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Ash pressed a kiss to his chest, searing hih the fabric of his tee “I can feel the darkness licking atIt’s co”

“No I won’t accept this” More than two hundred years he’d waited for her, and now she was telling him he’d lose her in a heartbeat? No

“I tracked down randmother’s medical records”

Janvier’s blood turned to ice

“I never knew her,” Ash said “My mother told me she died when randmother spent fifteen years in a psychiatric facility”

He shook his head in mute denial, but Ash wasn’t finished

“It was randirlhood friends” A ragged breath, her body rigid against hie and pain and screareat-grandhosts would not leave her alone’—as they hadn’t herto tell him, didn’t want to understand it

“I’m so sorry, Janvier I should’ve stopped us before—”

“Don’t you say that Don’t you ever say that” He crushed her to him “You were always meant to be mine” His eyes burned, his chest so painful that it felt as if his heart had burst “Whether it’s for a year or a century, it doesn’t diht his hold, the kiss she pressed to the pulse in his neck an agonizing tenderness “I’ers trembled as she curved them around the side of his neck “Only ever yours”

He couldn’t speak for a long ti her so she could sit up, he said, “No more walls, nothis fro hiether “And never any apologies Not between us”

His fierce, beautiful, wild stor and proud and so dahtht “No walls, no distance” Raer in every word “You’re in my soul, Janvier”

He wanted to say the same in return but his throat was too thick, too filled with the anger inside him

Ash wouldn’t let him look aouldn’t let hi” He’d split his veins for her, if that hat she wanted

“If we’re going to do this, we do it full throttle” The darkness of her eyes caught hi for the toe to drown us”

Jawbones grinding, he defied her to look out over the water, but if the Hudson held an answer for hiers weaving through his hair, his Ashblade’s arms around his neck “I want to play with you as we’ve always played No rules, no holding back Don’t treat me as broken Don’t do that”