Soul Mates: Sacrifice

I sat up in bed and hit the switch on the headboard. The soft light that illuminated the bed wouldn't bother Lucien, but it was a sudden shock to my eyes. I'd been staring into darkness for the better part of an hour, my mind restless. A dream had ruined what could have been the most perfect day of sleep in a long while.

Knees to my chest, I leaned against the headboard, one hand on Lucien's head, thumb moving lightly back and forth over his forehead. Lucien had fallen into a deep sleep long before dawn had arrived. He'd fed and then rolled over and crashed, mumbling that he was sorry he was so sleepy.

It was still so soon after what had happened to him. Being taken from his own bed, impaled on a bed of spikes in the floor of a coffin, and then buried for over a week tends to take a lot of out of someone. As it was, if we'd been even hours later in finding him, Lucien would have been dead.

Permanently.

He wasn't fully recovered yet. His leg still hurt him more than he would acknowledge and he was weak from the blood loss and power drain. The best donors available had fed him, and his wounds could no longer be seen on the surface, but his body was still damaged on the inside and needed to heal.

So far, Lucien had been in good spirits. He'd seemed to be dealing with everything okay, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before it really hit him that it was Caleb who was the cause of everything that had happened.

Caleb.

The one he'd loved and cherished for so long—the one he'd trusted above all others.

Hell, I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around what Caleb had done. And I'd seen the damned video of him and Cyril together. I knew he'd done it, heard what at least part of his motivation had been, but part of me still couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it.

The last time I'd seen Caleb was the night before the Coven meeting. I'd run into him right outside my bedroom door and he was in a big-ass hurry to get away. I guess now I knew the reason why, but I couldn't understand why he'd even come back here after everything he'd done.

None of it made sense to me. Only Caleb knew why he'd done what he'd done. I'd always been of the belief that jealousy makes people do stupid things. But this? This was beyond stupidity.

I shook my head and crawled off the bed, wandering over to the closet. I found a pair of jeans and was just slipping them on when I heard the lock on the bedroom door click.

Xander.

As I buttoned my jeans, I poked my head out of the closet. He wasn't wearing anything but a loose pair of black cotton shorts and his hair was disheveled. He'd been sleeping.

"Hey, baby."