Everyone
The pain in his voice has my heart thudding slow and hard in my chest.
Sure, there’s a part of me that can’t imagine what world he’s talking about, considering I’m currently living in the middle of a fantasy novel—one complete with fantastical creatures and secrets galore. But there’s a larger part of me that just wants him to know that whatever world he’s talking about, and whatever happened to him in that world, I’m on his side.
I take my time running my palms over his chest and pressing kisses along the powerful column of his throat. He smells like oranges again, and deep water, and I sink into the scent of him, into the glorious taste and feel and sound of him.
His hands go to my hips, and he groans low in his throat as he arches against me. It feels amazing—he feels amazing. I’ve never been this intimate with a guy before, have never wanted to be, but with Jaxon, I want it all. I want to feel everything, experience everything. Maybe not now, when we’re on borrowed time, but soon.
But I also want to know what’s hurting him. Not so I can take it away—I know way better than that—but so I can
share it with him. So I can understand. Which is why I roll off him just as things are getting really interesting.
He rolls with me, of course, so that now we’re stretched on our sides, facing each other. His arm is around my waist, his hand resting on my hip, and there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to sink back into him. To just let whatever’s going to happen happen.
But Jaxon deserves better than that. And so do I.
Which is why I reach up and cup his unscarred cheek, then lean forward until our mouths are so close that we’re breathing the same air. “Believe me, I understand better than most if you don’t want to talk about what happened to you,” I whisper. “But I need you to know that if you ever want to share what happened with me, I’m more than happy to listen.”
My words aren’t sexy and they definitely aren’t slick, but they are sincere and they are heartfelt. Jaxon must sense it, too, because instead of dismissing me out of turn, as I half expected him to, he stares at me through eyes that show more than I ever imagined.
Then he kisses me—long, slow, deep—before rolling away and sitting up, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. I sit up, too, and because I can’t leave him alone in this…whatever this turns out to be, I wrap myself around him from behind as I press soft, quick kisses to his shoulders and the back of his neck.
And then I say, “Tell me,” because I think he needs to hear me say that almost as much as he needs to tell me the story burning inside him.
I’m not sure how I expect the story to come out—whether
in fits and starts or one smooth retelling—but I do know that I never could have anticipated what he says when he finally begins to speak.
“I killed Hudson.”
Shock rips through me. “Hudson? Your—” “Brother. Yeah.” He wipes a hand over his face.
A million emotions go through me at those four words— shock that isn’t really shock, horror, sorrow, concern, pity, pain. The list goes on and on. But the one that stands head and shoulders above the others is disbelief. Dangerous as he is, I don’t believe Jaxon would ever deliberately harm someone he cares about. Everyone else might be open season, but not those he considers under his protection. If I’ve learned nothing else in the week I’ve been here, I’ve learned that.
Which means something really horrible must have happened. What must it be like to live with the kind of power he wields?
What must it be like to live with the knowledge that one careless moment, one slip of control, and he can lose everything?
“What happened?” I ask eventually, when minutes pass and he doesn’t say anything else.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. I can’t imagine you hurting your brother on purpose.”
He turns on me then, eyes showing that yawning, empty blackness I’m coming to hate so much. “Then your imagination isn’t good enough.”
Fear skitters through me at the darkness in his voice.
“Jaxon.” I lay a gentle hand on his arm.
“I didn’t set out to kill him, Grace. But do you really think intentions matter when someone’s dead? It’s not like you can just bring them back because you didn’t want to do it.”
“I know that better than most.” I’m still haunted by the fight my parents and I had right before they died.
“Do you?” Jaxon demands. “Do you know what it feels like to be able to wave a hand and do this?” Seconds later, everything in the room, except for the bed we’re sitting on, is floating in the air around us. “Or this?” Everything comes crashing to the ground. The guitar crumbles. One of the glass picture frames shatters into a million pieces.
I take a minute, let the shock cycle through before I try to say anything that makes sense.
“Maybe you’re right,” I eventually answer. “Maybe I don’t know what any of that feels like. But I know your brother wouldn’t want you beating yourself up over whatever happened to him. He wouldn’t want you torturing yourself.”
Jaxon’s answering laugh is filled with actual humor. “It’s pretty obvious you don’t know Hudson. Or my parents. Or Lia.”
“Lia blames you for Hudson’s death?” I ask, surprised.
“Lia blames everyone and everything for Hudson’s death. If she had the kind of power I do, her rage would burn down the world.” This time when he laughs, there’s only regret in the sound.
“What about your parents? Surely they don’t hold you responsible for something you had no control over?”
“Who said I had no control? I had a choice. And I made it. I killed him, Grace. On purpose. And I would do it again.”
My stomach churns at his admission—and the coldness in his voice as he makes it. But I’ve learned enough about Jaxon to know that he will always cast himself in the most awful light. That he will always choose to see himself as the villain, even if he’s the victim.
Especially if he’s the victim.
Pointing that out to him right now won’t do any good, though, so I wait for him to say more. And there is more. If there wasn’t, he wouldn’t be so concerned with losing control and hurting me.
“Hudson was the firstborn,” he eventually continues. “The prince who would be king. The perfect son who only grew more perfect after death.”
There’s no bitterness in the words, just a matter-of- factness that makes it way too easy to read between the lines. Still, I can’t resist asking, “And you are?”
“Very definitely not.” He laughs. “Which is fine. More than fine. Being king has never exactly been an aspiration of mine.”
“King?” I ask, because when he first said it, I thought it was a metaphor. His brother the prince. But now that he said it again, in reference to himself being king, I can’t not ask.
“Yes, king.” He lifts a brow. “Didn’t Macy tell you?”
“No.” King of what? I want to ask, but now doesn’t exactly seem like the time.
“Oh, well, here I am.” He does a mock little bow. “The next vampire liege at your service.”
“Ooookay.” I don’t know what else to say to that revelation. Except, “It was supposed to be Hudson? But now
that he’s dead…”
“Exactly.” He makes a you guessed it clicking sound with the corner of his mouth. “I’m the replacement. The new heir apparent.”
And future king. My mind boggles at the mere idea. What does a vampire king do, anyway? And is that why everyone treats Jaxon with such deference? Because he’s royalty? But what does vampire royalty have to do with dragons? Or witches?
“I am, of course, also the murderer of the former heir apparent,” Jaxon continues, “which in another species might cause some problems. But in the vampire world, you’re only as strong as what you can defend…and what you can take. So all I had to do to become the most fearsome and revered vampire in the world was to kill my big brother.”
He gives a little shrug that is supposed to show how amusing he finds the whole thing, how much he doesn’t care.
I don’t buy it for a second.
“But that’s not why you killed him,” I add, because I think he needs to hear me say it.
“I thought we already covered that motive doesn’t matter? Perception becomes truth eventually, even when it’s wrong.” There’s a wealth of pain in those four words, even though the tone Jaxon uses is completely devoid of emotion. “Especially when it’s wrong. History is, after all, written by the winner.”
I rest my head on his shoulder in a small gesture of comfort. “But you’re the winner.”
“Am I?”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I don’t even try. Instead, I ask for the truth. His truth. “Why did you kill Hudson?”
“Because he needed to be killed. And I’m the only one who could.”
The words hang in the air as I try to absorb them, to figure out what he means. “So Hudson was as powerful as you, then.”
“No one is as powerful as me.” He isn’t bragging. In fact, he sounds almost ashamed of the fact.
“Why is that exactly?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Genetics. Each generation of born vampires tends to be more powerful than the generation that came before them. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, that’s how it’s always been. It’s why there are so few of us—nature’s way of keeping the balance, I figure. And since my parents come from the strongest two families and wield incredible power themselves, it’s no surprise that when they mated, their offspring…”
“Can literally make the earth shake.”
He gives a half smile, the first I’ve seen from him since this conversation began. “Something like that, yeah.”
“So am I right in guessing that Hudson was not exactly responsible with his power?”
“A lot of young vampires aren’t.”
“That’s not an answer.” I raise a brow, wait for him to look at me. It takes longer than it should. “And you strike me as very responsible.”
He arches his own brows, takes a deliberate look around the disaster he made of the room when he was kissing me.
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you think you mean. Hudson…” He sighs. “Hudson’s plans were always audacious. Always looking to give vampires more power, more money, more control, which isn’t bad in and of itself.”
I’m tempted to disagree. After all, if you plan on garnering more power, money, and control, it has to come from somewhere. And history has shown that taking any of those three things tends to be less than humane for the people it’s being taken from.
But that’s a discussion for another time, not now, when Jaxon is finally opening up.
“But somewhere along the line, he got lost in those plans,” Jaxon continues. “He got so concerned with what he could achieve and how he could achieve it that he never stopped to question if he should.
“I tried to pull him back, tried to talk reason to him, but with Lia and my mother whispering all kinds of Chosen One bullshit in his ear, it became impossible to reach him. Impossible to make him understand that his own brand of manifest destiny was not…acceptable, especially when those plans included…” His voice drifts off for a minute, and a look at his eyes tells me that mentally, Jaxon’s not here in this room anymore. He’s far away in another time and place. “Things between vampires and shifters have always been
tense,” he finally continues, a defensive note in his voice that I’ve never heard before. “We’ve never really gotten along with the wolves or the dragons; they don’t trust us and we sure as hell don’t trust them. So when Hudson worked up a plan to”—he curls the fingers of his free hand
and makes air quotes—“‘put the shifters in their place,’ a lot of people thought he was onto something.”
“But not you.”
“Going after the shifters looked and smelled an awful lot like prejudice to me. And then it began to look a lot like genocide. Especially when he started adding other supernatural creatures—and even made vampires—to his list. Things got ugly.”
“How ugly?” I ask, though I’m not sure I actually want to know the answer. Not when Jaxon looks more grim than I’ve ever seen him. And not when he’s throwing around words like “genocide.”
“Ugly.” He refuses to elaborate. “Especially with our history.”
Again the blanks in my knowledge base make it impossible to understand what history he’s referring to. Instead of asking, I make a mental note to check the library or ask Macy.
“I tried to reason with Hudson, tried to talk him down. I even went to the king and queen to see if they could do something with him.”
I note how he calls his parents the king and queen instead of Mom and Dad, and for a second, I flash back to the first day I met him. To the chess table and the vampire queen and the things he said about what I thought at the time was just a chess piece.
It all makes so much more sense now. “They couldn’t.”
“They wouldn’t,” he corrects. “So I tried to talk to him again. So did Byron and Mekhi and a few of the others who
would have graduated with him. He didn’t listen. And one day he started a fight that was set to rip the whole world apart, had it been allowed to continue.”
“That’s when you stepped in.”
“I thought I could fix things. I thought I could talk him down. It didn’t work out like that.
He closes his eyes, and it makes him seem so far away. Until he opens them again, and I realize he is even more distant than I imagined.
“Do you know what it’s like to realize the brother you grew up revering is a total and complete sociopath?” he asks in a voice made more terrible by the reasonableness of it. “Can you imagine what it feels like to know that maybe if you hadn’t been so blind, so caught up in your hero worship and seen him for what he was sooner, a lot of people would still be alive?
“I had to kill him, Grace. There was no other choice. Truth be told, I don’t even regret doing it.” He says the last in a whisper, like he’s ashamed to even admit it.
“I don’t believe that,” I tell him. Guilt radiates off him, makes me hurt for him in a way I’ve never hurt for anyone before.
“I believe it was necessary. I believe you did what you had to do. But I don’t believe for one second that you don’t regret killing him.” He’s spent too much time torturing himself for that to be true.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I can’t help wondering if I said the wrong thing. Can’t help wondering if I just made everything worse.
“I regret that he had to be killed,” he finally says after a
long silence passes between us. “I regret that my parents created him and molded him into the monster that he was. But I don’t regret that he’s gone now. If he wasn’t dead, no one in the entire world would be safe.”
My stomach plummets at his words. Instinctively, I want to deny them, but I’ve seen Jaxon’s power. I’ve seen what he can do when he controls it and what it can do on its own when he can’t. If Hudson’s power was anything close— without Jaxon’s morality to keep it in check—I can’t imagine what might happen.
“Did you have the same power, or—”
“Hudson could persuade anyone to do anything.” The words are as flat as his tone. As his eyes. “I don’t mean he could con people; I mean that he had the power to make people do whatever he wanted them to do. He could make them torture another person, could make them kill anyone he wanted to. He could start wars and launch bombs.”
A chill runs up my spine at his words, has the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. Even before he looks straight at me and continues. “He could make you kill yourself, Grace. Or Macy. Or your uncle. Or me. He could make you do anything he wanted, and he did. Over and over and over again.
“No one could stop him. No one could resist him. And he knew it. So he took whatever he wanted and planned for more. And when he decided he was going to murder the shifters, just wipe them out of existence, I knew he wouldn’t stop there. The dragons would go, too. The witches. The made vampires. The humans.
“He would destroy them all— just because he could.”
He looks away, I think because he doesn’t want me to see his face. But I don’t need to look in his eyes to know how much this hurts him, not when I can hear it in his voice and feel it in the tension of his body against mine. “There were a lot of people who supported him, Grace. And a lot of people willing to stand in front of him to protect him and the vision he had for our species. I killed a lot of them to get to him. And then I killed him.”
This time, when he closes his eyes and then opens them, the distance is gone. And in its place is the same resolve it must have cost for him to not only take on Hudson but also to beat him. “So, no, I don’t regret that I killed him. I regret that I didn’t do it sooner.”
When he finally turns back around to look at me, I can see the pain, the devastation behind the emptiness in his eyes. It makes me ache for him in a way I’ve never ached for anyone, not even my parents. “Oh, Jaxon.” I put my arms around him again, try to hold him, but his body is stiff and unyielding against my own.
“His death destroyed my parents, and it broke Lia into so many pieces, I don’t think she’ll ever recover. Before all this happened, she was my best friend. Now she can barely stand to look at me. Flint’s brother died fighting Hudson’s army in the same fight, and Flint’s never been the same, either. We used to be friends, if you can believe it.”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath and lets himself sink into me. I hold him as tightly as I can, for as long as he’ll let me. Which isn’t long at all. He pulls away well before I’m ready to let him go.
“Nothing has been the same since Hudson did what he
did. The different species have been at war three times in the last five hundred years. This was almost number four. And though we stopped it before it got too far, the distrust for vampires that goes back centuries is right up front again. “Add in the fact that a lot of people got an up-close-and- personal look at my power and no one’s happy. And can you blame them? How do they know I won’t turn like my brother
did?”
“You won’t.” The certainty is a fire deep inside me.
“Probably not,” he agrees, though it’s hard to miss his qualification. “But this is why I warned you away from Flint, and it’s why I had to do what I did in the study lounge. They’ve been gunning for you since you got here. I don’t know why it started, if it’s because you’re human or if there’s something I haven’t figured out yet. But I’m sure that it’s continued—and gotten worse—because you’re mine.”
The torment is back, worse than before. “It’s why I tried to stay away from you,” he adds, “but we both know how well that worked.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I whisper as so much of what he’s said and done since I first got here finally begins to make sense. “This is why you act the way you do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face closes up, but there’s a wariness—and a yearning—in his eyes that says I’m on the right track.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I rest a hand on his cheek, ignoring the way he flinches when I touch his scar. “You act the way you do because you believe it’s the only way you can keep the peace.”
“It is the only way to keep the peace.” The words are torn from him. “We’re balanced on a razor-thin tightrope, and every day, every minute, is a balancing act. One wrong step in either direction, and the world burns. Not just ours but yours as well, Grace. I can’t let that happen.”
Of course he can’t.
Other people could walk away, could say it wasn’t their responsibility. Could tell themselves that there was nothing they could do.
But that’s not how Jaxon operates. Those aren’t the rules he lives by. No, Jaxon takes it all on his shoulders. Not just the mess Hudson created and left him with but everything that happened before it—and everything that’s happened since.
“So what does that mean for you?” I ask softly, not wanting to spook him any more than I already have. “That you have to give up everything good in your life just to keep things together for everyone else?”
“I’m not giving up anything. This is just who I am.” His hands clench into fists, and he tries to turn away.
But I won’t let him. Not now, not when I’m finally understanding all the ways he’s managed to torture himself
—for Hudson’s death and for this new role he doesn’t want but can’t turn away from.
“That’s bullshit,” I tell him softly. “You wear indifference like a mask and wield coldness like a weapon—not because you feel nothing, but because you feel too much. You’ve worked so hard to make everyone believe you’re a monster that you’ve begun to believe it yourself.
“But you’re not a monster, Jaxon. Not even close.”
This time, he doesn’t just turn away—he jerks away, like he’s been shocked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growls.
“You think if people are scared enough, if they hate you enough, they won’t dare to step out of line. They won’t dare to start another war because you’ll finish that one, too—and them right along with it.”
The pain and loneliness of his existence hit me like an avalanche. What must it feel like to be so alone? What must it feel like to—?
“Don’t look at me like that,” he orders, his voice as tight and thin as a high wire.
“Like what?” I whisper.
“Like I’m a victim. Or a hero. I’m neither of those things.”
He’s both of those things—and so much more. But I know he won’t believe me if I try to tell him that. Just like I know he won’t take any more comfort from me right now, not when I’ve just laid him open for both of us to see.
So I do the only thing I can do.
I tangle my hands in his hair, pull his mouth down to mine, and give him the only thing he’ll accept from me.
