Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

“What do you even care if I die? So what? Let’s just go out there and give them hell.”

“Like you could really give them hell,” Peter laughed hollowly. “You’d just slow me down.”

“Maybe,” I admitted and swallowed. “What you’re saying … or thinking… If Ezra isn’t coming back and they’re only going to come after us… then… Why don’t you just go? I’ll just wait here until you come back or they come for me. I don’t want to slow down your fight. But it’s better than the both of us waiting here to die.”

His expression changed instantly into something that was completely foreign to me. It took me a minute to realize that it was something that resembled concern and affection for me, of all things. Even when we had been bonded, he’d never looked at me like that. His emerald eyes were swimming with something harder, and he lowered them before I could get a complete read on what he was thinking.

“That’s an idiotic plan,” Peter shook his head.

“That’s pretty much what your plan is,” I countered evenly.

“I’m not gonna just leave you here!” Peter insisted tightly.

“But you’re saying they’ll kill me no matter what! At least this way you can get in a few good punches, take out some of the bastards that-” I stopped myself before I said anything about Ezra being injured. Even though I was talking about and even thinking about, I couldn’t really believe it was true. He was Ezra, and he was all powerful. If anybody could make out through a pack of lycan, it was him. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one that thought that way, or Peter never would’ve let Ezra go off alone with them.

“You’d be completely unprotected. You wouldn’t even stand a chance,” Peter shook his head again, sounding tired of this conversation, and stood up.

“So what? You almost killed me once before and now you’re suddenly my body guard?” I wrinkled my nose at his hypocrisy.

“Oh, god dammit!” Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m so sick of having that thrown in my face! I did that because I loved you, Alice!” He immediately regretted saying that and stared off anywhere but me.

“Yeah, cause that’s a healthy way to express love! By killing another person!” I was purposely pushing his buttons. If the only chance at a rescue mission was Peter going off without me, then I had to piss him off enough to leave me. Although, it didn’t really make sense that he’d need any persuading.

Normally he couldn’t wait to get away from me, and with the bond between us broken, I figured he’d be even more eager to.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you! I was trying to kill me!” Peter rubbed his eyes, looking as if he’d said too much and not knowing how to take it back. “Jack was in the house. I knew he was tuned in to your heart.

When I grabbed in the kitchen, he came flying in to save you. I thought if he found me, draining the life from you, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.” Tiredly, Peter exhaled. “I knew he was a better match for you than I was, and I didn’t see any other way out.”

For once, I was too flabbergasted to say anything. I don’t think that I had ever truly believed that Peter cared about me. The bond made him feel things for me, but I’d always suspected that he hated me. But I found out that not only did Peter care about me, he loved me so much, he’d been planning to die for my happiness. My heart thumped dully in my chest and I tried to think of something say to him.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Peter snapped when he finally met my eyes again. “I don’t know why it’s so shocking that I wouldn’t want you to die. Do you really think Ezra would be so willing to sacrifice himself for me if I was such a psychopath?”

“Peter, I am so sorry,” I whispered, unable to muster the full strength of my voice.

“Stop!” Peter repeated. “Look, Ezra is the one out there! We need to be worrying about him, not us!

Because there isn’t even an ‘us’ to worry about!”

“You’re right.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of any confused thoughts about Peter.

It was hard, though. That changed the way I thought about everything. All the time I had been messing around with Jack, falling in love with him, the one thing that had given me the green light was that Peter had tried to kill me. I hadn’t been angry with him for it, but I hadn’t really wanted to pursue a relationship with him after that. But when I thought about it as his own suicide attempt, that he had loved me so much he had been willing to give me up… then I suddenly felt like a total hussy. We had been bound together, and he had truly loved me, but I had run off with his brother instead.

Peter didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I’m not sure if he was really trying to come up with another plan, but I certainly couldn’t. Part of me was really trying to, but I felt like all the wind had been knocked out me, and it was hard to concentrate on figuring out how to rescue Ezra/get revenge, especially when I didn’t really understand what either of those things would entail.

Before either of us could formulate what would most likely be a non-plan, there was a soft thudding sound on the door to the hotel room. Not a knock exactly, but more like something falling into it. I looked to Peter, but his eyes were already fixed on the door. He had moved in front of me, trying to block me in case it happened to be the lycan announcing their entrance.

When the door slowly swung open, we were greeted by something almost as bad.

Ezra leaned on the doorframe, looking more haggard than I could ever imagine him being.

His clothes, the same black sweater and jeans he had worn the night before, were torn and dirty.

His skin was gaunt and pale, and Ezra had always looked tan and full of life. Ezra had started staggering into the room and Peter rushed to him.

“Oh my gosh, Ezra! Are you okay?” I wanted to rush to him and hug him, but the way Peter was handling him, I knew that he couldn’t handle it.

“Yeah… I just…” Ezra started to brush us off, but his voice had never sounded weaker.

I was about to ask what was wrong, but then I saw it. Bite marks on his neck and wrists. It was a 45 minute drive from lycan territory, plenty of time for a vampire to heal, but they were still red and swollen. He had been so drained to that he didn’t have the strength to heal.

“He needs to feed,” Peter told me almost absently and attempted a hand Ezra off to me. He hurried off to the bathroom to get blood for Ezra, leaving me alone to struggle with the situation.

Gingerly, I put my arm around Ezra to stabilize him and tried to help him on the bed. He was horribly pale and his deep brown eyes were glassy. I had never seen a vampire look so ill before. It had never even occurred to me that they could even look like this, especially Ezra. He was in control of everything. As far as my standard for perfection was concerned, it was him.

When I sat down next to him on the bed, my arm still supporting him, the weight of everything must have finally hit him and he started collapsing back. I could’ve held him up but it caught me off guard. As a result, I ended up falling back first, with him landing top of me. I scooted back farther on the bed so I could sit up more. His head was resting on my lap, and I meant to try and help him up, but then I felt the desperate way he was gripping my thigh. There was nothing sexual about it, but it was like he just needed to hang onto something, so he was clinging onto me.

“I got you some blood,” Peter said numbly when he walked back into the room. He looked down at Ezra, squeezing painfully onto me, and so I gave him a questioning look. Peter just pressed his lips into a thin line and didn’t say anything.