Xane picks me up, cradling me in his arms, and carries me away from the destruction to sit propped up against the low wall leading to the main gardens. “What the fuck happened here, Liv? And where the Hell is Constantine?”
“Good question,” Sebastian says as he sits on my other side. “Where did he go?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” I mumble and then add, “Ironic, really, seeing as he did beat the shit out of me.”
“What?” Xane and Sebastian ask in unison.
“He did this to you?” Xane gestures at my shredded and bloody clothes and then at the fallen tower.
“No,” Sebastian says. “He would never do that. Not to you. Liv?” He questions me, now unsure.
“You know how mad he was at us. After you left, I went to find him. I know I shouldn’t have,” I say before he can yell at me. “Believe me, next time I will leave well enough alone. I found him in the tower, and he was so angry. The things he said…” I trail off, the tears threatening to flow again. “It was worse than what he did,” I whisper, and Sebastian pulls me to him to comfort me.
“What did he do?” he croaks.
“He ripped me to shreds before he threw me out of the windows,” I say into his chest and then pull back. The last thing I need is to be cuddling Sebastian if CK makes another appearance.
“No,” Sebastian says weakly. “He wouldn’t…” But then he looks at me and again at the tower and asks, “He threw you out of the window?”
I nod and my neck cracks painfully. I wince as it is still newly healed, and I don’t particularly feel like having it snap again. “And then he just disappeared. Teleported out of here like it meant nothing to him.”
“Liv, sweetie. There must be a reason he did it. He wouldn’t just do that and then leave you. He wouldn’t.”
“Well, if you find him you can ask him, because I can think of no good reason why he would.”
“I can’t find him. I can’t even sense him,” he says worriedly.
Find him? Sense him? He can find and sense our sire when he is not here? I knew he had more honed skills with that than me, but I didn’t realize it went as far as all that.
“Screw him,” Xane says fiercely. “He can stay away as far as I am concerned. I won’t let him near you again, never again,” he almost yells and I shy away from him and the sudden rush of power that sweeps off him.
“Why are you here?” I ask him then, finding it odd that he would be.
He looks at me sadly and then at Sebastian. He finally says, “I knew it the second you hit the ground. I felt your fear and your pain. I came straight away.”
“Same here,” Sebastian says quietly.
“Oh,” I say awkwardly. Well, I couldn’t have been out for very long then if they came straight away. I suppose that’s something that I managed to heal quickly enough while unconscious.
“Who brought the tower down?” Xane asks.
“Me, mostly. Both by being slammed into it, but also by my Power.” I shrug, brushing it off. “Seb, you had better go and do damage control. And get Marguerite to hire someone to get this mess cleaned up and fixed.”
He pauses and clears his throat.
“I am still the lady of this house, whether he likes it or not. Now go,” I say with as much authority as I can, and he jumps to his feet. He scampers off and I sink back against the wall and close my eyes.
“You need to feed,” Xane says, taking my hands he pulls me forward. I open my eyes as his l
ips touch mine and he whispers, “Take what you need,” before he pushes his tongue into my mouth and kisses me. His hands gripping mine tightly, I pull on his energy, but instead of coming out of his hands, it is coming out of his mouth and into mine. I am taking his very essence with no watering down and it is a fair boost. I let go of his hands and take his face, pulling him even closer to me as I feed from him, absorbing as much of him as I dare. I push him away before I get carried away and he grins at me. “Feel better?”
“Much,” I say. “Wow. How come we have never done that before?”
“Because you weren’t ready. You can only share pure essence when you are truly bound. I have always known we were, but it has taken you a bit longer to accept.”
I want to say something to him, to tell him that I do accept our bond, but Sebastian returns, and the moment is lost.
“All sorted. I told them you were in the tower and it collapsed. Marguerite is outraged on your behalf and I can only imagine that Georges is going to get an earful and a half.”