But I’ve only got one shot at it.

As the scene resets to Hudson reading on the couch, I take a deep breath and force myself to let go of our mating bond. It’s harder than it should be, even knowing it’s the only chance I have of stopping this.

I drop back into the cell just in time to hear Hudson scream. Which makes me wonder if he was more aware of me along the mating bond than I thought. He’s at the early part of the nightmare—before anything bad happens—so he shouldn’t be this freaked out yet. But he’s convulsing on the bed, his entire body shaking as he groans in distress.

I drop to my knees next to the bed and put an arm around him. “I’ve got you,” I whisper into his ear, hoping against hope that somehow he’ll hear me in the middle of that hellscape. “I’m going to get you out.”

I turn to Remy then and ask, “Can you help me? I need to hold him down.”

“Of course,” he answers, all but leaping off his bed and running across the cell to us. “What happened in there?” he asks as he drops to his knees beside me.

I don’t take the time to answer him. I can’t afford to, not knowing what’s coming next for Hudson. Instead, I wrap one hand around Remy’s wrist and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Then, praying this works, I close my eyes one more time and use my other hand to grab on to the mating bond.

It takes a few more seconds than it did the first time, but when I open my eyes, Remy and I are both in Hudson’s nightmare.

“What the fuck did you do?” Remy yells. He doesn’t seem angry, more astonished. Which I get, considering I’m a little shocked that it worked, too.

“Channeling magic is one of my powers,” I tell him. “And even though my powers are currently locked up, yours aren’t. So I took a really big chance, hoping that the magic used to channel comes from the source—you—and not me, which would make it immune to the whole prison-cell/grounding situation we’ve got going on here.” I give a slight grin. “Apparently, it’s a chance that paid off.”

“Apparently,” he agrees. “Nice job, Amazing Grace.”

“How about we save the superlative nicknames until we know whether my plan works or not?” I look down at where my hand is still wrapped around his wrist. “Do you mind?”

“For you, cher?” He gives me a playful wink. “Not even a little bit.”

I’d roll my eyes at him, but I’m too busy using every ounce of strength I have inside me to focus on every ounce of magic I can sense inside him. There’s more than I thought, but not as much as I’d hoped—or as much as I think we’ll need. But I don’t care. I have to try.

Drawing as much of that magic into me as I possibly can, I focus on Hudson—who is currently stalking the other Grace across his room—and shout, “Stop!” as loud as I can.

128

Now You Kill Me,

Now You Don’t

At first, I don’t think he hears me. He doesn’t move, doesn’t falter, doesn’t so much as look my way. But I’m not about to give up now. Not when I’m so close to getting his attention…and he’s so close to self-destructing.

“Hudson! Stop!” I shout again.

This time, he does more than pause. He turns to me and slowly, slowly registers that I’m inside the dream with him.

“Grace?” he whispers. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s okay,” I tell him, walking toward him. “I’ve got—”

“No!” he yells, throwing a hand out as if to ward me off. “Don’t come any closer.”

He sounds so anguished, so panicked that I freeze about halfway across the room.

“Hudson, please. Let me touch you.”

“I can’t.” He holds up his hands, and suddenly they are drenched in blood, even though he hasn’t so much as touched the other Grace. “I’ll hurt you.”

“No.” I shake my head even as I take another step toward him. “You won’t. That’s just a nightmare. It’s not real.”

“It is real,” he says, and his voice is shaking in a way it so rarely does. “I hurt everyone. It’s what I do. It’s all I know how to do.”

“Is that what you really think? Or is that what this place is telling you?”

“It’s the truth. I killed those people. Worse, I made them kill themselves.”

“You did,” I agree. “And it was a terrible thing. But it wasn’t all on you, Hudson. It was on them, too.”

“It was all on me. I took away their choices. I made them do what they did—”

“Because you felt like you didn’t have a choice,” I remind him. “They were going to do something awful. They were going to hurt, maybe kill, all those kids. Destroy all those families. You didn’t know who you could trust, so you did what you thought you had to do to stop them.”

“I made them kill their friends, all the while as they screamed in their heads to stop,” he whispers, then continues on a ragged sob, “but they couldn’t. They couldn’t stop. They couldn’t stop. They couldn’t.”

Before I can think of anything else to say, the Grace cowering on the floor starts to scream. “Stop! Please stop, Hudson. Please don’t hurt me. Don’t—”

“Get out now!” he growls at me. “Before it’s too late.”

Then he turns and advances toward the kneeling Grace, and I know he’s going to kill her again. But I also know that this is the time that’s going to break him—I can see it in his eyes, can hear it in the agony he doesn’t even try to hide.

Can feel it in the misery stretching between us, like a mating bond on the brink of unraveling.

And I know I can’t let him do it. Not this time. Not ever again.

So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing that might be able to reach him. I drop my hold on Remy’s wrist and let him fall back out of the hellscape—I don’t need him now that Hudson knows I’m here—then leap across the room, throwing myself between that other Grace and him.

“Get out of here!” he yells again, and now the bloodlust is in his eyes, the compulsion raging through him like a forest fire. “I can’t hold back any longer.”

“Then don’t hold back,” I tell him, moving so that my body is pressed up against his. “Do whatever you need to, Hudson. Because I’m not walking away—from this or from you.”

“Grace,” he growls, even as the fire burns in his eyes. “Grace, no.”

“It’s okay, Hudson.” I thread my fingers through his hair, press myself even closer against him.

“I can’t—” he chokes out, and I can see his fangs gleaming in the light. “I won’t be able to—” He breaks off, buries his face in the sensitive space where my neck and my shoulder meet. I can feel him fighting himself, can feel him trying to pull back, to move away. But I can also feel the heat in him, the need, and the bloodlust. And I know if I let him go now, he’ll be on the other Grace—the Grace this hellscape is wielding like a weapon against him—and there’s no way he’ll survive.

No way either of them will survive.

And I’m not about to let that happen. This shithole has been using me to hurt him from the first day we arrived…

But that ends here and now.

“Nobody lives their lives without regrets, Hudson,” I say, looking intently into his eyes. “Everyone makes shitty decisions at some point, tough decisions, ones we’ll spend the rest of our lives regretting.” For just a second, I think of my parents. “The key isn’t to try to live life regret-free. It’s to always try to make the best decision you can in that moment, because the regret’s going to come whether you like it or not. But if you tried your best, well, that’s the most anyone can ask of you.”

I pause, take a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I whisper to him again, even as I tilt my head back and to the side. “I want you to.”

He tries one more time. “Grace—”

“I’ve got you, Hudson. I’ve got you.”

He groans low in his throat and then, with a flash of teeth, he’s on me.

He bites me right over the pulse point at the base of my throat, his fangs slicing cleanly through skin and sinking deep into my veins.

I cry out at the sudden movement, the quick flash of pain, but it fades as rapidly as it started. Then he starts to drink, and everything fades but Hudson and me and this one moment…

He shifts against me, looking for more, and I tilt my head back to give him better access. I press myself even more tightly against him so that I can feel every part of him against every part of me. Then revel in the way his hands tighten on my hips, in the way his mouth grows slower as he drinks and drinks and drinks from me.

For what feels like an eternity, I forget where we are, forget why we’re doing this, forget anything and everything but Hudson and how if I don’t break through to him, I might never get him back.

He shifts against me, pulls away, and I moan. With a ragged voice, I whisper, “Hudson, I trust you—”