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This won’t end well, but so few things do. Why deny ourselves?
“Of all the good things.” He grasps my hips as I roll them into his. “Of all the good things I’ve felt in my fucking life, you are the best.”
His hand pins my wrists again, above my head, as though he needs to know that I’m here to stay. I struggle against his hold, just to test it. “Be good.” Lowe clicks his tongue.
He nixes my choice of a vintage bicycle pump (“That’s a hookah, Misery.”). I veto his ceramic vase (“Someone’s grandpa’s in there, Lowe.”).
“I’m going to take over Father’s seat on the council.” I must have misheard. “What?” “I’m going to take over Father’s seat on the council.” Nope, I heard correctly. “Did Father … die?”
“Making a bid? That’s not a thing people do.” He shrugs. “It’s a thing I’m doing.”
“You know what the punishment for high treason is?” He must, because I do, and I never know shit.
Maybe I could punch him and Owen. Just a little bit. Wouldn’t that make me feel better? Yes. Yes, it would.
“I’m no fan of your father. And as the Weres and the Vampyres form alliances, I would love to see someone whose priorities align with mine.” My brother and my husband look at me, then at each other. Something I cannot decipher passes between them. An agreement. A shared port of call.
A mate grabs you by the stomach, he said, and he was so sure of it, I felt it in my stomach, too. He made it sound like a thought that won’t quit, a spectacle impossible to tear one’s eyes from.
My cheeks are hot. I’m on the verge of something.
It’s possible that I’m an idiot who reads too much into too little. But I feel something deep in my belly, and I know it to be right. Lowe may have a mate, but she’s not Gabi.
there’s a question bubbling deep in my belly, and an answer simmering inside him, a tentative certainty that warms the air between us.
“I know. I know, I think—” My hands travel down, pulling up his shirt and exposing a strip of warm skin. “I want to—” I cannot say it out loud, because I don’t know what I need. It has to do with the truth, and him admitting it, but it’s a confused, painful thorn tangled in my head. “Can we—”
“We should slow down.” He laughs, rueful, hot into my skin. “The opposite.”
“I’ve been thinking about this,” I tell him, barely a whisper. His “Yeah” is apologetic. “I tried not to.” I turn my head. He’s hulking, wrapped around me. His cheek is there, stubbly and flushed olive and perfect for me to kiss. “Me, too.” Then I add, smiling, “Not too hard, though.”
maybe it’s whatever chemicals flood Vampyre brains after sex, but I cannot accept that this is not destined. That we are not meant to be.
“It’s complicated.” I don’t think it’s complicated. In fact, I suspect it might be very simple. “Explain it to me, please.”
shake me awake when the sun was still too high in the sky. She’d be surprisingly ruthless, more forceful than her little body looked capable of. She’d grasp my shoulder and waggle it hard, with the force of a pack of rottweilers chewing their favorite toy into a slimy chunk of plastic.
“You look good.” Her eyebrow lifts. “That’s a weird thing to say in the let’s-exchange-vital-info stage of a joint abduction.” “It was a damn compliment!” “Fine. Thanks. I was always very self-conscious of my forehead, as you know, but maybe unnecessarily? Maybe I’ll spare myself the whole monthly trim—” “Okay, now shut up. Where are we?”
“I’ve been catching up on sleep. Reviewing my life choices. Stewing in regret. Mostly, I read.” She gestures at the shelves. “But the selection here is limited to the classics. I’ve read, like, three Dickens novels.” “Appalling.” “The Catcher in the Rye, too.” “God.”
“It’s just …” She swallows. “I wasn’t sure.” “Sure of what?” “That you’d be looking. We had that fight, and …” Her voice breaks a little. “I kind of said things I didn’t mean, and I figured that maybe you were done with me.” I stare at her, momentarily speechless. Maybe the larder beetles have eaten her brain? “Dude. I didn’t know that was an option.”
“I’ve actually been working on a plan.” “Let’s hear it.” “It involves staying here. Building a life. Growing old. Developing cataracts.” I smile. “You always had the worst fucking plans.”
“Who’s that?” I whisper. “Bob.” I tilt my head. “Who the hell is Bob?” “It’s a name I made up for the guards. They’re all Bob.”
“Misery’s not feeling well,” she yells. Which is true—I feel like total shit. “I think the drugs might be about to kill her or something!” What the hell? I mouth. I cannot deal with a Serena plan right now. “Well, that’s above my pay grade. I can’t do anything for a leech, anyway—”
“This one looks pretty light. If we both throw our weight at it, we should be able to break through. At my three, okay?” Serena gives me a puzzled look. Then takes a step forward, grabs the handle, and turns it. The door opens. “How did you know—?” “I didn’t. I did this thing—it’s called checking. You should try it sometime.”
“If they murder me, avenge me,” Serena whispers. It’s nice, all this faith she seems to have in me. “Any preferences on how?” “Be creative.”
When Alex arrived on the scene, his first question to me was whether all the blood was making me hungry. Once we’re back in Were territory, I plan to smear a pancake on the inside of a toilet and ask him the same.
“Lowe and I are basically best friends.” Lowe’s puzzled frown doesn’t quite broadcast best friendship.
If I want to be in love with my stupid Were husband, I’m going to be in love with my stupid Were husband, whether he wants to admit that he loves me back or not.
“You’re not a problem, Misery. You’re a privilege.”
And I … maybe I don’t have the hardware, but the software is here, and I get to program it.
Maybe you’re not meant for me the way I’m meant for you, but I’m going to choose you anyway, over and over and over again.
Our hearts stop at the same time, and then resume. Mine with lagging thuds. His, a beating drum. “Misery. I want to live inside you.”
His smile is at once reserved and hesitant and proud and luminous.
when I finally bite you, it won’t be on your neck.” He lets out a rueful laugh. “Nothing as dignified for us, Misery.” Oh. “Where?”
His palm rounds my throat. Cups my nape. The pad of his thumb traces down my spine, just one or two vertebrae. “Here. I think I’ll bite you here.” He says it like it’s a secret, filthy plan he’s been working on for a while, and then lets out a rueful, frustrated sound. “You’ll wear your hair up, and people will see it, and they will know that I took my beautiful Vampyre bride the way wolves do, and that she loved it. And you will be good for me and let me, won’t you?”
“I look forward to that.”
oof we're in in third person.. not my fave but i suppose something different for the epuilogue and the outlier chapter being the only one in Lowe's POV I'll pursevere.
“YOU ARE OFFICIALLY CONDEMNED TO A lifetime of Misery”
Just be with him. His mate. With him. He hasn’t quite gotten used to the idea. It’s possible that when it comes to feelings like the ones he has for Misery, big and overwhelming and all-encompassing, accustoming is not something that happens, ever. The raw preciousness might never wear off.
“Emery has been blowing up the family chat. Among other things, apparently.” He shrugs at Lowe’s lifted eyebrow. “What? Too soon?”
I would not like to thank: • Ticketmaster.
