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The wards.Fuck. I didn’t reinforce the wards after she came back.
I lash out at the revenants, whipping my magic in purple snares to cut through them. They fall one by one as I rend them into nothing, but there are so many. I concentrate on stopping them from getting to my mate.
“Revenants!” Glenda’s yell comes from behind me. “Everyone protect Hayden. Draw them away.”
Maximus yips, reappearing and taking on a creature who looms above him.
“To Hayden,” I order him. He vanishes.
I glance back to see her standing in her shirt and panties atop the van with the three-headed pup at her feet, growling and snapping at any revenant who comes close. She wouldn’t be any safer inside the van. In fact, I’m grateful she has taken the high ground, wielding the wrought iron pieces I brought her from a seventeenth-century architectural marvel like they’re stakes. I don’t know if iron works against revenants, but I appreciate her fierce spirit.
Ghosts zoom around my mate, drawing away the creatures who follow a human soul—alive or dead. Bertie the Bard sings off-key as he floats back and forth to lead creatures away. Glenda darts in front of Hayden as a ghostly shield. Her befriending the ghosts may save her life. With them, I have more than a fighting shot at making it through this with my fated mate.
Maximus snaps and growls with all three skulls, ferociously defending her. Or at least her ankles. She still grips the iron, swinging it when the rare creature makes it past me to chase her phantom protectors.
I target around the ghosts to rend each revenant, picking them off easily now.
“Why tell me we’re fated mates in the first place?” Hayden asks on a shout.
“Because we are.” What the hell dimensions is she thinking?
“Then why don’t you want the mating bond?”
Snagging another revenant out of the air, I rend it into specks so infinitesimal that the pieces of thepiecesof souls stitched together couldn’t be resurrected by a god. “Ido.”
“What aren’t you telling me? Why keep secrets when I say I’m ready to be your mate?” The tense set of her jaw and the grip she has on those iron pieces—by gods, she’s fiery. My brave and beautiful mate would take on revenants, risk madness to challenge me and make me a better reaper.
I can’t deny her the truth, not when she’s putting hers out there for everyone to hear. “I wanted you to have a choice since I took that away the night you died. I brought you back. Selfishly.” I slam another revenant to the ground. “I’mthe reason you have the headaches.” Holding the creature, I take out two more. “I’mwhy you’re in pain.” With a snarl to rival the worst wolven fiend, I finish off the trio with far more violence than necessary. “You should have a choice this time.”
“Well, I choose you.” She shakes an iron bar my way. “I loveyou. So there. Choice made.”
She loves me.
My mate loves me.
Like an obsessed crusader, I tear through the last of the revenants, rending them ruthlessly to get to her so I can drag her off the roof and into my shadows. My magic pulses around us. I bury my face against her neck, needing to sink my fangs into that sweet spot on her shoulder and claim, take, possess.
Maximus yips, jumping into my shadows to lick at her face before disappearing again.
“Time to finish what I started,” Hayden says, seduction dripping from her tone.
“Ooh,” Glenda interrupts, clapping from the top of the van with my dog at her feet. “I knew the revenants had interrupted something big given the whole missing pants situation. We could be twins! Talk about Bangus Interruptus.”
I will not rend my mate’s best friend. I will not rend?—
“Time to go, Glenda,” Hayden says.
“Right.” The ghost giggles. “Be sure to have arealgood time.” With that, she vanishes, taking Maximus with her.
With her ghosts gone, the revenants defeated, and my magic swirling around us, we have the rest of our lives to celebrate what the gods have granted us.
To bond.
To finally finish what I started that fateful night.
To claim the one woman meant to be mine.
She will be my forever mate.
