Page 58 of Don't Bite the Botanist
Tressa groaned and pushed off the table to slide her chair over to the silver cooler next to Baylin’s couch. “I guess I can’t be shocked that nothing is going well.” She pulled out a chilled blood bag and stared at it for a second. “You know, I teased Saiden constantly about his messy courtship of Cora, but at this point, I would trade places in a heartbeat.”
She released her tiny fangs but couldn’t bring herself to puncture the bag. Gently rocking her upturned palm, she felt the weight of the blood swishing back and forth, back and forth, like a sanguine metronome. With each alternating slosh, she felt more like she didn’t deserve to replenish her strength. She deserved to suffer.
Retracting her fangs, she tossed the bag back into the cooler andturned to her cousin. “I don’t know if he’s ever going to forgive me, Bay.”
Her cousin dropped his feet to the ground, then reached over to grab her chair. He dragged her back to him and placed his hands on her thighs, his face deadly serious for possibly only the second time ever. “Tress, you know I love you,” he said solemnly. “From now till the end of time, you’re my family. But for fuck’s sake, would you please stop acting like you didn’t see this coming the moment you told him that first lie? You had to know this was all going to come crashing down sooner or later.”
Tressa cringed and scooted away from her cousin. But no matter how much distance she put between them, Baylin wasn’t wrong. He was rarely wrong. Even if nobody wanted to hear it.
She ran a hand through her hair. “I guess I just saw how things worked out for Saiden, and…” She let out a pathetic laugh. “I guess I thought somehow, because he was my mate, it would be the same for me.”
Baylin gave her another sympathetic look, and Tressa wished he would go back to cracking jokes. “Don’t write him off just yet, Tress. Forever is a very long time to hate someone.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t see the look in his eyes. He’s going to leave, Bay. He said he wanted to help with this rogue hunt, but he told me he never wants to see me again after that. How can I change his mind if he disappears?”
“I won’t let that happen,” Baylin assured her, tapping on his monitor. “If he needs a wee bit of time after all this, I’ll keep an eye on him. Let him cool off for, I don’t know, a few decades or so. Eventually he’ll calm down.”
“Decades?” Tressa sputtered. “Bay, I can barely handle being on the other side of the compound from him. Saiden said it took over amonth before he could bring himself to leave Cora behind to go out on a hunt. You think I’m going to survive if he leaves the city? Or worse, the state?”
Baylin groaned, scrubbed at his face, then took another massive swig from his water bottle. “Feck, I wish Raven was here,” he muttered. “She’s so much better at this whole consoling thing than I am. Look, Tress, I might not have any pretty words, so I’ll just be blunt. You fucked up. You lied to him. I get that it was a shite situation, but you still sent it arseways. It’s time to cop on and learn to live with the consequences.”
Tressa blinked at him. “And now I wish Raven was here too.”
“Oh, feck off,cailín.”
Baylin took another slug from his bottle, and Tressa stared daggers at him. “Bay, what the hell do you think you’re doing with that?”
He turned away from her. “It’s a water bottle, Tress.”
“Doesn’t mean there’s water in it. My heart is broken, not my sense of smell. And I know you only get that thick brogue when you’re drunk, so spill. What happened before I came in here that has you drinking all of a sudden, and why are you trying to hide it?”
He flipped her off, but there was no anger when he said, “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. You got your own issues to deal with. Now if you’re not feeling knackered, you should get back to your boyo. Or go literally anywhere that isn’t my room. I swear I’m gonna get a feckin keypad for my door so all you shites can’t just be barging in.”
She debated pushing him but quickly accepted it would be an exercise in futility. Much like his computers, Baylin kept his secrets locked up tight. Tressa hopped out of the chair, then bent down to kiss him on the cheek. “You love us, and you know it. Now stop drinking and maybe get some sleep yourself. Don’t make me worry about youtoo, Bay.”
He waved a hand at her to leave, and she did. But not before snatching the bottle from his hand. He made a grab for it, but she danced out of his range and took a deeper sniff.
She’d been right. Whiskey. Probably Bushmills, knowing her cousin.
Disgusting, but given the circumstances, she chugged what was left in the bottle. Her vamp system would burn through it in about five minutes, but that was five minutes that she could stop worrying about Ethan lying dead in the other room.
She needed him to wake up soon. The post transition was never easy, and she wouldn’t abandon him for that. No matter how much he hated her, she would never abandon him.
Chapter thirty-two
Ethan
He was alone.
He had been nothing. Gone. And when he was Ethan again, he was alone.
It was eerie, how dark the building was at night.
Was it even night? There were no windows in his basement lab, but somehow it felt late. It felt gloomy and ominous. It felt like the time when wicked things claimed ownership of the world, moving through the shadows to steal the lives of any who dared intrude during these unholy hours.
The shadows owned this moment, so the shadows were all he saw.
Except…
