Chapter 82 AURORA
I ran my hands over Dane’s tense shoulders, then through his thick, soft hair. My hands shook. I wanted to tell him the truth. I was going to tell him the truth about as much as I could, but I was still afraid. If he thought I was lying, I’d die, but the truth could kill me just as easily.
“I…” I took a steadying breath. “I want to tell you the truth, Dane, but I’m afraid you won’t believe it.”
He said nothing, just held on to me, waiting.
So, I started talking.
“I know you and I are committed to finding this relic, but lately…I don’t know what to think. These shadow creatures…the attacks…” I trailed off, then started again. “I’ve had some…dreams, some visions. I keep seeing myself in the past, and I don’t know if I’m the good person I thought I was. But honest to the goddess, Dane, I thought I was a good person. I want to be a good person.” My voice wavered at the end, and his thumbs began stroking small circles on my back.
“Like I told you in the infirmary, I had a dream. I thought I saw myself healing your grandfather and Piper. So, I went down, and instead…” My breath caught. “And now Connall is dead. One of the few people who loved and accepted me before. And it’s my fault.” I pressed a hand to my mouth as tears began to flow freely from my eyes. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to take him from you and your pack, from our children. You’re right to blame me for it, but it wasn’t because I meant it to happen. I was just a fool.”
The tears ran down my cheeks, warm and wet. “I don’t know why I’m getting these dreams, or what entity is sending them to me, or why it's trying to kill your family off.”
“I just know it all started when I came back here. I think this relic…it’s protected by something dark, and the darkness wants to claim me, and it wants to kill you. But I don’t know why. And I can’t understand where Evelyn fits into it.” Unless she really was the chosen of the goddess of the moon, and I was the chosen of…something else.
Something evil.
Maybe I’d been wrong about everything. My whole life, I’d wanted to do good, to be good… But maybe I wasn’t good. Maybe I was the evil that had to be vanquished.
“Anyway, that’s the truth. I fear myself. I fear these dreams. But aside from that, I don’t know any more than you do. If I did, I would have stayed away from your grandfather. I promise, I won’t go near Piper. Words aren’t enough for me to say how much I regret what happened, but I am so sorry…”
I didn’t go into any more detail about the past. I couldn’t bring myself to say I’d wanted him dead, that everything he’d suspected of me back then had been true, or would have been true, if I hadn’t lost my memory the night we met.
I also didn’t voice my thoughts that maybe I was evil, and he and Evelyn were supposed to join forces to get rid of me, that maybe we were some kind of star-crossed lovers, one dark, one light.
But the thought took hold, and I couldn’t help but say, “Maybe each of us were claimed by opposing powers far beyond us, and any love we might have had was doomed before it had even had a chance to start.”
Dane finally straightened. I sat on the edge of the bed, and he knelt before me. He traced a hand up my arm to my shoulder to the back of my neck. Then he pulled me forward and kissed me. It was soft and heartfelt. Part of me feared it was a kiss goodbye, that he was lulling me into this moment of relaxation so it would be easy when he snapped my neck.
But he didn’t. He pulled back, his eyes scorching into me. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why my family is in danger. But I’m sick of reacting instead of acting. From here on out, that changes. We figure out what we’re dealing with, and we deal with it.”
“We?” I asked. My fingers tightened into fists. It was hard to believe, after everything I’d done, that he might let me live.
Dane gently pinched my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Fuck higher powers. The only person who can tell me I can’t have you is you.” His eyes dropped to my lips, then met mine again. “So tell me, Aurora DeVere, can I finally make you mine?”