I think because he isn’t saying anything yet, that because I can’t hear his soothing voice, it only makes me angrier.

I cry harder and pound my arms against his chest, letting it all out.

“You should’ve told me!” I wail, sobs quivering in my throat. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

He lets me hit him, over and over until I can’t anymore and I fall against him, giving him the OK he had been waiting for all along.

Finally, he speaks:

“Because I wanted to spend the last of your days seeing your smiling face, not watching you let the pain of knowing what you’d become change you before the blood could change you.” He grips my arms and pulls me away from him, staring deeply into my eyes with ferocity. “Because I was being selfish!”

My chest shudders, but I try to choke it down. My emotions are a whirlwind of chaos. I hear the rain beating against the ground and faint rumbles of thunder far off in the distance. My body starts to shiver from the chill in the air, but I force that down too. “This is how you knew…,” I say softly, more to myself. “…You knew all along you couldn’t hurt me because I was bonded to you.” My head jerks up to look at him, my gaze burning into his angrily. “You knew, Isaac….”

Rain glides over his face as he stares into my eyes. He doesn’t have to say a word because his face answers for him.

I scream at him over the rain, “You’re just like him! You’re just like your father!” Tears barrel from my eyes. I know my words hurt him, but I’m hurting so much that the only way to relieve my pain is to cut him deeper.

“Don’t say that to me,” Isaac growls. “Please….”

“Isaac…we could’ve gone through this together.” I push his hands away again. “I’ve been going through it alone. ALONE, Isaac!”

“I CAN’T TAKE IT BACK!” Isaac roars.

“Would you if you could?” I say through my teeth, and he stops, stunned for a moment.

“No…,” he says quietly, his face still permeated with anger and grief. “If it meant that you would die…I wouldn’t take it back….”

The tears are burning my throat, but the shuddering of my chest subsides.

I see his jawline harden as if he’s gritting his teeth. His gaze bores into me, unrelenting, and finally he crushes his mouth against mine and lifts me up into his arms, carrying me across the yard with my legs wrapped around his waist, and then up the steps without breaking the kiss once. I hear the front door swing open, smashing into the inside wall and he kisses me all the way up the stairs, only breaking it long enough to let me breathe and to get us up the stairs safely.

We crash into his bedroom and I feel him kick the door closed with his foot. My back presses into the wall as he pins me against it with one arm holding me from the bottom. His kiss becomes harder, more aggressive, but I want it that way and he knows it. Isaac lifts my arms above me, peeling off my wet shirt and tossing it across the room. He buries his face in my neck, moaning against my skin; I feel the hairs rise on my arms when his tongue traces along my collarbone and the bare skin above my br**sts. My fingers claw across his ribs and his back as I fight to tear his shirt off. I get it above his six-pack and then he reaches up and rips it off the rest of the way for me.

With his tongue tangled in mine, he pulls my body away from the wall. I feel both hands slip underneath me, carrying me across the room where he throws me onto the bed. The warm weight of his body presses against mine; rainwater runs down his chest and shoulders. It drips from the tips of his hair onto me as he lies on top of me.

I don’t even think about it when I reach down and fumble the button on his jeans. He does the same, peeling mine off first before letting me get his zipper down. Without ever moving his lips from mine, he manages to get his pants off.

I’m trembling, every inch of my body shaking inside when I feel him through his boxers as he presses against me.

He looks down at me and whispers, “I have to know…are you okay?”

I touch his lips with my fingertips, searching his face with my eyes. He kisses my fingers, gently licking the tips of them. “I drank you before I got here,” I say staring up at him. I pull him back toward me, taking him into another kiss, squeezing his body between my shaking thighs.

I feel his hand move between us, his fingers slipping behind the waist of my panties as he slips one side down and then the other seconds afterwards. I don’t even notice when he gets his boxers off. I gasp when his fingers slide in-between my legs and he touches me. My back arches, my chest lifting gently toward his and the longer his fingers move the more I feel my body urging to pull away, but he holds me in place.

He kisses me once more as he moves his hand away, letting his wet lips linger on mine for a long moment before looking down into my eyes and hesitates.

When I don’t back off, I feel him inside of me.

I inhale a hard and tremulous breath and my eyelids fall heavily. My thighs are shaking, every inch of my body quivering. I can’t open my eyes. I want to, but they’re too heavy with heat. He crushes his mouth over mine and I feel his moans in my throat. I push my body farther into his, wrapping my arms around his back, feeling his sweat under my fingernails as I drag them firmly down his moist skin.

He moans hungrily against my mouth until he pulls away and buries his head in my shoulder, pushing himself deeper between my legs. Tiny gasps escape my lips, over and over. My hands grip the back of his head, my fingers dig deeply into his dark, wet hair.

I hear a distinctive growl reverberate through his chest, through his entire body and I know, just like three months ago, what it means, what he’s becoming. Breathing fast and heavy, I reach up to feel his hand and let the sharpness of one claw barely graze my skin, but not enough to cut it.

I feel his body ease, struggling with himself, fighting against the transition into his mediate form.

I reach up with both of my hands and lift his head so that he’ll look at me. He resists at first keeping his head down, the rainwater and sweat soaking his hair and my fingers. “Isaac, look at me,” I whisper soft and forcibly. “I want to see your eyes.”

He shakes his head no in my hands and I can hear the denial in a low series of growls. I crush his body between my thighs when I feel him stop and he doesn’t try to pull away.

Pulling his head two more inches down to me, I plant my lips against his forehead and through his disheveled wet hair, my palms still trying to force him to face me. “Please….”

Slowly, Isaac raises his black eyes, but not without reluctance. His lips are slightly parted, but I can see his sharp teeth barely piercing the top layer of flesh on his bottom lip. Little blue-black veins have spread across and down his cheekbones from both corners of his eyes.

He is frighteningly beautiful.

His lips are inches from mine. I touch them with my fingertips and he gazes down at me with a look of conjecture. The rain pounds harder against the roof. I hear it draining and trickling through the gutters. I hear Isaac’s softened growls as he tames the beast inside. The heat coming off his body is almost unbearable now, but I press my body into his until I can’t anymore. “You have to infect me,” I say; each word so balanced and sincere.

Isaac’s weight starts to lift from mine, but I pull him closer, digging my fingernails into his back, tightening my legs around him to hold him in place.

He gives in to me, letting me hold him down, only because of the soft look of resolution in my eyes.

“No….” He shakes his head twice. “No.”

“You have to, Isaac.” I reach up and brush the very edge of my fingertip across the skin under his eye, feeling the tiny raised veins. “I won’t be like Aramei…you knew I wouldn’t. Isaac…you have to do this for me.”

Finally, he lifts up, but I latch onto him, forcing my hands around the back of his neck, my legs stay wrapped tightly around his waist. He sits up on his knees in the center of the bed with me, refusing to look at me, shaking his head no over and over again.

I won’t let go.

I follow his eyes no matter where they wander, forcing him to stay with me, to look at me and never look away. “My sister lived through it,” I say. “You heard what your father said, Isaac. He said that because my sister survived, the chances are I probably will too.”

“Chances aren’t certain, Adria!” The infernal growl in his angry words shocks me, but I don’t give in.

I grab his face in my hands again, forcing his gaze. “It’s enough for me,” I say, “Isaac look at me!” My fingers are pressing harshly against his cheeks and temples.

He stares painfully at me, giving me what I want, but not without letting me see the absolute pain and conflict in his face, of what I’m asking him to do.

“No!” he says and his whole body shudders. “You promised you’d never ask this of me!”

I grab his face in my hands even tighter and stare intensely into his churning black eyes. “And you promised you’d never leave me to Aramei’s fate….”

My words rip through him, tightening the pain in his face into something much more heartbreaking, but still he refuses. He shakes his head over and over, turning his eyes downward and trying to push me away, still conflicted by also wanting me here.

My body tightens with anger. “YOU TOOK MY CHOICE AWAY! THIS IS THE ONLY CHOICE I HAVE LEFT!” I never wanted to blame him and I know that it’s not his fault, that he did nothing wrong, but my desperation is making me say things that I would never otherwise say.

Becoming what he is, is my only chance at any kind of life.

“This is my choice, Isaac…while I’m still capable of making my own choices…while I’m still the one in control.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I would rather die than live a life incapable of thought and of happiness. To live a life incapable of love…Isaac, I choose to risk it because I want to love you for as long as I can….”

His frightening black eyes glare back at me with so much grief, but I see something else in his eyes, too. I see the undeniable guilt of knowing that what I say is true.

Moisture forms around his solid black eyes and tears stream down his wounded face. I feel his clawed hands on my back, pulling me deeper into his chest. I lay my head against him, listening to his heart hammer through his body so fast and so hard that it scares me. Tears gush from my eyes and my whole body shakes from determination and fear. Fear of living the rest of my life devoid of thought and emotion and love. Fear of him not giving me what I want, yet fear of him giving in and making me what he is. Fear of not living through it and cutting my time with him even shorter than the blood might have given me.

I hate fear. It’s just another form of death.

Isaac’s chest shudders with tears and anger and self-torture. His arms tighten around me so hard that I struggle to find my breath. His skin is so hot now that it burns me.

“Tell me that you’ll never hate me for this, Adria!” he says; the words trembling on his lips, his head pressed into my hair. “PROMISE ME!” His arms nearly crush me.