Her eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
“When we made love, I bit you. I marked you.” His hand slid from hers and touched her on the shoulder. That sweet curve that led up to her neck. His fingers trailed over her silken skin. “When you mark here, that’s a mating bite for my kind. Fucking binding as marriage. I’m locked to you, tied to you now for the rest of my life. I won’t ever be happy with anyone else.” He’d never feel so much as a flicker of desire for anyone else. He couldn’t. He was mated and that meant that he belonged—body and soul—to her.
“I don’t really want you happy with anyone else,” she muttered.
She didn’t get it.
“If you were a shifter, the marking would have just condemned us both to a life where we were always tied to one another. If you left me, you’d mourn for me. Your body would hurt because you needed me close to you.” He exhaled. “But you’re not a shifter, thankfully. So the rules that apply to me…they won’t apply to you. You can walk away. You can be happy without me. You can have a life that isn’t tied to a monster.”
“And what about you? Will you be happy without me?”
Never. “I will be happy…knowing that you’re safe. Knowing that you have a life that suits you better.”
“You’re…you’re telling me to walk away.”
He was trying to get her to run away. “Being noble isn’t something I do well.” Or at all, usually. “I am the monster in the closet. The one that little kids are supposed to fear. I’m a nightmare, and I don’t know how to handle anything good.” His hand lingered against her skin. “When I try, I destroy it.” Just like he’d destroyed her. “You need someone better than me. You need to go…you need to just…leave, Rose. Live your life.”
“Without you.” She shook her head. Tears gleamed in her beautiful eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because, for once, I want to put someone else first. I don’t want to be like Simon. I don’t want to take and take and take…until there is nothing left of you.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “But I thought…”
He forced a hard smile. “That we’d get a happy ending? That’s not for people like me. The ending I wanted…I wanted a redo for you. I wanted Leo to make you human again, and then I was going to get him to make you forget me.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “What?”
“We weren’t going to be together when this story ended. You were going to have your life, and I was just going to be a bad dream that faded away when you woke up at dawn.”
“You were going to do that—to me?” And she jerked away from him. She fumbled with the door, and she shoved it open, sending a crack snaking along the glass with the force she used. “You bastard!”
She jumped out of the chopper. He didn’t follow her.
“You don’t get to decide my life! I’ve learned to be a vampire and you know why? Not because I’m evil or dark or any crap like that…but because I’m strong.” Her hand gripped the door. “I’m strong enough to keep going even when I was so terrified of the world around me. I’m strong enough that I learned to hunt, learned to live a whole new life. If I didn’t want this, I could have given up at any moment. You think Luke didn’t offer me a way out?”
“What?” Shock froze his heart. No, no, Luke would not have done that. He’d known just how desperate Julian was for Rose, how much he cared for her. He would not have offered her death.
“When I opened my eyes, he immediately started telling me the ways that I could die. He was giving me an out right then.”
Julian shook his head. No, Luke had just been warning her…hadn’t he? Doubt gnawed at him as he started to see the past with different eyes.
“And he came to me later…when I was so afraid of killing someone else, and he had a wooden stake with him. He told me…he told me that I wouldn’t even feel the pain, if that was what I wanted.”
For an instant, the whole world went dark. Rose—dead? Luke had gone to her with a stake. I will kill him. “The sonofabitch never told me—”
“That he offered me death? He did, but I didn’t want death. I wanted to keep living. I chose to keep going. It’s been my choice all along. Just like you have been. I want you, Julian. I love you. Beast or man, it’s the same to me. You are the same.”
“Rose…”
“It’s time for you to make a choice.” She let go of the door and stepped back. “If you want me, then we’re looking to the future. There is no more guilt and no more regret. No more fear, not for either of us.”