Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Seventy-EightSage

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Sage

O ur feet hit the hardwood of Dean’s sitting room, and he turned to me, but I spoke before he had the chance to.

“No. Stop trying to push it off.”

He pursed his lips but continued anyway.

“Tomorrow is going to be a lot with the change. You need to be completely settled, and completely comfortable. Wouldn’t you rather be at the loft?”

I thought of all the bad memories I’d had there. All the brown walls and lingering signs of Lauden.

I shook my head. “No. I want to be here.”

Dean nodded, then shrugged. “We at least need to get you pajamas, and a change of clothes.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. I could already feel my heart starting to race from what I knew would come next. How my life could change.

I opened a portal and we went to the loft, but only long enough to grab what he instructed me to, and come back.

When we landed back in his home, he turned to me again.

“Gods, Dean, I swear if you try to push this off anymore—” I snapped but he cut me off.

“I can hear how fast your heart is racing. You need to relax before we start. Why don’t you sit, and I’ll make you some dinner?”

My anxiety was starting to swell to near unbearable, so I agreed.

I changed into pajamas and then walked around his home, tended to all the potted plants, and when dinner was done I ate the roasted chicken and potatoes he’d cooked. A part of me blushed at the sign of real food in his home after he’d told me he hardly kept any here for himself.

I pushed my plate away when I was finished, and looked up to where he’d been carefully studying me while I ate.

“What now?” he asked softly, and I snorted.

“You’re the Kova, you tell me.”

He chuckled and looked down. “I meant is there anything else I can get you, to make you feel comfortable, before we do this?”

I shook my head but clenched my hands into fists below the table to hide the way they shook.

“I’m ready,” I breathed.

He pursed his lips and rose. He took my hand and brought me with him to the couch, and we both sat.

“You don’t have to,” he urged again.

I threw my head back. “Dean, please,” I said, feigning annoyance, but the tears had already started to prick and I couldn’t blink them away fast enough before I lowered my head back to meet his gaze.

His face twisted in pain and he shook his head, turning on the couch to face me.

“Sage, no. We can’t do this. You clearly don’t want to.”

I swallowed and shook my head, despite the few teardrops that fell down my cheeks.

“I want to do this Dean. I want to be strong. I want to feel safe,” I whispered through the tears. “It’s just scary,” I breathed. “I’m allowed to want something and to also be scared.”

His brows furrowed and he nodded, before reaching for my head, to bring it close. He kissed my forehead, then pulled my face to his chest, and let me cry.

I didn’t know what would happen to me when I came out of this on the other side. When I wasn’t Sage the Sorceress with the extinct portaling ability anymore. When I was just Sage, the Kova.

For a moment thoughts of what Vasier would say when he saw me sprouted into my mind. Seeing his daughter, as the one thing he hated most in this world. And that thought alone chased away some of the fear.

Dean held me through it all, and when I finally pulled back and dragged my hands down my cheeks to clear the tears away, I looked at him.

“What do I need to do?” I whispered.

He blinked slowly and stared at me, but said nothing.

Then, finally, he straightened. “First—”

I waved a hand. “No, I mean, I know how it works,” I said softly. “You drink my blood, and then I drink yours. I just meant, where do you want me?”

He took a silent breath, then shrugged. “Whatever is most comfortable for you. We can stay here, or we can stand. Whatever you’d prefer.”

I swallowed and nodded, angling myself toward him so we faced each other on the couch.

We sat square to each other, and I lifted my hands to clear my hair from one side of my neck, and tried to ignore Dean eyeing how they trembled.

“I’m ready,” I said when I’d pulled all my hair away and dropped it over the front of my shoulder.

He met my gaze, his eyes steady. Unwavering.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

He swallowed and lowered one hand over both of mine. They sat in my lap, and as he tightened his around the both of them, I realized that they’d still been shaking.

I watched as his eyes lowered over my neck, then flicked up to mine.

“It’s going to be…a lot,” he said, his voice hoarse. “For mates, drinking each other’s blood is intimate.”

“Okay,” I said breathlessly.

He shook his head. “No, I mean—I’m trying to say that whatever happens, whatever you may want to do, it’s okay. But if you want to stop, if you want me to stop, tell me, push me, whatever you need. And I’ll stop.”

Gods. As if this wasn’t already overwhelming.

I nodded, taking a deep breath, and trying to hide the way it shuddered out of me.

“Okay. Thank you for warning me,” I whispered.

His eyes lowered over my neck again, and his free hand reached around to grasp the back of my neck, and started to tug me closer.

My heart raced against my chest, my eyes tried to follow his lips as he drew closer—as his fangs lengthened—until I couldn’t see them anymore, he was too close. I shut my eyes, waited for what it would feel like.

But now, here with Dean, I didn’t fear him or his bite in the way I thought I might, after my other experiences.

I only felt the patter of my heart, the warmth of his hand over mine, and waited for the feel of his lips on my neck.

He leaned ever closer, I could feel his breath, and felt the worry wash through my mind. His worry.

“Dean?” I whispered, confused why he was taking so long, only a second before I felt his lips on me.

But they weren’t on my neck, they were on mine.

He kissed me slowly, his lips soft but firm, before he pulled back. His eyes were wide, worried, and he frantically shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t—”

I pulled back, angry tears in my eyes. “You said you would help me. You can’t—”

“No,” he croaked, and the sound had my eyes widening and raising to meet his. “You don’t understand.”

His hand tightened around mine, and I felt the one at the back of my neck tilt me closer.

“Feeding from a mate,” he whispered the word, “it’s special.” He took a deep breath. “But changing a mate?” He shook his head and I watched as his eyes misted. “It’s never been done before,” he whispered. “You and Evaline, you’re the first non-Kova who have ever been someone’s mate. And because of that, no Kova has ever had to turn a mate.”

I shook my head, confused by his tears, by his words.

“I don’t understand. You don’t want to because it’s never been done?” I asked, and felt my hands start to shake again.

His tightened over them, and he glanced down for a moment, and when he raised his eyes back up to mine, they were alight. With tears and the reflection of the fire behind me, and emotion.

“No, it’s not that.” He took a deep breath, and his words started to rush out. “I don’t want to—I can’t—turn you without telling you. I’ve basically said it in every way but the words. But I can’t go through with this ritual that’s supposed to be special for any mortal, but especially a mortal being turned by their mate, without telling you—without saying it.”

My eyes flitted across his face and my heart hammered in my chest and I watched as he pursed his lips, and spoke.

“I love you, Sage.”

The noise of the fire behind us died in my ears as all of my senses focused in on what he’d just said, what he was still saying.

“I don’t know when it started, sometime before we left to look for Charlotte, I think. But I know that it will never end.”

I tried to see him, to focus on him and the way his face pulled together as he spoke, through the tears in my eyes.

I love you .

A simple, succinct, sentence. One I’d heard before. From my mother, Vasier, Lauden, and Evaline.

And each of those times, from each of those people, I’d believed them. But my mother was gone, Vasier used me, and Lauden manipulated me. Maybe Evaline meant it at the time, I’d hoped so at least, but none of them had ever sounded like this .

I love you.

I could hear his words in the space between us, but I could also feel a surge of what I could only describe as love, down the bond. It filled my mind, hummed inside of it, until all I could hear was it, and the echo of his words, playing in my mind.

I love you .

No one, ever, had ever said it to me like that. Not like it filled their whole heart. Not like they needed me to breathe, to keep going each day. Like they had to get the words out because they couldn’t stand another moment in this world where I didn’t know with absolute certainty, and not just with vague confessions or future promises, that it was how they felt.

Vasier and Lauden certainly hadn’t.

Evaline, sort of, but in a way that only a friend could.

And my mother, maybe. But I didn’t get enough time with her, so I couldn’t know for sure.

But this. This was it, I thought. This was what I’d been watching, wondering what it was like, between Evaline and Maddox, Cora and Wyott.

He was speaking again, and Gods I didn’t even know how much time had passed since he’d said it. Not much, I don’t think.

“I don’t want you to say anything, I just needed you to know. I needed you to hear the words. Before we do this. Before it’s done, forever. So that you know, a hundred years from now, whether you are with me or not, that on this day, at this moment, when you turned, when you were reborn into something new, that the person who was in this with you, loved you.”

A tear fell down my cheek, and he leaned in to kiss it away.

A sigh shuddered through me at the gesture, at his words, before he lowered his lips over mine again, and kissed the breath away.

I pulled my hands from his, reached up and around his neck, and pulled myself into his lap.

He groaned deep in his chest and curled his arms around my back, and pulled me against him. He righted himself on the couch, leaned back against it, and tilted his head up to keep his lips on mine.

His hands settled onto my back, fanned out over it. My knees were on each side of his hips, hands raising to knot into his long, curly hair.

I love you.

His words replayed in my head, and I knew my response.

“Dean, I—” I said against his lips, but I felt him shake his head.

“No,” he whispered, then pulled away, only far enough to meet my eyes. “Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Too much has happened, and I don’t want you to regret it. Only say it when you know it. When nothing else in the world—leaving Mortithev and everyone behind, being here on your own, your attack, or even my own words tonight—is persuading you to feel anything. Only say it when it is exactly how you feel, for no other reason than because it is true.”

I swallowed, and nodded.

And knew exactly what he was saying.

Between Vasier and Lauden, I’d become too broken to know what love was. And when Dean showed it to me, even before tonight, I’d grasped onto it, quickly.

In an instant, I understood his fear. I understood why he didn’t want me to repeat the words back to him.

I took a deep breath, and then I spoke.

“I understand. But I hope you know that all this change—Vasier and Lauden and the way they treated me—isn’t the reason I want to be around you.” Something flashed in his eyes as I continued. “And it’s not because we’re mates. It’s because I feel safe with you, Dean.” He swallowed and watched my lips as I spoke. “It’s because you have given me a place where I can be myself and be safe. And that is worth everything to me.”

My voice choked at the end.

“And if you won’t let me say it back,” I said and watched as his chest stopped moving, as he stopped breathing. “Then at least let me say that .”

I pulled my hands down from his hair to set them on each cheek, holding his face in them.

“I feel safe with you,” I repeated, and Gods you’d have thought I’d said the words—the real words—by the way his brows pulled up, a smile grew, and his eyes misted again.

He leaned forward to kiss me again, a soft and light and loving kiss.

When he pulled away, he didn’t move far. Only kissed down my chin, my jaw, to my neck.

I opened my eyes wide, waiting. Looking over his head, over his couch, and out the window behind him that looked out over the river that cut through Rominia. My hands moved to brace myself on the top of the couch behind him.

His hands on my back pressed me closer to him, his lips hovered over my neck, and I felt his fangs scrape along my skin.

I waited for the pain, but there wasn’t any.

My eyes widened and a gasp fell from my lips as his fangs sank in.

Because there was only pleasure.

A shiver ran up my spine from the feel, and was only further fueled when Dean’s shuddering groan hummed through my skin.

My hands moved from the couch and fell to his shoulders, fisted in the fabric there.

I tried to catch my breath as I tilted my head back, inadvertently tilting my pelvis toward his in the process and my eyes nearly rolled back from the feel of his bite, and the friction between our hips at the move.

Dean shivered and his chest rumbled, but then it was all over in an instant, because he pulled his fangs away. I felt his tongue along my skin, but then he was straightening back against the couch, and pulling me toward him until my head rolled back forward and I looked down at him.

“Why did you stop?” I breathed and saw the rise and fall of his chest was just as quick as mine.

He shook his head. “The change doesn’t require me to take much,” he said, his voice coarse.

I nodded, because Gods what was I going to say? I couldn’t think.

My gaze moved from his near-black eyes to the remnant of my blood on his lip, and I raised a hand there. I felt his eyes on me as I swept a thumb over the blood, then met his eyes as I slid my thumb up until his tongue could dart out and remove the blood from it.

His breaths were still ragged, and mine were shallow, as we locked eyes.

“When can I...?” I asked, trailing off.

“It takes a few minutes to ensure the blood has mingled,” he said, low.

“Oh.”

And then we reached for each other until our lips clashed and our bodies folded into each other. Dean had me flipped onto my back along the couch in the next breath and nestled himself above me. His lips were on mine, and then on my jaw and neck and chest.

I held my breath, half expecting him to feed again, hoping he would, when his hand drifted down to my bare knee and tugged it to pull it up over his hip.

I still wore my pajamas, a linen top, and shorts, and even though the fabric was so thin it was nearly translucent, it felt entirely too constricting on me now. A barrier between the two of us.

I thought about trying to pull my shirt off, at least, but didn’t even dare. If he’d cut us off last night just because he didn’t want my judgment clouded, he’d definitely stop us after his confession, and with the change looming.

Instead of trying to push it further, and despite the fact that I desperately wanted to, I only enjoyed the feel of his lips on my skin, and his hands clutching me close.

After a few minutes, he pulled himself off of me and pulled me back up to sit.

“We have to stop,” he said between breaths.

I nodded. “I know.”

I watched him swallow, then look down at his wrist. He took a deep breath, finally caught it all, and looked back to me.

“You’re positive?” he asked, and I nodded. “There’s no way I can convince you to take more time to think about it?”

I looked at him, my eyes half-lidded. “Dean.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

Dean straightened and turned to me. He held my gaze and smiled as he tilted his head, before reaching forward and placing a soft kiss on my lips. When he pulled away he brought his wrist up to his face, took one more deep breath, then bit into it.

He offered it to me and I leaned toward him to take it.

“How fast will it happen?” I whispered.

His eyes flicked between mine.

“It could take seconds, or hours. Everyone is different.”

I nodded, looked down at the bite mark, and watched for a moment as it started to heal. Before it closed all the way, I lowered my lips over it, and drank.