Undeniably Chosen

  Shopping for Seth.

  I smiled, covering my lips with my fingers. I wondered what Seth was going to think about that. He was going to have to get used to it in this family. Mom was a mother hen and that wasn’t going to change with him.

  I heard the water turn off and got up quickly. I went to my closet to get some clothes for the day, but then went to bathroom door and knocked instead, “Seth?”

  “I have clothes. I heard,” he called back and chuckled. He opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “You’re not the only one with a gift, you know.”

  I could clearly see his face now. He hadn’t changed that much, but gosh, he so daggum handsome. I let my eyes flick around his chest a little, noticing some changes there, and then back up to his eyes. He was thoroughly amused by the maneuver and my face apparently. “I didn’t think you were listening. How are you?”

  “Right now?” he asked low and came toward me. I backed up when my nose was against his chest, not wanting to back down, but having no other choice. “I’m great.” He maneuvered me to the wall by the bathroom door. “How are you?”

  “Seth,” I whispered and put my hand on his chest to stop him when he kept coming.

  He smiled. “Ava.”

  I smiled back and shook my head. “I’m amazing.” That urge to cry came back so strong, but this time it was nothing but happiness. God, thank you, how did I get everything I ever wanted? I had gone to thinking my fairytale was ruined to thinking that I was the luckiest girl on the planet. Nobody could be this happy. I let my hand slide up around his neck, absolutely loving the way his lips parted and the harsh breath that came.

  “I want to tell your parents today,” he said, his eyes half-closed.

  I knew what he meant. The wedding. “Are you sure? We can wait. We don’t have to. They’re going to go crazy and I want you to be ready—”

  He stopped me, leaning in and kissing the words from my mouth. “I’m ready,” he said as he leaned back. “I’m not going to let the Watsons stop me from moving on when it’s the one thing I want to do. I promise you, if we could get married tomorrow, I’d do it.”

  I pressed into his mind a little, wanting to make sure he was certain and not just trying to make me happy. He had this barrier that surrounded his mind that was nothing but his love and protectiveness for me. I groaned and little, gripping his neck tighter. I hadn’t meant to open the floodgates or start something, but I had almost forgotten that we had ascended. It was a whole new ballgame. I knew what this led to now.

  He leaned into me, his breath hitting my cheek, and I wrapped my arms around his neck because I would buckle otherwise. He wanted to stay. His mind told me so. We never got to do things like this. Our relationship was so rocky at times and so fast and slow, so different. And with whatever Ashlyn had done to my mind making it so I couldn’t read his, we’d never really gotten to do much in each other’s minds but that once.

  I could see the way he saw me in the mornings when he’d take me to school. I’d be sitting way over there in my seat, being sullen, and he’d be thinking I was so beautiful and angry, like one of my robins.

  I felt a tear fall free. His mind was beautiful. I could sit and swim in it all day. It was like my favorite warm blanket, a pool that was just the right temperature.

  But this was really the first time we’d gotten to do this with each other, and I wasn’t going to mutualize with him the day after we almost died, with my parents downstairs, and him in a towel.

  We both pulled back at the same time, agreeing, and I was grateful. I thought he might want to mutualize now and not wait.

  “Of course I do,” he said, pulling my face up. “Everything in me wants to. And we will. Just not today.” He took my mouth gently, but it quickly moved to passionate. I felt bad. He just took a shower and smelled delicious, and here I was smelling like smoke and—

  He growled. Trust me, the way you smell is not what interests me right now.

  Okay.

  He pulled back and licked his lip. “Okay what?” But he knew. He was grinning.

  “Okay. Let’s tell my parents.” He grinned wider. “I just hope you know what you’re getting into. The weddings aren’t normal, but they are crazy.”

  “I just want to marry your cute behind.” He kissed my forehead. “I don’t care about the rest.”

  “It’ll be a good way to bury the hatchet with the family, I guess,” I mused, thinking he was in such a better mood.

  “Thank you for yesterday,” he said, distractedly. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  I tilted my head. “I wouldn’t have made it without you either.”

  “No, I mean after. I’m sorry I was an ass.” He pursed his lips. “But you saved me. I wouldn’t have been okay without you.” He sighed. “I’m still not, I just…need to move on.”

  I hugged him tighter. “I want nothing more than to move on with you. Truly.”

  He mentally tensed. “I guess we should talk about where we’re going to live and all that?”

  I laughed and looked up at him, putting my chin on his chest. “Why? We’re going to live here, of course. I’m not going to leave my parents.” He tried to keep a straight face, I’ll give him that. “I’m completely kidding.”

  He whooshed a breath. “That was dirty.”

  I laughed harder. “Your. Face. Was. Priceless.”

  “Jacobsons and their jokes.” He shook his head. “I guess I’ll have to learn some, huh?” I squinted. “Well, I’m not going to be a Watson anymore, and I for daggum sure don’t want their name any longer. Do you think your family would mind if I took their—”

  “Are you kidding?” I wanted to cry again. Gah! “No they won’t mind!”

  “We better ask,” he said wryly. “We both know this family isn’t exactly known for their enthusiasm for me. In fact, I bet you at least one has something to say about the wedding.” He scoffed and looked down. “I somehow managed to piss off two entire families by just being born. That takes skill.”

  I cupped his face. “If anyone says anything, I will personally disown them. I am so over it. And where else would we live for our first place but your apartment. I like your apartment. It’s close to school. It’s the right size for us. Why wouldn’t we live there?”

  “It’s a big step down, Ave.”

  He was smiling, but he was feeling the pressure. He lost his job because of our bond and had no idea what he was going to do now. He had no idea about the house buying tradition. He was still worrying about how to buy me a ring. I sighed. So the Watsons had apparently adopted some human traditions and kept some Virtuoso ones. I’d talk to him about that later. And I was sure he’d feel guilty about that, too. If anyone in my family made him feel bad about this I would…

  “Hey.” I looked up. “What’s the matter?”

  I had been blocking him so he wouldn’t see, but had apparently gotten a little worked up. “I’m just…everything. Nothing. All of it. I can’t wait to tell my family and then…I don’t even want to see them.”

  He rubbed my jaw with his thumb. “They were protecting you.”

  “And condemning you. It pisses me off.”

  He smirked. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “That will never lose its luster.”

  I scoffed and smiled. “My crazy side?”

  “Your sexy, protective side.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “Go take a shower while I get dressed. Meet you downstairs and we’ll tell them.”

  I slithered into the bathroom on jelly legs as he backed away. I showered quickly because I couldn’t believe what was about to happen. I was still slicking on my lipgloss coming down the stairs when I yelled at Mom through her bathroom door and asked where Seth was. I could hear the shower running.

  “He’s at the side door. One of your friends from school came for you.” My blood ran a thick as mud in my veins. “He answered the door, said he knew her. They’re on the porch.”

  I wal
ked quickly, ready to throw Lilith out on her behind. Why would he even be talking to her knowing what she did? Knowing that she could get to him or me at any moment? Or my family? I picked up the speed. They probably weren’t talking; they were probably fighting. But his heartbeat was fine… I opened the door and…

  Harper.

  Seth was blocking the doorway, his arms crossed. He looked at me and I could tell how torn he was. He was checking to see if I was angry with him, but why would I be? Did he make her come here? Harper looked at me and her entire face changed. She had been pleading, half-smiling, looking sorry for something. Now she just looked peeved.

  “You ruined everything,” she said.

  “You came to see me?” I asked politely. “Mom said?”

  “Oh, bite me. I came for Seth. I knew he was here. I knew he was going to have to coddle you all night after my father almost killed you. You’re alive so, I’m assuming he failed.” Seth and I looked at her. She didn’t know about her father yet. They hadn’t called her?

  “How did you know that he failed?”

  “I didn’t.” She looked at Seth. “I hoped. I haven’t been home. I didn’t want to hear about it. Pfft.” She looked away, shaking her head. “I’m so sick of Dad’s agendas and plotting. And he’s started to,” she looked at me quickly, “bring in new people. He wants me to bond with one of them.”

  Bring in? For their experiments.

  Yes, Seth confirmed.

  “I don’t want to bond to any of them. Dad doesn’t care who I bond with as long as it’s somebody so I get an ability for his army,” she sneered.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, not caring about the pity party. I felt bad about her father, but she didn’t seem to have much like for the guy. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be upset about his death.

  “I came for Seth.” Her eyes never left him.

  Well, this was just getting awkward. “You need to leave,” he told her.

  “You were promised to me,” she said, like a toddler who didn’t get her favorite toy on Christmas.

  “That’s not how it works, Harper.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “I get it,” I said softer. “Seth told me about what they did to you all as kids.” She scoffed and looked at him as if he had betrayed her. “You’re grateful for what he did, and he wasn’t related to you so you thought you could actually do the bond with him and everything would be okay. I get it. But he doesn’t belong to you.”

  “No, you don’t get it,” she said and sighed. “We had a thing, okay. It may not be a significant thing, but it was enough of a promise in my book.”

  Even though I knew it wasn’t true, just hearing her say the words made my blood ice over.

  “Being your friend is not a thing,” he told her, his color rising.

  “In a world where you have no true friends, yes it is!” she yelled back.

  “When he went to do our imprint, I said no. I said it was disgusting.” She glared. “I said we were family and it was never going to happen. How much clearer can it get than that?”

  She looked away. “I thought you were just protecting my virtue or something.”

  Enough. I refused to feel sorry for this girl. “All right, Harper, it’s time to go.”

  “I’m not leaving. Not until Seth agrees to keep seeing me. You’re not just throwing me away. Not after all we’ve been through. And maybe we can…talk. Say that you’ll at least think about pushing the imprint with me one day. It’s only fair. We would have been great together if she hadn’t come along.”

  I tried not to yell. “If you had forced the imprint, we still would have imprinted and it would have cancelled yours out. Don’t you get it? We’re soulmates. We were supposed to be together!”

  She shook her head. “No. We could experiment and find out if you like. See if your bond is as strong as you think it is.”

  “Reverse psychology? Really? Get off my porch, Harper.”

  She looked at Seth, back at me, and then back at him. “But when will I see you again?”

  He paused for only a moment. I knew it was my job to be the bad guy in this situation. It was my job to protect my significant. And boy, did I want to. My hands were shaking with the restraint of wanting to grip her jaw and throw her backwards from the porch in a good ol’ Tennessee see ya later.

  “I’m going to answer that one for him and say, nada.” Her mouth opened. “Nope. Get going.” She scoffed. “Bye.” Her mouth opened again. “You’re lucky that I’m letting you just walk away.”

  “Seth!” she yelled over me. “Do something!”

  “What did you think was going to happen?” he asked, exasperated, but quiet. “A fairytale ending? I’ve already got one of those.”

  “You need to go home anyway,” I told her, my voice softer. “Things didn’t go that well last night.”

  She squinted. “What do you mean?”

  “Just go home.”

  “Look, I don’t care what happened to them. Seth could be my ticket out of all that. He was my ticket.”

  I stared in complete and utter, dubious silence and awe. “Seth isn’t the only good guy in the world, Harper. Not that you deserve one; you have to earn a good guy. If you want to leave your family, then leave. That doesn’t have anything to do with Seth.”

  “They’ll just call me back with the blood bond.”

  “There are ways around that.” Her eyes bugged. I smirked. “Well, a Jacobson knows something about blood and alchemy that a Watson doesn’t. Who would have thought?”

  “Whatever. I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay here and fight for what I want.” Her eyes looked at Seth.

  “Harper—”

  “The family has been so calm the past few years until you showed up, Ava,” she sneered. “That’s why all this got started back up again. They had almost let it go with your family, given up, just let it fall to the back of their minds and moved on. But then you came and woke up the beast. And ruined my life.”

  She came the couple steps that were between us and I felt Seth’s hand gripping my arm to swing me behind him. But this was my fight. I had to fight for my significant, just like if another guy came to the house for me Seth would take care of it. Oh, and I imagined he would.

  And I was about to take care of this.

  I planted my feet and held my hand out to her, turning my face to the side because I still wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen. When I heard her screech, I looked to see her moving aside as ice shards flung past her and slammed into the driveway. I felt the coolness under my fingertips. I looked under my feet to see the ice on the doormat. She gazed back at me like I was Beelzebub himself standing there in that doorway.

  “You asked for it,” I told her. “Get. Off. My. Porch. And stay away from Seth.”

  “You’re a freak,” she hissed.

  “I’m ascended,” I corrected and held out my hand again. She scooted backward off that porch so fast, almost tripping in the process, and didn’t look back. I thought about that. If that had been me, she would have had to hurt me or worse to get me to leave Seth. She came here like it was going to be some big fight and at the first sign that she might actually have one, she turned tail and ran.

  I felt Seth pulling me to look at him instead of watching her go. That in itself made my pulse race.

  “That…” he sighed and licked his lip, “was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’re not upset with me?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted just a smidge before he leaned in ever so slowly and captured my lips, his warm palm finding my side inside my open sweater, tugging me to him with a jolt. I gasped against his lips. He enjoyed that immensely, smiling into our kiss. His free hand found my other side and he gripped me to him tightly, his fingers spreading to cover more of me. The tingles that spread from his lips to mine were a full-on assault. I felt lightheaded, I felt on fire, I felt like he was practically swimming through my veins, I felt…so com
plete.

  So he liked seeing my protective side, huh?

  Ah, you have no idea, little bird…

  So this was what it was like to be a real significant couple. I grinned and went up on my tiptoes, pressing closer, loving the way he groaned a little and picked my feet from the floor.

  I was thinking about how good his hands felt on me, how his magic fingers could lull me into any reality he wanted me to believe in. Even though we had almost died when we ascended at the library, when he gripped my legs, pressing me to his chest, kissing me and slamming me to the wall…

  I barely got my thought out when I felt his hand on the back of my thigh and in my hair. I opened my eyes a little, feeling how heavy they were, and pulled away just enough to see him. My lips were parted and my breaths were ragged as I saw his arms still tightly around me, not moving, but felt his mind’s hands moving on me where he wanted them to go.

  Oh…I wasn’t going to survive being his significant.

  He chuckled huskily and smugly, too. He pressed me to the door and kissed me hard once more. “Let’s get you inside. It’s too cold out here.” His eyes darkened as his lips morphed into a smirk. “And you had to wear those tights today, didn’t you?”

  “They’re a different color,” I defended with a laugh.

  “Oh, I know.” I didn’t think he even noticed with our guest that I was wearing tights again. I felt his actual hand just above my knee. He looked down and over at my leg. “I kinda like the grey ones myself.” I felt my eyes bug. “What? You didn’t think I had you pegged the second you came out that door with these on?” He tsked and then sighed long and hard looking over at my leg. “Man, these tights are going to be a problem for me.”

  I laughed and hit his chest with the side of my fist. “You are so crazy.”

  “And, no, I’m not mad,” he said, his eyes staring into mine so deeply I feared I’d get lost in them forever. I knew exactly what Ashlyn had been talking about. He finished softly, “Why would I be? If the situation was reversed, you don’t think I’d protect what’s mine?”

  My heart skipped and he smiled a little at feeling it, obviously enjoying that.

  “I just felt like you had put her in her place and it was my turn. It’s my right to if she won’t stop,” I said and bit my lip, feeling a little…I don’t know. I didn’t have to defend myself, I knew that.