Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “That’s how you felt? With your mate?”

            This time he turns to look at me. I don’t know why it takes him so long to produce that simple:

            “Yeah.”

            God. This is just total, utter shit.

            Lowe has a mate, which is apparently amazing. But his mate is stuck among my people while he’s married to me.

            “I’m so sorry,” I blurt out.

            His gaze is calm. Too calm. “You shouldn’t be sorry.”

            “I can be sorry if I want to. I can apologize. I can prostrate myself and—”

            “Why are you apologizing?”

            “Because. In a year at the most I’m going to peace out.” His well-being is not my responsibility, but already so much has been taken from him—and swiftly exchanged with bricks of duty. “You’ll be able to be with your mate, and you’ll live bitingly ever after. There’s biting involved, right?”

            “Yeah. The bite is . .” His gaze flickers down to my neck. Lingers. “Important.”

            “It looks painful. Mick’s, I mean.”

            “No,” he husks, eyes on me. My pulse flickers. “Not if it’s done right.”

            He must have one on his body. A secret buried into his skin, under the soft cotton of his T-shirt. And he must have left one on his mate, a raised scar to guide him home, to be traced in the middle of the night.

            And then something occurs to me. A petrifying possibility.

            “It’s always reciprocal, right?”

            “The bite?”

            “The mate thing. If you meet someone, and you feel that they are your mate, and your biology changes . . . theirs will change, too, right?” I don’t need a verbal answer, because I see in his stoic, forbearing expression that no. Nope. “Oh, shit.”

            I’m no romantic, but the prospect is appalling. The idea that one might be destined to someone who just . . . won’t. Can’t. Doesn’t. All the feelings in the world, but one-sided. Uncomprehended and unbound. A bridge built of chemistry and physics that stops halfway, never to pick up again.

            The fall would break every last bone.

            “It sounds fucking horrible.”

            He nods thoughtfully. “Does it?”

            “It’s a life sentence.” No parole. Just you and a cellmate who’ll never know you exist.

            “Maybe.” Lowe’s shoulders tense and relax. “Maybe there is something devastating about the incompleteness of it. But maybe, just knowing that the other person is there . . .” His throat bobs. “There might be pleasure in that, too. The satisfaction of knowing that something beautiful exists.” His lips open and close a few times, as though he can only find the right words by shaping them first to himself. “Maybe some things transcend reciprocity. Maybe not everything is about having.”

            I let out a disbelieving laugh. “Such wisdom, from someone whose mating is clearly reciprocated.”

            “Yeah?” He’s amused—and something else.

            “No one who has ever dealt with unrequited love would say that.”

            His smile is secretive. “Is that how your love has been? Unrequited?”

            “There has been no love at all.” I rest my chin over my knees. It’s my turn now to stare at the shimmery lake. “I am a Vampyre.”

            “Vampyres don’t love?”

            “Not like that. We definitely don’t talk about this stuff.”

            “Relationships?”

            “Feelings. We’re not raised to put a whole lot of value in that. We’re taught that what matters is the good of the many. The continuation of the species. The rest comes after. At least, that’s how I understood it—I grasp my people’s customs very little. Serena would ask me what’s normal in Vampyre society, and I couldn’t tell her. When I tried to go back after being the Collateral, it was . . .” I flinch. “I didn’t know how to behave. The way I spoke the Tongue was choppy. I didn’t get what was going on, you know?” Yes, he does. I can tell.