But as my eyes meet Jaxon’s cold, dark ones, I can’t help acknowledging that while one thing hasn’t changed, everything else has.
And I have no idea what to do about any of it.
1
Check Your Mate
Three weeks later…
“I’m begging you.” Macy throws herself across her rainbow-comforter-covered bed and stares at me with imploring eyes. It’s so good to see her finally almost smiling again since Xavier’s funeral that I can’t help myself from smiling back. It’s not a full smile yet, but I’ll take it. “For the love of God, please, please, pleeeeeeease put those boys out of their misery.”
“That’s going to be hard,” I answer as I drop my backpack next to my desk before flopping down on my own bed. “Considering I haven’t put them into their misery.”
“That is the biggest lie you have ever told.” My cousin snorts, then lifts her head just enough to make sure that I can see her rolling her eyes. “You are one hundred and fifty percent responsible for the way Jaxon and Hudson have been moping around school for the last three weeks.”
“I feel like there are a lot of reasons Jaxon and Hudson are moping around school, and I’m only to blame for about half of them,” I shoot back…then immediately regret the words.
Not because they aren’t true but because I now have to watch as the little bit of color Macy had in her cheeks slowly drains away. She looks so different from the girl I met in November that it’s hard to believe she’s the same person. Her wildly colored hair still hasn’t made a reappearance, and while the deep raven black she dyed it for Xavier’s funeral suits her coloring, it doesn’t suit anything else about her. Except her sadness…it suits that just fine.
I start to apologize, but Macy rolls over to face me and plows ahead. “I know exactly what a miserable vampire looks like, and you’ve got two of them on your hands. And just an FYI, deadly and pathetic make for a really dangerous combination, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” It’s a combination I’ve been dealing with for weeks, a combination that makes my every breath feel like a bomb about to go off, my every move like I’m playing Russian roulette with everyone’s happiness.
And since the universe just isn’t done screwing with me…apparently, Macy was wrong when she first told me that Hudson had graduated before Jaxon killed him. Turns out: nope, so close and yet not quite there. Something about him lacking enough credits because he’d had private tutors instead of attending Katmere for all four years. Macy was several years his junior, so she’d shrugged—what did she know? No one spoke his name after his death. Either way, it means that everywhere I turn, there he is. Just like Jaxon. Both of them in our friendship circle but not. Both of them watching me with eyes that appear blank on the surface but hold a multitude of emotions underneath. Waiting on me to do or say…something.
“I still don’t know how I ended up mated to Hudson,” I say dully. “I thought you had to be interested in being mated, or at least ‘open’ to it, for it to happen in the first place?”
Macy grins at me. “Clearly you feel something for him.”
I roll my eyes. “Gratitude. I feel gratitude for him. And I’m pretty sure that’s a terrible reason to hook up.”
“So…” Macy’s eyes are positively sparkling with humor now. “You’ve thought about ‘hooking up’ with Hudson, eh?”
I throw a small decorative pillow at my cousin, who easily dodges its path and laughs. “Well, all I know is, most everyone at school would kill to find even one mate. You having had two since arriving is so not allowed.”
Macy’s teasing me, trying to lighten the moment, but it doesn’t help.
Hudson often sits with us at meals or in classes we share. Although most of the Order and Flint watch him warily, he’s somehow managed to woo my cousin with no more than a teasing half smile and a French vanilla latte.
In fact, she’s actually one of the few people who blames Jaxon for our mating bond being severed, and she’s let it be known she is firmly Team Hudson. I can’t help but wonder if she’s on Hudson’s side because she really thinks he’s best for me—or just that he isn’t Jaxon, the boy who insisted we challenge the Unkillable Beast, a move that ended up getting Xavier killed.
Either way, she’s right about one thing: eventually I’m going to have to deal with this mess.
I’ve been doing my best to ignore the situation a while longer, though…at least until I have a plan. I’ve spent nearly all my time since Xavier’s funeral trying to figure out what to do, how to fix things—between Jaxon and me, and Jaxon and Hudson, and Hudson and me—but I can’t. The ground has turned to quicksand beneath me, and my wings aren’t nearly as much help as you’d expect them to be… I mean, I have to land sometime, and every time I do, I start to sink.
Macy must sense my inner anguish, since she sits up on the end of her bed, her amusement fading as quickly as mine. “I know things are rough right now,” she continues. “I was just teasing about the boys. You’re doing your best.”
“What if I don’t know what to do?” The words explode out of me like I’m a bottle under pressure and Macy’s just caused the first leak. “I had barely begun to deal with being a gargoyle, and now I have to deal with winning a seat on the Circle of Doom and Desperation and being coronated right after graduation.”
“Circle of Doom and Desperation?” Macy repeats with a startled laugh.
“After which I’m sure I’ll be locked in a tower or beheaded or something else equally fatalistic.” I say it like it’s a joke, but I’m not kidding. There isn’t one ounce of optimism in me about being a member of the paranormal council Jaxon and Hudson’s parents head up…or anything else that comes with it. Including politics, survival, and being mated to Hudson instead of my actual boyfriend in this brave new world I’ve found myself in.
“I’m still in love with Jaxon. I can’t change how I feel.” I groan. “But I can’t stand hurting Hudson, either—or the look in his eyes when we’re sitting at the lunch table and he’s watching me with his brother.”
The whole thing is a nightmare beyond comprehension, and the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep pretty much at all since I nearly died only makes everything worse. But how can I relax when every time I close my eyes, I feel Cyrus’s teeth sinking into my neck and the agony of his eternal bite spreading through me? Or I remember Hudson placing me in a shallow grave and burying me alive (still not ready to ask how he knew to do that)? Or worse—and yes, this is actually worse—I see the look on Jaxon’s face when Hudson told him I am his mate?