arms and gave the kind of bear hug that he was known for—the sort that put a strain on your spinal cord and made you have to reinflate your rib cage afterward just to make sure you hadn’t punctured a lung.

together, and his brother was characteristically blunt. “I’m not going to ask how you’re holding up.” “I appreciate that, my lord. Because I’m pretty fucking ragged.” “Why wouldn’t you be.” “It’s almost harder when people are kind.”

Even in the sadness, it was hard not to feel blessed.

The scream was his final good-bye, his pledge to meet her on the flip side, his love made manifest one last time.

The critical part that had been missing was a sense of herself not as somebody who was unworthy and had to be punished, but as an individual with value and a life to live beyond the tragedy that had defined her for so long.

After having traversed the great distance from where she had first started, only to find that the prize was nothing but another sacrifice, she was livid to the point of violence.

Life was short, no matter how many days you were granted. And people were precious, each and every one, no matter how many you were lucky enough to have in your life. And love… love was worth dying for. Worth living for, too.

You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye—and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren’t thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you’d had more time. Even if you’d had centuries… When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch—when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.