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Then why didn’t he kill me? It didn’t make sense. I shut the water off and reached for the top towel resting on the pile just outside the foot of the antique tub. Wrapping it around me, I grabbed a smaller one to squeeze the water out of my hair.
I tried to remember what happened that night almost a year ago. I’d been jogging and my ear buds had somehow managed to wrap themselves around a small angel statue’s head. I snorted. It was like I had unintentionally been trying to strangle her. How ironic Hunters were descendants of angels.
Why else would Michael have been there, except to be hunting me down?
I had no clothes to change into, except for the red panties stuffed in my pocket. I pulled them on and then stared at the angry reflection looking back at me in the mirror. I wanted answers. If this was all some sort of game Michael was playing, set up by Caleb, to use me as a pawn, I wanted out.
I jerked the door handle and then remembered I’d locked it. Flipping the deadbolt I stomped into the bedroom. It didn’t have the proper affect I wanted it to have with bare feet.
Michael had closed the bedroom door and stood staring out the window at the rising sun working its way over the Appalachian Mountains. “How was your shower?” he asked quietly, not turning around.
“Fine.” I grabbed a pair of pants from the suitcase now sitting on top of the antique desk. Turning my back to Michael I slipped on a bra and red shirt that was loose around the neck. It slipped over my right shoulder. I lifted my shoulder to move it up and then ignored it when the collar part slipped over my shoulder again. It was the style and I had no intention of taking it off for something different. I hopped onto the bed and sat cross legged in the middle of it. I noticed my bag with the Grollic journal and my diary sat on the end of the bed. I reached for it and pulled out my diary. I had a pen inside the bag as well. I wrote fast, writing down how Michael and I had met that first night and what had happened in the past day.
Ten minutes later I slammed the book shut and tossed the pen by my bag. It landed and rolled perfectly back into it.
“What were you writing?” Michael asked, still standing by the window. He had turned so he could still look outside but watch me at the same time.
“Stuff.”
He rolled his eyes and huffed. “This is ridiculous.”
“You bet your ass it is!”
His eyebrows mashed together. “Excuse me?”
“You’re acting like I’m the one who’s been lying to you. Like you’re the victim here.” I jumped off the bed.
Michael took a step toward me. “You consider yourself a victim?” He shook his head. “And do you think you’re the only one who’s been lied to? That this is all about you?” His eyes burned bright blue, the pupils small against the darkness in his face. “What about you, Rouge? You have nothing to share with me?”
I matched his anger with my own. It burned and tightened deep inside my stomach. While his voice stayed low and deadly, mine rose. “You mean this?” I pulled the shirt over my left shoulder and twisted around. The mirror on the other side of the room showed me his face as he looked at the birthmark on my shoulder, in that spot low on the shoulder blade that was next to impossible to touch. My left breast pressed against the front of my shirt, trying to escape the pressure. I didn’t care. “I never knew it was anything. Even when Damon kidnapped me and said I was the Seventh Mark. He thought it was on the same spot as his marking. Did you know that? Did you know the seventh son of the Vargulf Monstrums would be marked on their back? Did you know it would change on my birthday from a regular birthmark to one that looked burnt? Is that how you found me, by looking for the marking?”
Michael’s face turned from anger to frustration. His fingers reached out but did not touch my skin. “I didn’t know you had a mark. You never told me. When I saw it, I figured you would tell me on your own time. I never figured you would hide it.”
“I. Would. Hide. It?” I spun around and glared at him. “You want to know why I never brought it up? Why I was scared to tell you?” I jabbed him in the chest with my finger. His muscles tightened and I tried not to notice how good he smelled. “You’re a Hunter!! A hunter who kills Grollics! I’m a Grollic. I’m the one you and your almighty Higher Coven want dead. We can’t be together! I didn’t want to admit it to you, or to myself. If I told you about it, then I would be destroying us! So, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it. Or to your precious Caleb.” I threw my hands up in the air.
Michael reached out for me but I pushed his hands away. “You are not one of them. You have the ability to control them. You could eliminate all of them.”
I shook my head and stepped back. “What? You want me to kill them? Kill my brother?”
“No!” He grabbed my hand and held it tight. “I didn’t mean your brother.”
“Just every other Grollic. So you can be the hero who won the war?”
“That’s not what I mean—”
“And you knew I was the Seventh Mark, didn’t you? That’s why you found me in the graveyard when I’d moved here.” I wrenched my hand out of his. “You were hunting me, weren’t you?”
“I... I... No! I was looking for...” He shook his head and his eyes closed. “You weren’t supposed to be a girl.”
“Excuse me?” The silence in the room grew deafening. “I wasn’t supposed to be a girl?” The words escaped my lips in a quiet, clear, jeer.
Michael ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s complicated, Rouge.”
“Really? I hadn’t thought my life had turned complicated the day I met you and then your sister.” The sarcasm dripped from my words. “Was this all a ruse? You, your sister, all of you? A trap to keep me close so I would kill the Grollics?”
“No!” He glanced toward the window and then back at me. “I had no idea who you were! I mean...” He sighed. “I honestly did not plan on meeting you that night. Then you showed up and I tried to stay away. When that Grollic saw you the first time and didn’t kill you, I knew you were different. I just didn’t know how.” His eyes danced back and forth as they stared at mine. “I tried to stay away,” he whispered as his arms reached for mine. “I didn’t know I’d fall in love with you.” He sighed. “I love you, Rouge. Not what you are, but who you are. I’d give everything up to be with you if I had to.”
I pushed up on my toes and pressed my lips against his. He pulled me tightly into his arms. “I love you,” he said in between kisses. “I love you.”
What did he mean when he said he would give up everything to be with me? Was Caleb threatening to disown him? To remove him as his understudy? Caleb was the leader of the Higher Coven, the oldest Hunter, and one of the originals. Michael was his understudy, expected to take his position should anything happen to him. Caleb didn’t fancy me, but after everything that had happened in the past year, I thought we had come to some kind of understanding. Maybe I had been wrong.
I buried my head against his neck and rested my cheek on his shoulder. I loved him, but I couldn’t tear him away from his family, or ask him to choose. I had no right.
Michael stiffened. He shifted and positioned himself in front of me to block the window. “Someone’s here.”
