Crimson Sunrise

  After releasing my arm, Sarah walked over to Derek, chastised him under her breath, and punched him playfully in the arm. He pretended to be hurt, cradling the injured appendage as he let out a yelp. I watched them walk to the house hand in hand.

  “Come here.” Caleb’s order was impossible to ignore, and I returned my attention to him. His face was no longer agitated or angry, instead he appeared incredibly drained. He closed the distance when I didn’t. He moved away from the table, sinewy muscles in his arms gathering and contorting.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, stopping just in front of me. He lifted his hands and grasped my arms. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I’m sorry too.” Slumping forward was all it took. His arms came around my midsection and pulled me close. “I’ve been short tempered the last couple of days. It’s all the stress.”

  His long fingers combed through my hair and I sighed, moved closer, and closed my eyes. It was so much better to make up with Caleb than it was to fight with him. My body fit perfectly against his, my cold skin soaking in his radiating warmth.

  Something flickered in my peripheral vision and I lifted my head, gazing up. When I saw the source, my heart skipped a beat, and I met Caleb’s ecstatic grin with one of my own. Once upon a time I had dreamed of experiencing a snowy season of winter with Caleb. We were both unsure if it would ever happen, but we shared our hope for it, our intense longing to remain with each other from one year to the next.

  I wasn’t sure if it was a message of some kind, but the realization that a shared wish was taking place between Caleb and I served as a reminder that no matter what, we were together, just as we had longed to be during the hot and humid summer months before. It also appeared that Sarah had ushered us back to the house just in time.

  Huge ivory white snowflakes were falling from the sky.

  Chapter 15—This One Thing

  Caleb hadn’t lied when he told me I would love Tennessee in the winter. A thin white blanket of snow covered the barren grass. Just enough to create the illusion the house sat on a cloud cushion. With the gray hued sky, it was a breathtaking mixture. Several of the branches were coated in the shimmering white flakes as well, the small slivers shining like diamonds when the sun managed to filter through the overcast clouds.

  Trent had become anxious for the company of his own kind and kept to himself in his room, away from the werewolves who were less than welcoming. I thought Caleb would object to my trip upstairs to check in with Trent, but he just nodded and walked into the basement to join his parents. I was sure he needed to be surrounded by their comforting presence as much as they required his. They had all but stopped speaking about Sammie. Her name was always at the forefront of their minds but remained an elephant inside the room.

  I made my way up the staircase, rounded the corner, and walked to the guest bedroom. I knocked on the closed door, waited for his invitation to enter, and slowly pushed it open. Trent was sitting in the chair across the room, snazzy in his black slacks and gray turtleneck, fiddling with his palm pilot. I wasn’t surprised. It seemed to be his entertainment of choice and means of conducting business. I had once joked he carried it around like a security blanket.

  “Emma,” he acknowledged me quietly, glancing up with his aqua colored eyes, before studying the screen again.

  “Hey,” I replied softly and closed the door behind me. I walked across the room, perched on the edge of the bed, and relaxed on the soft mattress that easily absorbed my weight.

  “Your mongrel doesn’t mind you being here?” he asked, flicking his fingers deftly across the tiny pad.

  “Caleb has had a bad week. You need to cut him some slack.” I tried to keep my tone neutral. I didn’t want to argue with Trent, whether he baited me or not. None of this had been easy for him, and I was grateful he had chosen to come when I had asked.

  “This family seems to have a problem keeping track of those closest to them.” Trent continued goading me, forging ahead into his area of expertise—apathy. It was the reason Sarah had disliked him from the start. But I knew it was all for show. He kept himself apart from people for a reason, his emotions carefully hidden and controlled.

  “Do you think saying things like that is going to make me want to come up here to see you?” I asked jokingly, trying to unlock the playful banter we once shared, and attempted to bring him out of his harsh outer shell.

  He shrugged. “No one asked you to come upstairs.”

  “Why are you being like this?” Feeling the cruel sting of hurt brought on by his rejection of my friendship, I allowed him to see my frustration. The moment Caleb had arrived home, Trent’s entire demeanor changed. He had once again become the person Sarah swore would never change, self righteous and arrogant.

  His lips curved into a sinful smirk, beautiful even in bitterness. “You know exactly why I’m being like this. Go downstairs to your wolf boy. Where you belong.”

  “I’m not fighting with you,” I informed him, somehow finding and maintaining my composure. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant to. You always knew how I felt about Caleb, even from the beginning.”

  He didn’t say anything, clicking away at his little mechanical device, acting as if I wasn’t even in the room.

  “Talk to me.” The seconds passed, each one chipping away pieces of my heart. I added quietly, “Please.”

  He stilled but didn’t look away from his hands.

  “Don’t act as if we weren’t ever friends.” I tried again. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  He didn’t react at all this time, focusing on the screen and pressing buttons as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “I suppose if you could do things differently you’d just allow Decimus to carry me off to whatever hellhole he had in store? Maybe that would have been the better thing for all of us.” I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice, even though I knew Trent had every right to feel as he did.

  He paused for the briefest of moments. His eyes flickered over the electronic object in his hands, as if he was struggling to focus.

  “I miss you.” The three small, whispered words were almost impossible to understand against the faint sound of key clicks. “I miss your friendship.”

  “I can’t give you friendship,” he said abruptly without looking in my direction. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Then I guess I made a mistake calling you,” I snapped, feeling the increasingly present haze of anger engulf me. The sharp ache in my heart joined with the roaring in my ears, hurt bringing emotions on hard and fast.

  Trent moved across the room faster than I could comprehend, his palm pilot left behind in the chair as if he had never been seated. He grasped my arms forcefully in his hands and kneeled between my legs.

  “Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me?” he asked, sounding as irate and hurt as I did. “Do you have any notion of how hard it was to let you go the first time? Knowing I handed you over. That I gave you to him when he let you go.”

  He emphasized the last words for good measure, letting them sink in, before continuing.

  “You can’t understand the complexities of my feelings. You can’t even fathom what this is like for me, being with you but unable to do anything but look from afar, watching the two of you together...” He paused, shaking his head. “Before you lecture me on the eccentricities of friendship, remember what we shared before I did right by you.”

  I exhaled softly into his face when he bridged the gap between us. His bright teal eyes were full of so much pain and loss. He lowered his mouth into the crook of my neck, ran his nose along the sensitive skin at my throat, and pulled away to gaze into my eyes again.

  “You have no idea what this is like for me.” He closed his eyes, brushing his cheek against mine. “You have no inkling of how being around you affects me.”

  “I’m sorry.” The whispered words were the barest of sounds, spoken against his beautiful pale skin that was accentuated by the light emitting from the
lamp on the nightstand.

  He didn’t kiss me so much as he feathered his lips across mine—left to right, right to left—in a gentle caress. He opened his eyes and looked at me. The black rim around the edge of the iris gave the blue-green pools added dimension, making them appear endless. His cool fingers followed the lines of my jaw as he studied me.

  “Things could have been so different,” he said, words laced with regret. “Things should have been different.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” I whispered. After I managed to remove my hand from his grasp, I placed my palm against his face. “I’m sorry for asking you to come here. I’m sorry you’re hurting and I’m the cause. After everything happened, I didn’t know who to call or what to do. I wouldn’t have asked you to come if I knew it would bring you pain. I would never intentionally hurt you.”

  He closed his eyes again and rested his forehead against mine. I didn’t move, allowing him a moment without interruption, knowing he deserved something far more that wasn’t within my power to give.

  “If Caleb had never come back, would you have come to me, Emma? Would you have cared for me as you do for him?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered as honestly as I was able. The truth was I had never known, not for certain. The way I felt for Trent was a mystery, even now.

  “But still you reached for me. When you needed someone, it was I that you sought.” His words filled my head, soft and forlorn.

  I couldn’t deny it, so I didn’t try. “Yes.”

  His hands fell away as he rose from his knees to stand above me. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll be leaving when Luca arrives. Your parents can handle things, you don’t need me.”

  “I understand.” My voice cracked, even as I willed it not to.

  Averting my gaze, I stared at the fluffy cream-colored carpet. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I held back. I respected him too much, and cared for him too deeply, to bring him additional suffering. Telling him I did need him would only facilitate another rush of emotions that would bring him undue hurt. He didn’t deserve that. Someone as wonderful as Trent deserved everything someone had to offer.

  I slowly lifted my gaze from the floor and viewed him through my lashes. The misery etched in his face made my stomach contort in a heavy spasm. I wanted to be livid with him for invading my private thoughts, just as I had always been in the past, but I couldn’t. His faced openly displayed the anguish he was experiencing because of it. His brows were taut, as were his lips and jaw. Deep pools of blue gazed me directly in the eye, as if he was daring me to look away first.

  In my inattentiveness, I had revealed more than he ever needed to know. I didn’t have to tell him that I needed him or why I wanted him to stay—he picked it up easily from my mind.

  “I think you should go,” he said quietly.

  I nodded, unable to think of anything to say. I rose from the bed, crossed to the door, and stopped when my hand touched the handle.

  “I won’t ever see you again, will I?”

  He didn’t have to answer, I already knew. I had seen the finality of his decision in his radiant eyes before I found the willpower to turn away.

  “No.”

  I was about to pivot around and tell him he couldn’t leave things like this when softly whispered words in my mind brought me short.

  “In all our time together, I have never asked you for anything, but I am now. Walk out the door and don’t stop, don’t turn around, and don’t look back. If you do, I won’t be able to let you go again. If you care for me at all, give me this one thing.”

  The door blurred in front of me, seen through a wall of tears that threatened to spill over a frail barrier of weakening lashes. I wrapped my fingers around the handle, trying to find the strength to leave.

  “I love you. Nothing will ever change that. Goodbye, Emma.”

  Tears ran freely down my face, and I didn’t bother swiping them away. He was well aware of how I felt. Visual cues were nothing in comparison to mental ones. I opened the door and stepped past the threshold, aware on some level that the symbolism of the groom carrying the bride into their future was heartbreakingly reversed. My unsteady legs managed to carry me across the hallway and into Caleb’s room. I stepped inside, closed the door quietly behind me, and stood for several seconds as the heaviness in my chest became unbearable.

  Stumbling numbly to the bed, I crawled over the mattress and curled into a quivering ball. Quiet sobs of sadness took over my body and I endured the unrelenting agony of loss.

  The only thing Trent asked of me was the only thing I was able to give to him.

  So I did.

  Chapter 16—In More Ways Than One

  Just as he said he would, Trent slipped away when my parents pulled into the front drive that night. He didn’t announce his departure, and he didn’t stay to greet my mother or father. He exited the house without any of us being aware of it, leaving only his suitcase with a note instructing my parents to bring it back with them.

  One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

  I managed to stifle my tears, but not my hurt, after I retreated to Caleb’s room. Somehow—despite his inability to read and share thoughts like Trent—Caleb felt my suffering. He came into the bedroom within minutes of Trent’s request. He didn’t ask questions and he didn’t pry. Instead he climbed into the bed, pulled me against him, and wrapped his body around mine as if he were a shield that could protect me from all the hurts and heartaches of the world.

  The way I felt about Trent didn’t make sense, but matters of the heart seldom do. No one really understands why they feel a certain way. They simply accept emotions for what they are.

  I knew I would mourn the loss of Trent in more ways than one. When Caleb had selflessly let me go, Trent had been the one who’d picked up the pieces. If it wasn’t for his friendship during that dark time, I would have been lost. He was my solace, the one person I could always turn to.

  When I greeted my parents outside on the front porch, I realized they had been told of Trent’s decision to leave. They didn’t mention his name as they pulled me into their arms and held me close. I leaned into their comforting embrace, happy and relieved to see them so soon after I’d left home behind.

  Neither had changed, but that was to be expected when you live forever. While I had become accustomed to how close in age we looked, it took Chris and Beverly a little getting used to. Introducing Mr. Blackney to my father—who appeared at least two decades younger—was beyond strange. As was standing side by side with my mother, since we could have easily passed for sisters.

  After awkward introductions were exchanged, we came inside. Caleb dutifully shrugged off my father’s insistence on carrying in their luggage and remained outside to bring it in himself. We all settled in the formal living room, Mom and Dad taking the love seat as I settled into the end of the couch next to them. Caleb strode past the door carrying several duffels under his arms and in his hands.

  “Can I get you anything?” Beverly asked.

  “No, thank you,” Mom answered and shook her head while Dad smiled wistfully, his gray eyes glancing at me in amusement.

  Bev sank into the large rocking chair that she used when crocheting and Chris settled into the large leather recliner next to her. I attempted to shove aside the momentary oddness I felt at the situation.

  I was in a living room with my parents, who were vampires. Directly across from them were Caleb’s parents, who were werewolves. It didn’t get any more surreal unless you sprinkled in my own unique Fae lineage.

  “We’re so grateful to you for taking care of our Emmaline,” Mom said, her quiet voice melodic.

  “She’s our family as well,” Chris replied, his deep voice a sharp contrast to hers.

  “I suppose we should get to the importance and necessity of our trip.” Dad leaned forward and started talking when Caleb took a seat beside me. “I have met with Quinn, and he has agreed to come here and
speak with Caleb and Emmaline. I’m not certain he will intercede, but I know he will give his unbiased judgment and wisdom on the matter.”

  “Quinn?” The name was one I had never heard before.

  “The enforcer of our laws.”

  The enforcer had a name. In all my times of hearing about him, no one had used it. Now I had something to place to the person.

  “I don’t know anything about your laws, but ours are simple.” Chris’s voice was throaty and deep. “Cross any of the pack, and you will bleed.”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  “I don’t see what’s so complex.”

  “It’s complex for a multitude of reasons. We cannot prove Decimus is responsible for Emmaline’s attack, and we are expected to provide just that—proof. Quinn is immune to the prince, but if he decides to move against him, it will cause a war for supremacy. Quinn’s involvement will be cementing all of our fates. He knows that.”

  Chris appeared confused, his brows creased as he spoke. “All of you could take him in a rush and remove him from power.”

  “No,” Dad said quietly, his Scottish brogue making the word more of a sound than an utterance. “We cannot. He can control all of us, no matter the number, in a given proximity. That is his strength. We cannot extinguish that which has supreme control over us.”

  “We can.” Caleb growled the words viciously, moving his body closer to me, and placed his hand on top of my leg.

  “My son is right,” Chris said. “She is pack, and as Caleb’s bonded mate, she is entitled to the same protection.”

  “Wait a minute.” I sat up, looking at everyone in the room. “We’re talking about losing lives. I don’t want that. I want to find a way to end all of this without hurting anyone.”

  “So you’ll just let them kill you instead?” Caleb demanded. “I won’t let that happen, no matter how much you want to play peacekeeper.”