Wrong love 2

Chapter Thirteen: The Promise He Kept

The rain came without warning.

That was the thing about April — it had never been trustworthy. Elara had lived through enough of them to know that April made no promises and kept fewer of the ones it did make, that it could produce warmth and light and the specific hopefulness of a season turning and then pull all of it back without notice and replace it with something grey and relentless and cold.

She stood at the kitchen window that morning and watched the rain come down.

"That's strange," she said.

Jace was behind her.

She felt him through the bond — present, close, the warmth of him that she had spent months learning to read like a second language. He was carrying something this morning. Had been carrying it since she woke up. Since midnight, maybe. Since before midnight.

She'd noticed.

She hadn't said anything.

She'd been waiting for him to bring it to her when he was ready.

"Get dressed," he said quietly. "Wear something warm."

She turned from the window.

He was looking at the rain.

Not at her.

"We're going out," she said. "In that."

"Yes."

"Jace—"

"Please," he said.

She looked at him.

At the profile. The jaw. The silver eyes on the rain outside that were doing that thing — that heavy careful thing she'd been feeling through the bond all morning and hadn't been able to name.

She went to get dressed.

He took her on foot.

Away from the house, away from the street, away from the ordinary Saturday morning geography of their neighbourhood — through the back gate and into the green space behind it and then further, following a path she hadn't known existed, that he seemed to know without looking for.

The rain fell on both of them.

She didn't mind rain. Had never minded it — three centuries had produced a specific relationship with weather that was largely indifferent. But she watched what the rain did to him and found herself minding it for his sake.

It made his hair fall.

The dark strands losing their shape in the wet, dropping over his forehead, splaying against his temples the way she'd only ever seen when he'd just showered, when he was unguarded and unhurried and entirely himself. The rain made him look younger somehow. More human than a thousand year old wolf had any right to look.

She watched it happen.

She watched his face.

He hadn't looked at her since they left the house.

The path narrowed and the trees closed in around them — denser with every step, the canopy thickening above until the rain was more sound than sensation, a percussion against the leaves that had started to win against the light. She looked up once and found that the sky had almost entirely disappeared. Green and shadow and the specific quality of somewhere the world hadn't reached.

He stopped.

In a small clearing — if you could call it that, barely a break in the density, just enough space for two people to stand facing each other with the trees pressing close on every side and the light doing its best and almost failing.

He turned to face her.

She knew.

She knew before he spoke.

Knew from the walk and the rain and the way he'd said please at the kitchen window. Knew from the bond — from the weight it had been carrying since midnight, from the thing she'd felt flicker when she'd said something's going to split us up and he'd told her it wasn't going to happen.

She knew.

She just didn't know yet which shape it was going to take.

He reached out.

Took both her hands.

Held them in his — wet from the rain, warm underneath, his thumbs pressing into her palms with the specific deliberateness of someone making sure they have contact before they say the thing.

She looked at his face.

He looked at hers.

The rain came down around them.

Silver eyes — and she had never seen them look like this before. Not in the flower field and not in the theater and not on any of the hundreds of mornings she'd woken up beside him. Sad in a way that had depth to it. The specific sadness of something that has been decided and is irreversible and is only sad because it is right.

"Jace," she said.

"Elara," he said.

His voice was quiet.

Careful.

Like every word had been chosen from a limited supply and he couldn't afford to waste any of them.

"I have to leave you," he said.

The clearing held the words.

The rain came down.

She stood very still.

Not because she hadn't known it was coming — she had known, some part of her had known since midnight, since the pavement, since months ago when the attacks had started coming faster and closer and he'd fought them all off and said I've got it and she'd believed him —

But knowing a shape was coming and having it arrive were two different things.

"Leave me," she said.

"Yes."

"Jace—"

"The people who want you dead," he said quietly. "They're coming for you because of me. My bloodline. My alpha status. My bond with you." He held her hands tighter. "I am the reason they keep coming. I am the reason yesterday happened. I am—" He stopped. "I am a magnet, Elara. For everything that wants you dead. And as long as I'm near you—"

"I'm coming with you," she said.

"No."

The word was quiet.

Absolute.

She looked at him.

"No?" she said.

"No," he said.

"I'm coming with you, Jace. Wherever you go I—"

"Elara." His hands pressed hers. "No."

"Why," she said. "Why not. Give me one reason why I can't—"

He looked at her.

And said the thing.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Like each word had been prepared individually and cost something individual to deliver.

"I don't want you to come," he said.

The clearing went very quiet.

Even the rain seemed to pull back for a second.

She stared at him.

"You don't—"

"Want you to," he said. "No."

"You don't want me."

A pause.

"Yes," he said.

She felt it land in her chest — not through the bond, not the warm constant presence of him that had lived there for months — just the word itself. Landing. Cold and clean and wrong in a way she couldn't immediately articulate because it was wrong, it was fundamentally wrong, she could feel through the bond that it was wrong even as he was saying it with those eyes and that voice and that face.

"Jace—"

She stopped.

Looked down at their joined hands.

At his right hand holding hers.

At the scar.

The silver line across his palm — faded now but permanent, the way oath scars were permanent, the mark of a blade and a promise and two people pressing bleeding hands together in a field of impossible flowers and choosing each other out loud.

She turned his hand over slowly.

Pressed her fingers to the scar.

Felt him feel her do it through the bond.

"You can't do this," she said softly.

He said nothing.

"You promised," she said. "You promised you'd protect me. You promised—"

"I know," he said.

"You swore it," she said. "With this." Her fingers pressed against the scar. "With your blood. You swore—"

"I know, Elara."

"Then how can you—"

"Because," he said quietly, "this is me keeping that promise."

The rain fell.

She looked at the scar.

At his hand in hers.

At the silver line that had been there since the beginning — since before the bond fully formed, since before the ring, since before the pool and the picnic and midnight and all of it — the very first thing they'd ever given each other.

This is me keeping that promise.

She understood it.

That was the worst part.

She understood it completely — felt the logic of it, felt the truth of it, felt it in the bond which had been carrying this weight since last night and had known, on some level, what it meant before she did.

She understood it.

And it was tearing her apart anyway.

"Jace," she said.

Her voice broke on his name.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

He made a sound low in his throat — something that wasn't a word and didn't need to be — and his hand tightened around hers.

"Don't," she said. Barely a whisper. "Don't you dare cry."

"I'm not," he said.

She looked up at him.

He was.

Not loudly — not the way she was, the tears mixing with the rain on her face until she couldn't have said which was which. Jace Ryder didn't cry loudly. He cried the way he did everything that cost him — quietly, controlled, the emotion present in the silver eyes and the jaw and the set of his mouth and the specific quality of someone holding something enormous at the absolute limit of their capacity.

"There's someone else," he said quietly. "Out there. Somewhere. Who can be near you without making you a target. Who can—"

"Stop," she said.

"Elara—"

"Stop," she said again. Harder. "Don't you dare. Don't you stand here in the rain and tell me to find someone else."

"If it's not too much trouble," he said. The words came out careful and deliberate and she could hear what they cost him. "I want you to. I want you to find someone who doesn't bring war to your door every—"

"Jace."

"—every time they're near you. Someone who—"

"Jace, stop—"

"I'm never coming back," he said.

The clearing held those four words.

The rain came down.

She stared at him.

At the silver eyes that were wet — from the rain, she told herself, from the rain — and the dark hair splayed against his forehead and the scar under her fingers and the bond between them that was doing something she had no name for, something that had never happened before, something that felt like watching a light source move away in the dark and understanding for the first time what dark actually meant.

"You don't mean that," she said.

"I do," he said quietly.

"Jace—"

"I mean every word," he said. "The same way I've meant everything. Every word I've ever said to you."

She looked at him.

At this wolf.

Her wolf.

Standing in a forest so dense the light had almost given up — rain on his face and his hands holding hers and a scar that had been there since the beginning and silver eyes that were saying the most devastating thing they'd ever said and meaning all of it.

She couldn't speak.

She didn't have words in any language for what was happening in her chest.

He pulled her in.

Both arms. All the way. The full grip of someone who had decided something and was allowing himself this one last thing before he lived with the decision.

She went.

Her face against his chest. His arms around her. The rain on both of them. His heartbeat under her ear — rapid, unlike his usual steady certainty, the thousand year old wolf's composure finally finding its limit — and the bond between them burning and burning and burning like it was trying to say everything the words hadn't.

"I love you," he said into her hair.

She gripped his jacket.

"I love you," he said again. "Whatever happens. Whatever you do. Whatever comes next. That doesn't change. It doesn't go anywhere. It just—" His voice fractured. One clean break. "It just can't be here anymore."

"Jace—"

"Let me," he said. "Let me do this."

She held on.

He held on.

The rain held them both.

For a long moment — for the last moment — the clearing contained a wolf and a vampire standing in the rain holding on to something that was about to become a different shape.

Then he pressed his lips to her hair.

Her forehead.

Her cheek.

And finally — slowly, completely, with everything a thousand years had ever taught him about what it meant to mean something — her mouth.

The last kiss.

She felt it through the bond as much as physically — felt what it meant to him, felt the enormity of it, felt a thousand year old wolf pouring everything he was into a single point of contact because after this there would be no more and he knew it.

She kissed him back with everything she had.

With year's of surviving and choosing and building and all the months in that house and the kitchen table and the pool and the field and midnight and the ring still on her finger —

All of it.

Into one kiss in a forest in the rain.

Then he stepped back.

His hands left hers last.

The bond — she felt it, the moment the contact broke, the specific quality of him pulling back not just physically but through the connection too, doing something she didn't know was possible, making himself smaller in her chest in a way that felt like watching a star beginning to recede —

He looked at her one more time.

Silver eyes.

"Goodbye, Elara," he said quietly.

And walked into the trees.

She stood still.

The rain came down.

The forest pressed close.

The bond—

The bond was still there. Still present. Still carrying him — north-east, moving, the warmth of him receding degree by degree as the trees took him and the distance grew —

No.

She moved.

"Jace."

Through the trees — branches, wet ground, the density of the forest that had swallowed the light now swallowing him — she pushed through it, following the bond, following north-east, following the warmth that was still there, still present, still—

"JACE."

Her voice hit the trees and came back to her.

She pushed further.

North-east — she followed it, the bond pulling her forward, the distance between them still there but manageable, still—

And then.

Nothing.

Not gone — he wasn't gone, she could feel him still, the faint thread of the bond that midnight had almost lost and that she had almost lost on the pavement — but distant. Suddenly, completely, impossibly distant. As though the forest had folded between them. As though a thousand year old wolf who had decided to disappear had done exactly that.

She stopped.

Turned in a full circle.

Trees. Rain. Darkness where the light had almost given up.

No Jace.

No sound of him.

No direction that felt more like him than any other.

Just the bond — thin now, the distance doing what distance did — and the rain and the forest and the scar on her right palm and the gold ring on her left hand and four words sitting in the clearing behind her.

I'm never coming back.

She stood in the forest.

In the rain.

In April.

Completely alone.

The bond burned.

Thin and far and present and breaking and still — still — his.

She stood there for a long time.

The rain didn't stop.

The forest didn't change.

He didn't come back.