“You showed me this before?” I ask him as I surreptitiously wipe the tears off my cheeks.

He laughs, but there’s no humor in the sound. “I showed you everything before.”

The emptiness in those words echoes inside me, and I close my eyes, unsure of what to say to him. Unsure, even, if I can believe him, though I find myself wanting to. Badly.

“Hudson—”

“You’re exhausted, Grace,” he tells me as he stands up, and I would swear that I felt his hand brush across my hair. “Sleep now.”

There’s so much I want to say to him, words on the tip of my tongue that I suddenly don’t know how to voice. So I do what he says. I close my eyes and let myself drift away.

But right before sleep claims me, I find a way to say at least one of the things that I want to. “You know I don’t want you to die, right?”

Hudson freezes, then sighs wearily. “I know, Grace.”

“But I can’t let Jaxon die, either,” I tell him. “I can’t.”

“I know that, too.”

“Please don’t make me choose.” My eyes are closing, and I’m starting to drift off.

But I still hear him when he says, “I’ll never make you choose, Grace. How could I when I know that you’d never choose me?”

69

To Bite or

Not to Bite

“Oh my God, Grace! Get up!” Macy’s squeals echo through our dorm room before light has even begun to filter through our window.

“Not yet,” I groan, rolling over and burying my head under my pillow for the second time in eight hours. “Still dark.”

I burrow deeper into my blankets, start to fall back into a dream about a little blue-eyed boy and his horse, when Macy shakes me. “I’m serious! You need to get up.”

“Make her go away,” Hudson groans from what sounds like the floor next to my bed.

Macy’s phone rings, and she gives up trying to get me awake while she takes the call.

I peek over the edge of my bed and, sure enough, he’s sprawled on the floor. He, too, buries his head under a pillow—one of my hot-pink pillows, to be exact.

“Don’t judge me,” he complains. “It’s slim pickings in this room.”

I smile. “Yeah, but I’ve got to say, hot pink might just be your color.”

“You know I bite, right?” he growls as he pulls the pillow tight around his head.

“Yes, because I’m so scared you’re going to bite me.” I roll my eyes. “While you’re—you know—in my head.”

He doesn’t answer, and I’m just about to congratulate myself for winning this round when I feel his fangs scraping gently down my neck. They don’t stop until they get to my pulse point, and then they hover there for one second, two.

Unexpected heat races through me at the familiarity of his touch, followed closely by an icy blast of panic—because he’s not Jaxon. “Hey! What are you doing?” I start to push him away, but he’s already gone.

“Showing you that even if I’m in your head, I can still bite you anytime you want me to.”

“But I don’t want you to!” I all but screech, even as my body still resonates from his touch. “That’s my whole point.”

“I know,” he answers calmly. “That’s why I didn’t do it.”

My hand goes to my neck, and I realize he’s right. There’s not even a tiny scratch. Thank God. “Don’t ever do that again,” I tell him, just to make sure he gets the message. “I don’t want anyone but Jaxon to bite me. Ever.”

His smile turns mocking and maybe even a little grim, but he doesn’t argue with me. He just nods and says, “Message received. I promise I won’t do that again.”

“Good.” Still, I run my fingers over my neck one more time, strangely disturbed by the warmth I feel under my skin despite the fact that Hudson never actually did anything to me. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” He grins slyly. “I mean, at least not until you ask me to.”

“Ugh.” I hit him with my pillow. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”

“Because I told you I wouldn’t touch you without your permission?” His look of wide-eyed innocence isn’t nearly as good as he thinks it is. “I was only trying to be a gentleman.”

“You know what? Bite me.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize what I’ve said. Even before Hudson leans forward with a wicked glint in his blue eyes. I throw a hand up and block his mouth. “No! I did not mean that in the good way.”

“That’s okay, Grace.” He gives me a look that I’m pretty sure would melt my panties off my body if I wasn’t mated to his brother. “I don’t mind being bad.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that about you.”

I throw back the covers—determined to end this conversation even if it means running away to the shower—and realize that Macy is off her call and speaking to me.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, trying to figure out why her eyes are so big and her face is so pale. “I was still asleep, so I didn’t hear what you said. What’s going on?”

“The Circle!” she tells me. “They’re here.”

“The Circle?” At first, her words don’t make any sense to my sleep-addled brain, but when Hudson curses low and long in a corner of my mind, it registers who she’s talking about. “Jaxon and Hudson’s parents are here?” I whisper, horrified at the thought.

“Yes! The king and queen, plus the other three mated pairs showed up at five this morning. No advance warning, no call ahead. Just eight of them at the front gate, demanding entrance. My dad is beyond pissed.”

“Why are they here?” I ask, shoving my super-obnoxious curls out of my way.

“Officially?” Macy answers. “For their twenty-five-year inspection. Which they scheduled at this time to support the Ludares tournament in order to promote interspecies cooperation and friendship.”

“And unofficially?” I ask, a little afraid to hear the answer.

“They want a look at you,” Hudson and Macy both reply at the exact same time.

“Me?” Okay, that was unexpected. “Why me?”

I mean, I get why maybe Jaxon’s parents would want to meet me—seeing as how I’m mated to their only living (that they know about, at least) son. But why get the rest of the Circle involved in what should be a personal family matter?

When I say as much to Macy and Hudson, they laugh—at me this time, definitely not with me.

“This isn’t about you being mated to Jaxon,” Hudson tells me. “I don’t think they care, one way or the other, about that—unless they think it threatens their power. What they do care about—what I guarantee you all members of the Circle care about, even the non-power-hungry ones—is that you’re the first gargoyle to be born in more than a thousand years.”

“Why does that matter? What is one lone gargoyle going to do to them? And a not very powerful gargoyle at that?” I say to the both of them.

“First of all,” Macy says emphatically, “you’re a new gargoyle, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a powerful one. It means you’ve got to take some time to figure out what’s up. You don’t even know all the things a gargoyle can do yet, let alone what you specifically can do.

“So yeah, of course they’re scared. If they weren’t, the king wouldn’t have murdered all the gargoyles on his last horrific rampage and the Circle sure as hell wouldn’t have let him get away with it. They may be cowards, for the most part, but normally they wouldn’t be okay with full-on genocide unless it actually served them.”

“Damn, Macy, tell us how you really feel!” Hudson exclaims. Then adds to me, “What she said.”

I laugh a little bit at that, which leads to a questioning look from Macy. “Hudson approves of your summation,” I tell her.

“That’s because my summation is right-on. And his father is an asshole.” She gives me a look that speaks volumes. “Like father, like son, apparently.”

Hudson rolls his eyes but surprisingly has nothing to say in response. Which might actually be a first, now that I think about it. He does, however, sit up and lean against the side of my bed, then runs a hand through his short, tousled hair. I know he’s not really real—so why is he sleeping in just a pair of flannel pajama pants and no shirt? Did he take off his shirt, or am I just—inexplicably—choosing to imagine him without one?

And of course, he hears that stray thought and winks at me over one bare shoulder. “I’ll let you decide.”

I ignore the heat stinging my cheeks and focus on Macy.

“So why exactly does the fact that the Circle decided to pay us a not-so-auspicious visit mean that I have to get up at”—I glance at my phone—“dear God, five fifteen in the morning?”

“Because, apparently, they’ve called a before-school assembly. And that means we all have to be in the auditorium at six thirty in full dress uniform.”

“Full dress uniform? You mean the skirt, tie, and blazer?” I think I’ve worn the whole uniform only once the entire time I’ve been here.

“Not the blazer,” Macy says with an exaggerated sigh. “The robes.”

“Robes?” I look toward my empty closet. “There’s no robe in there.”

“No, but I have an extra—from when I was shorter, thankfully. Otherwise, you’d fall on your face.”

“So skirt, tie, robe?” I ask, making sure I’ve got it.

“Yeah.”

“Like graduation robe?” I ask, just to be clear. Because right now I’m kind of picturing a room full of students in fuzzy black bathrobes. Not that that would be a bad thing…

“More like ceremonial robes.” Macy sighs.