| |
Pain exploded, doubling Adam over, as Cain slammed his fist into his stomach the moment they were alone. Adam crumpled into a gasping heap on the floor.
“What is wrong with you?”
He sucked in a restricted breath and pushed his back against the wall, his legs sprawled and trembling. He deserved the pain. He deserved death.
“How could you let her walk away, Adam? She’s everything to you!”
Wheezing, he shut his eyes and let his misery swallow him whole. “I’m nothing to her.”
Cain’s foot slammed into his ribs, snapping bone and Adam slouched to the floor. He’d already damaged so much. He wouldn’t fight back.
“Why? Because the Elders say so?” His head whipped against the pavement as Cain’s fist cracked into his jaw. “What do they know, Adam? Where were they when we needed them, other than in our way?”
He tasted blood and forced himself to sit up, his arms pushing through the tremors as his back pressed into the wall. “She needs you.”
The punch came before he was ready, snapping his head into the wall. Blood filled his mouth and he spit.
“You’re her husband. You vowed to protect her.”
“She doesn’t need a husband!” He argued through gritted teeth. “She needs her mate. You share a sire bond. Nothing can touch that!” The words, although from his mouth, detonated in his soul. The gutting truth gnawed into him, so deep he no longer wanted to breathe. “End me now.”
Cain’s eyes flashed with fury. “Your indifference is selfish.”
“I’m anything but indifferent!” Adam growled. “What would you have me do? I have no right to her! You’re my brother! There are laws!”
Pain welled in his chest until he could no longer breathe. How could anything hurt so much and not destroy him.
“Please, Cain... I can’t bear it.” They would share a life, a home, a family. What of the child now in her womb? Would it ever recognize Adam as anything more than an uncle? Cain was not a selfless man, and once he accepted his fate, Adam would have nothing.
Perhaps Annalise knew this and that was why she insisted they help him. “She practically chose you—”
White light exploded behind his eyes as Cain’s fist crashed into his skull. Bone crunched at the bridge of his nose as blood seeped down his face.
“You’re pathetic,” Cain sneered. “Your loyalty should be to her, not me. And certainly not them!”
His head throbbed, and a roar ripped from his throat. “I am loyal to her!”
“How? By abandoning her?”
“This is best for her! This is best for everyone. This is how God intended—”
“She loves you, you fool! Leave God out of it!”
He turned away, his gaze dropping to the spatters of blood on the floor. “She’ll learn to love you.” The pain bloomed in his chest, overtaking his heart. “Loving her is simple, Cain. You won’t have to try.”
“Is that what you want? Her in my bed with your bastard child between us?”
His eyes squeezed shut. “You won’t let that child know the difference. I know you.”
“I’m not interested in raising your son. You sentence me to an eternity of knowing she wanted you first. How long will she picture your face when I touch her? Dream it’s your body filling hers?”
Bile rose as he covered his ears. “Stop. Please.”
“But that’s what you’re asking of me. You want me to stand in your place.” Something shifted in his voice. Inadequacy rolled off of him, and he stepped back. “I’m on this earth to serve as your backup.”
Adam looked up at him, eyes pleading and face bloodied. “Does she not call to you? Have you not shared dreams? Your refusal can only go so far, brother. I know the truth. Denying the hold she has over you is only denying the inevitable.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve spent so much more time with her and yet... You still don’t fully know her. She’ll fight me, Adam. She’s fierce and strong and she’s far past pissed. You say she’s mine, but she’ll never accept that. Our God holds no authority over her will. And what will happen when I grow tired of waiting for her consent?”
“In time she’ll—”
“No!” He yanked him of the floor, onto his feet, and slammed his back into the wall. “I will not force myself on her! And how dare you suggest she learn to accept anything she doesn’t want. You are her protector!”
“She doesn’t belong to me!”
“Then who, Adam? Who does she belong to? That female is more English than anything else. This is not my battle. It’s yours.”
“And I lost!” he shouted, finally shoving Cain’s hands away. “I had her—I had everything—and I lost all of it! God has—”
“Your God has betrayed you!” He pointed down the empty corridor. “She would never betray you in such a way. She sacrificed her entire world for you. She agreed to marry you. She even tried to...” His voice broke as he looked away. “She even tried to save us.”
Adam’s brow tightened as he watched Cain struggle to process everything they’d gone through. He was unaware Cain knew about their pre-marital bargain.
“I was going to take her from you,” Cain whispered, his eyes unable to meet Adam’s. “I was angry. Why should you get her? I went to the house. You were with Grandfather and Father, away in the barn. The rain covered the voices, and I could have stolen her right out from under your nose.”
Adam’s gaze dropped. “Why didn’t you?”
He laughed. “She’s rather adorable when she’s stubborn. Honestly, as titillating as it might have been to drag her kicking and screaming out of there, the thought exhausted me. She wanted you. And she had no shame in telling me—over and over again.”
Cain paced to the opposite wall, pressing his back to the plaster and sliding his back down until he sat on the floor. “I think she’s the sort of female who’d fight me forever. I don’t want that. I don’t want the fight. I don’t want to be anyone’s second choice. I’d rather have no one.”
“You’re not second choice.”
His head lifted, and Adam saw his anguish as much as he felt it. “To her, that’s all I’d ever be.”
Tears flooded Adam’s eyes. “How are you fighting this?”
Cain shook his head. “Because she’s not mine. She’s yours in every sense of the word. Even in our dreams, we only shared pain. Perhaps she can feel mine, and that’s why it was so important for her to fix this war between us.”
Adam wanted her pain. He wanted her joy and her happiness. He wanted all of it, and knowing Cain experienced this slight part of her, broke him in ways he couldn’t explain. Their kind was not built to share. He wanted all of her.
“I felt her tonight,” his brother rasped. “I felt her life drifting away and I felt the emptiness consuming her. I’m tethered to her, but...” His brow creased. “She’s tied to you.”
“It’s your blood that saved her.”
He shook his head. “I’ve felt her fear, her anxiety, her anger, pain, and death. But I’ve never felt her love, Adam. Her heart belongs to you.”
They sat in silence. The night had shifted into day and with dawn came the rising press to move. But neither of them knew where to go from here.
“Perhaps it was a combination of both our blood that saved her,” Cain wondered aloud. “What would have happened if she hadn’t had yours first?”
They shared a womb, at one point surviving off the same blood. Could it be that simple? Adam rested his head against the wall, shutting his eyes. Exhaustion crept into his bones. Nothing about this was simple.
“I feel her now, Adam.”
His eyes flashed open. Jealousy—his out—slashed through him.
“She’s in pain. She’s scared and confused and having a lot of bad thoughts—dangerous thoughts.”
A heavy weight pressed against his chest. He reflexively reached for her emotions, only to hit a wall. “I feel nothing,” he gasped.
Cain arched a brow. “She’s immortal now. Her mind won’t be as open. And I imagine our sister probably taught her how to block you.”
A tear trailed down his face. “She must think this the cruelest joke.”
Cain shifted his weight, moving to the opposite wall and sitting beside his brother, shoulder to shoulder. “Show her it’s not, Adam. You’re good and honorable and everything she deserves. Take away her regret and replace it with the love I know you feel for her.”
His body pulsed with the need to do just that. Everything inside of him wanted to fix this, but their laws... What was the authority here? Even the Bishop had doubted Cain’s instinct. They were in uncharted territory. And Adam feared adding to the damage, adding to her heartache.
“She might never forgive me.”
“Oh, then by all means, leave her to me and sentence her to an eternity of disappointment.”
Adam glanced at his brother, hearing the sarcasm in his voice and the deflection of his emotions, but he couldn’t hide his feelings from him. He never could.
Adam gripped his hand, silently telling him he felt his pain. Cain could not walk away from this unscathed. He’d already been hurt so much.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner.”
Cain’s eyes shifted. “Neither of us knew what was happening. If I’d known earlier... If I’d been the one to find her first... You would have never known the scent of her skin, or the weight of her hair running through your fingers, or the feel of her lips. I would have kept it all for myself and turned my back on you just as fast. It’s the nature of the beast, brother. And it’s inside of all of us.”
“Where will you go?” They both understood the sacrifice Cain offered. There would be no staying on the farm—at least not right away.
“Do you honestly care what happens to me?”
He scowled. “Yes, I care.”
He dropped his head back, looking up at the rafters, his fingers entwined between his knees. “I suppose it might be interesting to try a nomadic existence for a while, get out in nature, connect with the greater picture. I’ll know where I’m heading when I find it.”
“It will be strange here without you.”
“You’ll be too busy with your new wife to even realize I’m gone.”
Adam hesitated, once again suffering a wave of sadness from Cain. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
He nodded. “I’m open to you, Adam. Search my emotions and see the truth by feeling what I feel for her. I care, yes, but... It’s nothing in comparison to your feelings.”
His scalp prickled as he sent out a gentle probe. Annalise colored certain emotions surrounding his aura, but they resembled the colors he recognized in Cain’s emotions for Larissa and Gracie.
“You view her as a sister?”
Cain raised a brow. “I suppose that’s accurate.”
Adam frowned. “But you tried—”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. Now...” He wrinkled his nose. “I just want her to be happy. I’m not the male to do that.”
“You humble me, Cain. Thank you.”
“Thank me by doing right by her. Give her everything she deserves, Adam. Do that, and I’ll never have a reason to regret my sacrifice.”
“You have my word.”