When he doesn’t see me climbing to my feet, he fades to me, but it takes so much out of him that he ends up on his knees by my head. I brace myself, expecting Mazur and Ephes to finish us off while they have the chance—or at least to finish me off, because I need Hudson to move away from me. I need him to live. But they pause for a second in the middle of the ballroom and show off for the crowd, waving their arms and getting everyone even more excited.

And maybe I should be insulted, since the giants obviously don’t think we’re any threat or they wouldn’t be showing off like that. But realistically, I’m grateful for the reprieve. I may not be afraid of death after everything that’s happened these last six months, but I’m not exactly looking forward to it, either.

“We need to move, Grace.” Hudson’s voice is low and urgent in my ear.

But I shake my head. “You go.”

“I will. We just need to get you up.”

“No,” I whisper.

“What do you mean, no?” He sounds totally confused.

“I can’t do this,” I tell him. “There’s no way I can beat them, and I’m causing you more trouble than I’m worth. Leave me.”

“Leave you?” Now he sounds totally insulted. And utterly pissed.

I sigh, tears trembling behind my lashes. “I’m tired, Hudson, and I hurt so much. Besides, the only chance we’ve got—the only chance any of us has got—is for you to make it out of this and finally stop Cyrus. You’re not going to do that if you’re trying to take care of me. I don’t have my gargoyle. I’m just a weak human, and I’m going to get you killed. So yeah, leave me. Get the key, free the beast, and end Cyrus once and for all. I know you can do it. You just need to let me go.”

Already, the room is spinning so badly that I’m half afraid I’m going to throw up. I drop my head down onto Hudson’s knee and wait for him to kiss me, to tell me that he loves me, to say goodbye.

Finally, I see why Jaxon was always trying to protect me. He must have been petrified every day of all the different ways I could easily die. All this time, I just wanted him to treat me as an equal—never once considering that I wasn’t his equal. Nor am I Hudson’s. What a horrible universal joke that these two amazing, powerful boys both ended up mated to me.

I thought with my gargoyle, I was a badass. I never once considered that that’s all that made me a badass worthy of Jaxon…or Hudson. Beautiful, amazing, selfless Hudson. He would lay down his life to save mine without a moment’s hesitation. It’s time that I do the same for him. So with the last of my strength, I look into his beautiful blue eyes and whisper, “Save yourself.”

Tears are nearly clogging my vision entirely, so much so that I can’t see his expression, but I know this is going to be hard for him. He loves me so much; I can see that now. But I know he also loves Jaxon, and without freeing the blacksmith and then the beast, without the Crown, Jaxon’s soul will be lost forever. Our friends will be facing Cyrus powerless. Hudson loves me, and I know he will save the people I love for me. I just want to feel his lips brush against my hair one more time. Hear him say he loves me one more time…

I close my eyes and wait.

Instead, he jerks away and lets my head bounce against the cold hardwood floor. And then his voice is full of British as he yells at me, “Have you lost your bloody fucking mind?”

141

Not-So-Amazing Grace

Well, that’s not how I expected this to go. I thought, maybe, I’d get an I love you, a kiss goodbye, an I’ll miss you. Not an, “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Grace? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Behind us, the giants are strutting their stuff, loud music sweeping through the ballroom as they do a little previctory victory dance.

Which only makes Hudson yell louder as he continues. “I’ve been with you when we were frozen in stone. When you lost your mate. When you had to win a Ludares championship on your own and when you survived my arsehole father’s fucking eternal bite. And this?”

He sweeps an arm around the ballroom before squatting down next to me again. “This is what you want to let take you down? Two giants barely smart enough not to drool on themselves and a sociopathic ten-year-old with a God complex?”

Well, when he puts it like that…

I sigh. When he puts it like that, it still doesn’t matter. “I’m tired, Hudson.” I sigh again. “I’m tired and I’m going to end up getting you killed,” I tell him, lifting a trembling hand to his cheek. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”

“Jesus, how the fuck hard did you hit your head anyway?” he growls, and through all our bickering, all our fights, I’ve never seen him look so mad. Or so disappointed. “Where’s the girl who never gives an inch? The girl who always digs in when things get bad? The girl who always argues with me?”

“I don’t always—”

“That’s shite and you know it.” He narrows his eyes at me. “From the day we met, you have done nothing but fight with me. Over everything from The Empire Strikes Back being the best movie ever made to whiny existential authors to whether or not I’m allowed to tell you I love you. Hell, we once had a fight over the color black.”

“It’s not the same—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“You’re damn right it’s not. You can fucking lecture me on a toothpaste cap—and how not screwing it back on wastes thirty percent of the tube—and somehow turn that into a dissertation on personal space. But this, this comes along and you’re like, ‘Sorry, I’m out’?”

“Toothpaste doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “It can’t kill you.”

“Maybe not, but the Unkillable Beast sure as hell could. Where’s the girl who faced him down and tamed him in the end? Who took on Jaxon Vega when the entire world was scared of him?” His voice goes soft. “Who gave me the courage to fight my own nightmares and win—even when the threat that she might die saving me was very, very real?”

“That Grace is gone,” I say. “The only Grace here now is a weak human—and I’m going to fucking get you killed!”

He studies me for several long seconds, those blue eyes of his memorizing every inch of my face. And then he leans back and snarls, “Get your arse up.”

“Excuse me?” I have to strain to hear him over the loud music and the celebratory stomping of the giants, but he’s never talked to me like that, no matter how heated our fights got.

He raises his voice. “You heard me. You will get up right this minute and use that big, beautiful brain of yours to find a way for us to win. Do you hear me? I cannot fight two giants and take care of you—just because you’ve decided to have a goddamn pity party today.”

I wince, but he doesn’t understand. I reach for his hand, my eyes pleading with him. “You can take both of them if you don’t have to worry about me.”

He stares at me incredulously. “You think I’m worried about two fucking giants? I couldn’t give two shites about them. Once you get your shite together, we’ll go out there and kick both their arses. Of that I have no doubt.”

His voice breaks. “But what happens to me if you give up, Grace? What happens to me if I lose the mate I’ve waited almost two hundred years to find? You think you can’t make it if you lose me? What the fuck do you think happens to me if I lose you?”

Everything inside me goes still at the agony in his voice. “Hudson—”

“Don’t you Hudson me, Grace. I’ve had to share you from the very first day you came into my life. And I have done it. I have shared you with Jaxon and I have shared you with the whole fucking world that needs you. And I have never complained because I know who you are. I know what your heart looks like. I know the baggage you come with, and I am okay with all of it.

“But I am not okay with you just checking yourself out, with you walking away and leaving me here alone because you’re tired. Because you’re scared. Because you don’t want to hurt anymore.

“That’s not how this works. That’s not how the world works, and that’s definitely not how you and I work. I have waited every miserable day of my whole miserable fucking life for you, and you are not giving up now.”

He drags a shaky breath into his lungs, but it doesn’t lessen the fury burning in his eyes. “Now, you listen to me, Grace Foster. I am in love with you. Not a human. Not a gargoyle. You. I am in love with the girl who has a heart bigger than the entire world and the fucking gumption to demand it kneel at her feet if it harms someone she loves.”

His voice catches at the end, and I reach up to wipe the tears flowing unchecked down my face so I can look into his blue eyes again—and I am devastated by what I see. I did this to him. I broke this beautiful boy’s heart, not by not loving him back as I always feared—but by not loving myself as much as he does.

But he dashes a quick hand across his face, wipes the wetness aside as though his pain is unimportant. He’s in my face now, and I have never seen such rage and such love on one face at the same time in my entire life. “But I can’t do this alone. I need you more than you will ever need me. And I swear to God, if you give up on yourself when you refused to ever give up on me…I will follow you to the afterlife and drag your stone ass back one painful mile at a time. So stop whatever this bullshit is you’ve got going on right now and. Get. The. Fuck. Up.”

142

A Little Fight

Left in Me