AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes glowing amber, he calmly picked up Selene’s dagger and placed it hilt-first into her hand. “You have to. It’s the only way.”
When she opened her mouth to protest again, her eyes stinging with tears, he grasped the back of her neck and said, “I’m already dead, love. If you don’t kill me, the spell will do it when this circle completes. No matter what, I’m not getting out of this alive. But if you kill me…” His voice cracked, and he swallowed. “At least then it’s just me. No one else needs to die.”
“Tallak,” she rasped, her throat raw and aching, her heart shredding.
Taking a shuddering breath, he gripped her neck tighter, brought his forehead to hers. “It’s okay, baby.” His voice was deep and rough, vibrating with emotion. “Gods know I’d want a whole lifetime with you, with Basil, but if this is it, then I’m ready to go. This way, at least you won’t lose Lily, and Rhun and Merle and the others will make it. I can go in peace knowing that the lot of them will survive. But one thing, I can’t go without.”
He framed her face with both hands, his thumbs stroking over her cheeks, such sincerity and earnestness in his flame-licked eyes. “Don’t let me go without your forgiveness. I’m sorry for the shit I said to you. I was a stupid, fucking asshole, and I am not worthy of your love, and eternity will not be enough to make me stop regretting every fucking word that I said to you. You didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t even true.”
Her heart, it split at the seams at his words.
“I was mad at myself, for not being there for Basil, for not being his dad when he so desperately needed one, and I took that anger and I threw it at you.” His face was a mask of hardness, but his hands, they were so soft as they held her face, so gentle. A sheen of wetness glistened in his eyes, and he swallowed. “It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry. No, don’t.”
He laid his finger over her mouth when she wanted to speak up, her heart in tatters.
“I need to say this to you,” he went on. “I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry. And there’s another thing I need to say. I never told you, but you need to know. You need to know this is how I feel before I go—you’re the best fucking mom Basil could have had. He’s so lucky it was you who took him in. And I cannot thank you enough for raising him so well. You did everything you could at the time to protect him from Robert, and I don’t blame you for not acting sooner. It wasn’t your fault.”
Tears tracked down his face, and it broke something inside her.
“Hazel, tonight, after our fight, I wanted to come to you and apologize. I wanted to tell you all this, to fight for you and make this work and earn my place at your side, but now… If this is all I get, just this chance to say I’m sorry and hear you forgive me—” His voice broke. “If you can find it in your heart to forgive me…please, please don’t let me go without telling me. Say you forgive me, love. Say it, and I’ll go in peace.”
Her tears spilled over, hot and painful, and her chest quaked with her sobs. Shaking her head, she whispered, “No.”
Something shattered in his eyes.
“No,” she repeated, dropped the dagger, and grabbed his wrists. “I’m not letting you go.”
His breath caught. “Hazel…”
“Shut it!” She sniffed, wiped her tears, and stood, her eyes frantically tracking over Selene’s dead body, Juneau’s still form several feet away, the ritual remains in front of the back wall.
Juneau.
Her gaze swung back to the oldest Laroche, whose chest rose and fell slowly. Unconscious. She was just knocked out, not dead. An idea sparked in her mind, an impossible, foolish idea, carried by desperate hope and bold defiance in the face of death.
“Oil,” she muttered and hurried over to her tool bag. “I need oil.”
“Hazel.” Tallak rose to his feet, watching her as she rummaged through her bag. “We don’t have time. You need to kill me now.”
Ignoring him, she grabbed the vial of oil, got up, and started pacing, her heart beating a tattoo against her ribs. Calm. She needed to be calm for this, to sift through her thoughts, to remember the words.
Tallak kept talking, trying to convince her to surrender to the cruelest twist of fate—killing the man she loved in a blood sacrifice ritual.
Time. She’d need more time for this. It’d taken Shobha several days, and now she thought she could accomplish this in a rare few minutes? Oh, gods.
She rounded on Tallak, his voice distracting her, making her thoughts scatter when she needed to focus. “Be quiet! I need to find the right words.”
“Words? For what?”
“Just let me think!”
When he opened his mouth again, she snapped, “If you want my forgiveness, then you’ll shut up right now.”
He closed his mouth with an audible click.
Rubbing her temples, still pacing, she closed her eyes, remembering Shobha’s words.
From the one who leads her blood and her line
