Page 61 of Don't Bite the Botanist
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tight, clutching her to his chest.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. She knew he would blame himself. Knew there was nothing she could do about that. Her mate was a kind soul at the heart of things. “Everything… is going to be… okay.” Her head lolled limply to the side, and she struggled to open her eyes. To see him one last time.
“Tressa?” Ethan said quietly, and she could hear the clarity in his voice, even if it sounded like it was so far away. “Tressa, wake up.”
He was really there. He was with her.
Ethan.
Her mate.
It wasn’t going to be easy for him, but her cousins would help. He would be okay. Her mate was strong, and he would recover.
All she could do was hope that he didn’t suffer too much. She opened her mouth one last time to tell him she loved him, but her heart gave its final pump before she could get a single word out.
And then… darkness.
Chapter thirty-four
Ethan
The lab dissolved around Ethan, fading into the recesses of his mind like a movie transition.
He blinked rapidly, his eyes flicking to the ceiling, then to the floor, and then darting around the room. Everything was dark yet vibrant at the same time. The individual fibers in the carpet stood out to him, and the texture on the walls was much more visible than before, like a tiny, crater-filled landscape. A coppery tang still filled his nose, and his eyes snapped from object to object, trying to make sense of where the blood had gone. But as he scanned the space that was both familiar and foreign, he couldn’t find so much as a drop.
Slowly, it came back to him. The compound. This room. He knew this room. He wasn’t in the lab. The blood wasn’t real. And Tressa wasn’t…
His eyes finally cleared, landing on the one thing he suddenly wanted to see so very badly—Tressa’s face.
“Tressa?” he said, gently shaking the sleeping woman in his arms. “Tressa, wake up.”
She didn’t move.
A slow soft thud caught his attention, echoing in his ears and growing fainter with every beat. He locked onto it, as if the noise might explain what was happening.
That sound was familiar, and there was another one chasing it. Faster. So fast itpounded. But the softer thud only faded, faded, faded…
Until it pulsed no more.
Heartbeat, his brain finally supplied, and the reality in front of him was suddenly much worse than any nightmare.
“Tressa!” he screamed, shaking her to wake her up. But she didn’t move. He pulled back and stared at the horrific wound in her chest, at the blood that leaked out slowly. So very slowly.
Pain flared in his mouth, a deep ache in his gums, something sharp breaking through at the delicious scent of the blood. Her blood. Like copper and bubblegum. So wrong and yet he wanted to taste it. Wanted to lap it up like ambrosia.
But Tressa wouldn’t wake up, and the fear coiling around his heart was far more pressing than the intoxicating blood now coating his fingers.
“Somebody help me!” he screamed again, but the terrified hammering of his own heart was the only answering call to his frantic plea.
“No, no, no,” he said, lowering her to the floor and placing his hand over the gaping hole in her chest. “Come on baby, you’re a vampire. You can heal this, right? Right?!” Tears rushed down his face, and every awful thing he’d said to her raced through his head.
“You say you’re not a monster, but you’re just like her.”
“It’s not like I give a shit anymore.”
“I never want to see you again.”
He pressed harder on the wound in her chest as he peppered kisses along her slack face and lifeless lips.
