Slay Alive

Chapter 21

twenty-one

Cade raises his glass and taps it against mine. “One magical prophecy forced on me over a beer to go with the big news. That night I was angry. For months, a year, more, I don’t know how long I was angry but slowly,” he pauses and sighs, “slowly I started to think about what it meant. She told me it was for my soulmate but it wasn’t until I got in a fight with a pack of wet behind the ears recruits that I understood what a hunter’s body meant. When I was about to take the life of another hunter just because I could, I saw that look in her eyes.”

“What look?”

“Resignation,” he says softly. “Like she knew it was the end and there was no point in fighting. It wasn’t her that I was seeing anymore, it was the Her that was mine. The Her that I needed to shape up for and become a man worthy of Her. A man doesn’t kill for sport and he doesn’t…” he swallows hard and continues on, “I stopped killing hunters that night. The only thing I could think of was–what if I killed Her? What if I was too wrong to know to stop and what if I hurt Her? ”

“ When you walk in daylight, violence no more, with secrets told and hearts joined, when you set love loose will you find her in a hunter’s body. A champion you will be.”

I shift in my seat. “Her,” I say, testing out the word. The reverence and weight in Cade’s voice saying that one word tells me everything. Those eyes I’ve fallen for look at me. Those two colors that so easily become my entire universe when they’re turned my way. I know what he’s thinking. I can read his emotions so easily right now.

It’s hard to say the words. Rejection hangs so close that I can nearly taste it. The flavor of it is a meal I know well but still I speak. “You think it’s me? The Her? ”

Cade answers me immediately. “I do. You know I do.”

My breath leaves me like I’ve been gut punched. I have to grab the table to stay upright. “Oh gods. Oh wow. I-I don’t know what I was expecting you would tell me but it wasn’t-”

“Wasn’t that I think you’re my magical prophesied soulmate? No, can’t for the life of me understand why you wouldn’t think that .” Cade gives me a wry smile. “You’re not going to faint are you?”

I shake my head. “No, at least I don’t think so.”

If this is all a dream, if I wake up in the fucking hospital with Gio and Donnie crying over my lifeless body, I’m going to riot.

I reach out a shaky hand to him. “I know that witch,” I say softly. “She came to me too.”

Cade slides his hand over mine and he interlaces our fingers together. “Did she now?”

“Yes, when I…” my voice trails off. I don’t know how to explain this next part. Yes, Cade just told me he thinks we belong together because a witch said so but how am I supposed to explain that I’m from a different timeline? World? Gods, I don’t even understand it.

But as they say, sometimes the only way out is through.

Time to rip the bandaid off.

I give Cade a please don’t think I’m off my rocker look and take a deep breath. “All right, here goes. I’m not from this world. This whole place, Briarwood Hollow, is a game that I play, that I have played for a decade. The night I met Rhia, Rhiannon to you, she pumped me full of a love potion which kicked off this whole quest line for me to find love. She swears that she thought I’d go on a self love journey or whatever, but that’s not what happened. I went home and put in Fangs Are Forever , my game, my comfort game where you are a villain that kills me any time I get too close, which has been one giant mind fuck getting to know you here. But I fell asleep playing the game and when I wake up, I’m in the woods and I’m superpowered and there’s a vampire hunting me and I accidentally kill it and it’s Dante! Who is normally super chill in the game but not that night, no he tried to murder me until I ran him through with a branch and that’s when the hunters found me and brought me back and I’ve been stuck in this world because she body swapped me with the real Duskweaver and I don’t know how to get back. Rhia said it was true love, finding true love which in my case would mean one of the boyfriends falls in love with me but I-well that hasn’t been going so great, you know?”

When I’m done speaking I’m out of breath and panting, I’m also sweating. I wipe my forehead and watch Cade. The next few seconds are going to be epic for how this plays out for me.

Cade bursts out laughing. “You’re the one that killed Dante? Gods! What a prick he was.” He throws his head back and laughs. I half expect him to pound the table or his knee with how he’s laughing.

“Hey.” My brow furrows as I watch Cade laugh. I frown and cross my arms. “Listen, is my story wacky? Yeah. Fantastical? Sure. That funny? No way, chuckles.”

Cade swipes at his eyes because he has honest to gods tears forming in the corners and reaches out a hand to me. “Love, I’m sorry. Oh, don’t make that face at me.”

I continue to glare and pout. “I’ll make whatever face I want. You’re laughing and I told you I got sucked into a game and killed Dante.”

“Shadowfang had that coming. You would have hated him. Trust me,” he says, taking a swig of his wine. “Total cunt.”

“Cade!”

“What? He was. I’m proud of you for taking him out if I’m going to be honest.” I shoot death murder eyes at Cade and only then does he hold up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You are telling me your origin story and that should be taken seriously.” He gathers my hands in his and kisses my knuckles. “We will get you home. I swear.”

I blink at him. “Wait, you believe me? Really? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Cade replies. He squeezes my hands when I continue to look at him in disbelief. “I take it you don’t have witches where you’re from? No one’s ever been sent to another dimension or that sort of thing?”

“No, I mean we do but not like Rhia, and-and are you saying this is normal here?”

He shrugs. “It happens from time to time. Rhiannon is a very busy woman.”

“So I’m seeing,” I mutter while Cade grins at me. “What is it?” My head is still spinning. In my wildest dreams I never thought Cade was going to accept what I had to say so easily, but I never knew I’d have him tell me that I’m his soulmate either.

“I found you.” We stare at each other in silence for a moment and my chest gets tight. It’s difficult to breathe but I do it. Soulmates. That magical little thing that even my world has. I think my parents are soulmates. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been such a romantic. I couldn’t help but see the world that way when I had the perfect example of bliss and partnership. My dad fell in love with my mom at first sight at a dance their sophomore year of college.

“I saw her from across the room dancing with a schmuck. I knew it was her for me. No question about it. She’s always been the most beautiful girl in the world to me.”

“He stole me from my date that night. It wasn’t hard. The guy had two left feet.”

For thirty years they’ve been together and they’re still just as in love as they’ve always been. I’ve always wanted that. I would have given anything for the kind of magic that lasts a lifetime.

“I always knew I would find you.”

Looks like the universe gave me what I wanted and more. An immortal soulmate who’s been searching for me for years while I was oblivious in another fucking dimension.

They do say life comes at you fast but jeez. This is hyperspeed.

“Cade, I don’t know if-what if I’m not Her?” It hurts to say it but I have to.

Life has never made love easy for me. Not when I tried to find it in a place not made for me. How could it find me so easily now? It doesn’t make sense. The vampire I feared is my soulmate? I’m the reason he stopped killing hunters because he wanted to be worthy of me? Because of me, he worked to become the kind of man that I swoon over instantly. To him I’ve always been worth it.

That’s not my story. Not the way I know it.

I don’t think I can take the thought that Cade’s soulmate is out there and that she isn’t me.

“No, hey, look at me.” Cade is in my space instantly, on his knees in front of me and caging me with a hand on either side of my chair. There’s nowhere for me to go but into his arms. “It’s you. I know it is. From the second I saw you, Bonnie. I knew. ”

I sniffle at his words. It’s so tantalizing and so easily believable. “You did?” I whisper.

Cade nods. “I did. Duskweaver, yes she stalked me. Thought it was just some infatuation more or less, but it wasn’t there when it was her. The knowing that I have. It’s you. The way you are now that calls to me. When you walked into my world in that training yard I nearly dusted myself in the sun. Almost dropped my umbrella right then when you looked at me.”

I huff out a laugh. Okay, now the story sounds more plausible. Woman finds soulmate in magical alternate game reality only to witness him go up like a bonfire in sunlight due to vampiric nature.

That’s a romance storyline that I could believe would be mine.

“I’m really glad you didn’t drop your umbrella,” I tell him in between sniffles.

Cade wipes my tears away. “Me too, love. We’re going to get you home. I promise.”

“But I don’t know how to get home.”

“And you don’t have to know. We are going to handle this. We are going to find the way forward, I swear it, Bonnie.”

Cade means what he’s saying. He’s going to help me get home.

“Thank you,” I whisper and throw my arms around him. I should be happy to have someone like Cade in my corner, I know that. Anyone in my shoes would be. So why do I feel like this is the beginning of the end?

Cade kisses me soft and slow as he lowers me down onto the bed. We move together, two pieces of a puzzle that just fit and nothing is hurried or frantic. It’s only me and him. He undresses me slowly, kissing every exposed inch of my skin until he maps out the planes of my body. I do the same to him. His body begs me to take my time, so I do. I learn the way his arms feel when they strain, how his back muscles feel like marble when he picks me up, the way his breath hitches when I drag my tongue along his thick hard cock.

We move together but not like on Stargazer Plaza. That had some bite to it, the sharp edge of battle that still lingered but that’s gone now. All our sharp edges have been rubbed smooth.

Every gasp and moan is like music to me. I work to keep him whispering my name but it’s no work at all with how Cade worships me.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers to me when he thrusts into me. He pins my hands to the bed as he takes me and gods, it’s so sweet to let my vampire have me.

“Oh gods, Cade.” He’s moving faster, the slow and easy roll of his hips has changed.

“Every part of you, hunter, is mine, isn’t it?” Cade rasps in my ear and fucks into me harder. I’ve never felt anything this good. I didn’t know it could be this way with anyone but I should have known it would be with him.

“Yes,” I cry.

He peppers my face with kisses and whispers to me, “So good for me, love.” And I am, good that is, but so is he. That night Cade doesn’t waste a single moment we have together. He devours me, swallows me whole and leaves me sobbing his name in the quiet of his room.

“You’re perfect. My hunter.”