The waitress doesn’t seem to notice as she pulls away and takes the plates and leaves, but Bella is still frozen. I search the cafe for the reason why, but the cause seems to be…Bella. Grabbing her cheeks, I look into her eyes. A tear drips down her cheek and I growl, my heart ripping from my chest. Who dares to hurt my mate? I will rip them to pieces.
“Bella,” I growl, a warning. “Fucking come back to me,” I demand. “Now!” I nearly shout in her face, but it’s no use, she doesn’t notice.
Worry tears through me, panic on its heels, and I do the only thing I can think of to get a reaction—I press my lips to hers, hard. Licking at her mouth, I bite and nip and she gasps, letting me sweep my tongue in before she breaks away from me, scrambling back on the booth, warding me off with a hand.
Her face is pale and panicked, her body shaking.
“Bella,” I whisper, moving closer, but she shakes her head, her red hair flying around her.
“Please, no, stop,” she begs, her eyes pained, so I stop moving.
Her chest is heaving and she closes her eyes, slumping there, and as I watch she rebuilds herself. She stops shaking and her body straightens out. I didn’t even realise how much she had curled up into herself. Her eyes are dim, no longer flashing, and her lips are no longer thin and pained. She blows out a breath and sits up, looking away from me.
“What happened?” I question.
“Nothing,” she replies, but her voice is still weak.
“Bella, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. We are not leaving until you tell me what just happened,” I argue, panic still clawing at my throat. Something hurt my mate and I don’t even know what. I feel useless, my darkness wanting to tear from me and kill everyone to try and make it better, but she needs the charming, human-ish side of me right now, not my monster.
She doesn’t look at me, and I want to grab her and force her to tell me, but after how she reacted when I touched her, I don’t want to cause her pain. So I try a different approach. “Bella, please, what happened?” I beg.
She looks at me, her eyes guarded, and I know whatever it is it’s a secret. “If I tell you, you could use it against me,” she whispers, and I know that someone has, someone hurt her with this before. I narrow my eyes, the blood lust returning for the idiot who hurt my mate.
“I will not, do you want my oath on it?” I offer.
Her eyes widen, and I realise then she knows what that means. So I nod. “I, Ciar, offer you my solemn oath. I shall not tell another living or dead soul of what you speak of, nor ever use it against you. So I speak it, so it be.” My voice rings around the space, the world holding its breath as the oath falls into place. If I was to break it, I would face pain and probably death, which is not something I would do, but if it helps her feel better I will pledge every day.
“Why?” she asks, her voice raw, but I hear the unanswered question—why do I care? Why do I want to know?
“I want to know everything that concerns you,” I confess.
She brushes that away, still not wanting to believe or trust the connection between us. “Fine. I have a power, it’s sometimes activated by touch. I see things,” she discloses, watching me fiercely, daring me to mock or scoff at her.
“See things?” I prompt, wanting her to keep going.
She sucks in a breath, obviously worried I wouldn’t believe her, and forges ahead. “When I touch people, I can see their pasts, future, or present. I can’t always control it, sometimes visions just come, warnings or memories. Contact usually triggers it, but I can be on guard and stop it…not always when bare skin touches.”
“That’s why you wear gloves and sleeves.” I frown.
She nods. “When I come out of a vision, I’m open, oversensitive, and everything floods in without meaning to, and when I’m touching someone...I can see things…”
“You saw a vision of me?” I whisper, wondering what she saw to pull away like that.
“Not at first, it was a memory from the waitress, one buried so deep.” She shivers in horror then. “So painful, then you pulled me back before it was done with me. It’s painful that way, being ripped from a vision, and my skin felt like it was being touched with acid and your gates were opening, so memory after memory bombarded me. It was too much, I was about to explode, I needed a moment to get my shields back up.” She shrugs.
My nails extend, ripping into the leather booth as I face her...I hurt her. I hurt my mate. “What else?” I growl.
“What else, what?” she inquires, looking around, but no one is paying us any attention.
“What else do I need to know so I don’t hurt you or something worse next time?” I force the words out of my closed throat.
“Nothing, there won’t be a next time.” She waves it away.
So I try another tactic, knowing if she closes down I won’t get anything out of her. “What was the vision?” I demand.
She shivers then, wrapping her arms around herself, her gaze going to the waitress who is reading at the counter. “A repressed memory...it has a darkness to it like someone erased it or made her forget.”
I freeze, my head swinging to the waitress. “Are you sure? There are only a few who have that power,” I murmur lowly.
“Yes, isn’t one a nightwalker?” she questions, her gaze on my face.
“Yes. The other isn’t someone you want to tangle with,” I growl, then gesture for the waitress to come over.
She presses a bookmark into the page and then wanders over. “Yes?” she asks, confused.
“Lean down,” I order, using my control as my brothers used to call it, or my charm.
She blinks but instantly does as she’s told. My voice turns silky. “Please do not react. Open your mind and allow me to see, and do not speak or make a noise.” I hold my hands on either side of her head and close my eyes as I work my way through her mind, careful not to leave any damage. There are a few spots of darkness where someone has wiped away memories or tried to at least, but they aren’t as powerful as I am.
“You’re right, someone has tried to wipe her memories, they are strong. Not as strong as me, though, this will just take a moment,” I mutter to Bella distractedly.
I grasp onto the blank spots, slowing peeling away the layers of charm and power still staining them from whichever nightwalker did this. It only takes a few minutes, and I don’t even break a sweat until the memories are mine. The waitress shudders in my arms, so I quickly block them so she doesn’t have to relive whatever traumatic events these hold.
The recollections are filled with pain, suffering, and blood. They echo with her screams, her humiliation, and pleas for help. They sicken me, but I force myself to watch, noting each and every face and what they did to this innocent human. Afterwards, I pull back, about to cover them once and for all, wiping them away. I don’t know how, but Bella must understand because her hand lands on my arm.
“She should have them, they are her memories,” Bella whispers sadly, and in her eyes I see the same pain and suffering I saw in those memories. Someone hurt her at some point.
“If I do, she will know about our kind. She will have to live with that knowledge, and if she tells anyone, they will think she is insane. It will isolate her as she has to come to the realisation of what happened to her and know that no one will ever believe her. Do you really want that for her? I can give her those memories back, the pain and suffering and humiliation, but she will never be the same again. She is happy, if not tired now, but she doesn’t know what happened to her own body. Tell me, it’s your choice, Bella,” I murmur, meaning every word. I will do whichever she picks.