"You were the one who left," she reminded him. "I stayed. I would've stayed with you, even knowing how it might all end."
"I know," he replied, remorse thick in his deep voice. "And I owed you that choice. I see that now." He scoffed quietly. "I see a lot of things more clearly now, when it's too late to turn any of it back. But maybe not this," he said, his thumb brushing gently across her eyelid as he continued to caress her face. "I might be able to fix this for you. And I'm asking you to give me that chance, Mira."
Tender, beautiful words. She could feel his affection in the quiet hitch of his voice and in the careful way he stroked her skin. He cared. He loved her, she had no doubt now.
But he wasn't giving himself as her mate. He was giving her a chance to heal through his blood bond. He wanted her whole again, but would he be offering this gift if she were looking into his eyes in this moment, seeing him as the man she loved, the male her heart was bound to, with or without his blood to seal it?
Her own blood must have betrayed her to him, because no sooner had she thought it, Kellan's touch slid down along her chin, lifting her sightless gaze up to meet his eyes. "When I imagined sharing this part of me with you, Mira, it was a sacred thing. A thing done in passion, in pleasure, with a promise of eternity ahead of us. It was never like this," he said, his voice rough, so gentle. "It was never supposed to be done with you suffering and afraid and me helpless, desperate, ultimately damned to lose you. And never less suited to be the one you bound yourself to than I am in this moment."
"There's no one else I want, Kellan. There never has been." She reached out to him but struggled to find him, touching only air and darkness. Frustration boiled up in the back of her throat, erupting in a small, broken cry.
Then Kellan's hand found hers, took it into his strong grasp. "There," he said, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. "I've got you, Mouse."
"Yes, you do," she replied, her love for him swelling inside her until she felt her heart might burst from it. "You won't let go, will you, Kellan? That's what you promised me. You won't let go."
His curse was a whispered oath. Then his mouth was on hers, claiming her in a possessive yet achingly sweet kiss. When he broke the contact a long moment later, she felt him moving his arm. She heard a soft, wet sound, smelled the spicy-dark scent of his blood.
"Open your mouth for me, baby," he whispered, placing his wrist against her parted lips.
Mira took him into her, the first sip of his blood like a lick of fire on her tongue. She swallowed, then drew another sip into her mouth. And another.
She hadn't been prepared.
How could she have ever been prepared to know the roar of heat and power that was Kellan's bond?
Mira drank him down in fevered, greedy gulps. As their blood bond completed, she could only hold on to him and give herself over to the rush of light and strength and something even more intense - something that defied all description - pouring into her every muscle, bone, and cell.
He was hers.
Kellan belonged to her in every way now, and if fate wanted to take him from her, Mira intended to give that cruel bitch one hell of a fight.
Chapter Twenty-One
EMPTY.
No sign of Mira or Bowman or anyone else at the old military fort at the far end of New Bedford. The bunker and its collection of underground batteries, which crouched on an outcrop of overgrown, untended parkland banked on three sides by the Atlantic, appeared to have been vacated very recently. They'd missed the rebel bastards.
It was not the kind of report Nathan wanted to have to give Lucan. Hell, it was bad enough reporting it to Nikolai a few moments ago. He hadn't taken it well, erupting in murderous, black fury. Mira's father, in Boston with a small squad of his Order brethren, had been determined that Mira would be going home safe with them before dawn. Now that prospect was looking less and less feasible.
Nathan's team, along with Mira's three teammates, had just completed a full sweep of the purported rebel base and turned up nothing. Just abandoned furniture, tables and chairs, cots and beds, all still in place as it ostensibly had been when the base's occupants used it last. But Mira had been there; Nathan could almost feel her presence in his bones.
"Damn it!" The curse exploded out of him, a reaction too strong to contain. He didn't miss the turn of heads in his direction. The grave looks of his team and Mira's met him through the darkness as the warriors regrouped on the thick, weed-choked grass outside the bunker. Niko and his squad were heading there now too, to see the place for themselves and to strategize the rest of the night's patrol with Nathan and the other men.
"Cleared out fast, evidently," Balthazar remarked, the big vampire's typical humor absent tonight. "Like rats from a sinking ship."
Rafe nodded, grim. "Maybe someone warned them we were coming."
"If they did get a warning we were on to them," Eli put in, "that would mean they hauled ass outta here less than five minutes after our lead came in."
"Didn't take off in a panic," Torin said. He tipped his head back, long braids at his temples swinging against his sharp cheekbones as he read the energy in the air. "They had time to gather everything they needed. When they left - by the fade of it, my guess would be sometime late morning - they left on their own terms."
Jax twirled one of his hira-shuriken between nimble fingers, the metal winking with lethal precision under the moonlight. "Doesn't matter why or when they left. Only matters where."
"And that puts us right back at square one," said Webb, the warrior Lucan had put in charge of Mira's squad after the incident with Rooster not even a week ago. From the sober look on the Breed male's face, it was a mantle he accepted out of duty alone, not personal ambition. "Can't believe she hasn't kicked those rebels' asses single-handed by now and come strolling back to us like it was no big thing. Shit, the way Mira goes into combat?" Webb shook his head, contemplating. "Fucking Valkyrie, man. Doesn't matter she's not Breed; it would take an army of humans to knock her down and keep her there. And I, for one, refuse to believe she's not still breathing out there somewhere."