I felt Jack when he entered the room, and not like before. My heart always knew exactly how far he was from me. The way plants strained for the sun, I strained for him.
I had changed. My skin was smoother, my hair silkier, my eyes brighter. While I hadn’t exactly been fat before, I had a new elegance to how I looked.
The change wasn’t as drastic as it had been with Milo, more like I had simply gone through a makeover, but I definitely looked better. And I had shot up from 5’3” to a whopping 5’5” feet tall.
Once I was fully conscious, fed, and the pain had gone away, I wanted to fill in the missing gap. The last thing I remembered before surrendering into the transformation was that I had just drank Jack’s blood, and he was about to battle Peter.
But here we were, in Jack’s room, with him by my side, and we both seemed alright.
“What happened?” I asked, forcing myself to sit up in his bed.
“When?” Jack played dumb. He sat at the end of his bed, watching me.
“How are we both alive?” I asked, and he laughed, completely distracting me.
His laughter, which had always had power over me, rippled through me. It was almost too miraculous to really comprehend the actual sound.
“You look totally in awe right now,” Jack smirked at me.
“I am but… don’t change the subject.” I blinked to focus myself. “How are we alive? Is Peter…”
Jack’s lips tightened into a thin line at the mention of him. Maybe it wasn’t the sound of his name quite as much as my underlying concern, but he pushed aside his feelings and decided that I deserved an explanation.
“No. He’s alive.” He let his words hang in the air, and I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“How? How are you both alive?” I asked.
“I broke the bond.” The glimmer returned to his eyes and an easy smile spread across his face, enchanting me. “When you drank my blood, whatever tie you had with Peter was severed.”
That should’ve been obvious. As soon as I thought of Peter, I didn’t have that physical ache for him or that fluttery feeling in my heart. While I had concern for his well-being, the only things I felt physically were a dull bloodlust and a pull towards Jack.
“So we’re… bonded now?” I spoke cautiously, afraid it was too good to be true.
After all this time trying to figure a way around it, around Peter, it almost seemed impossible to believe that while I was sleeping, it had happened.
“What do you think?” Jack smiled crookedly at me. Breathing him in, feeling the way my body felt magnetized to his, I knew we were bonded.
My first big clue was when Jack had opened his veins in the den, and I had been unable to resist the scent of his blood. It tasted wonderful, and my mouth watered at the thought of it. But no vampires’ blood should be that appealing to humans. People aren’t meant to have bloodlust, but I did, for Jack.
“So then what happened?” I continued, ignoring the delirious happiness taking over me. My heart sped up and my thirst intensified, but I wanted my curiosity satisfied before I dealt with my other pressing needs.
“I don’t know.” Jack furrowed his brow, but more out of displeasure over the subject. “I was in the den with you, and Peter went crazy in the other room. I was afraid he would hurt you, so I ran out to find out what happened. He was destroying the house, and Ezra could barely contain him. But he didn’t seem to care about me when I came out.”
“But why? If he didn’t want to hurt you, why was he so angry?”
“He felt it break.” He lowered his eyes from mine. “The bond. If you hadn’t been out, you would’ve felt it. And if you hadn’t bonded with me, you’d still be feeling it. Apparently, it’s… incredibly painful.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He shifted and hesitated before continuing. “Physically, I guess it’s similar to turning, but on a smaller scale. But… something happens emotionally too. And Peter was so riled up from everything else that had been going on.”
Jack didn’t like talking about the fact that Peter had actually cared for me. He didn’t want to believe it because of how Peter treated me and how much Jack loved me. If he admitted that maybe Peter did truly love me, then what Jack had been doing with me suddenly became a betrayal, and Jack did not see it that way.
“So where is he now?” I asked.
“Nobody knows. He’s just gone, for good this time.” Jack shrugged, as if it was of no consequence to him.
“Good,” I lied and hoped he didn’t notice. Then I swatted his arm, probably harder than I meant to from the surprised grimace on his face.
“Thanks?”
“That’s for being the biggest idiot ever! How could you do something so stupid?” I yelled at him, and it was a tough decision not to hit him again. “You were going to kill yourself! If the bond hadn’t been snapped or whatever, you would’ve been murdered!”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Jack said, and he suppressed a laugh at my mini-outburst. “There was a good chance that I would die no matter what I did. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”