Girl, Forsaken by Graceley Knox

Author:Graceley Knox [Knox, Graceley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chaotic Press, LLC
Published: 2018-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

In Arsen’s underground fortress, time has no meaning. When we untangle and I look at my phone, I find out the day has slipped into a new one, and it’s time I get on with my life. Arsen eyes me warily.

“I have to go and get back to the lab.”

He nods. There can be no words between us now that will have any meaning. Our souls joined for that space and anything we say will be trivial in comparison to that. We understand each other in a molecular way. For someone like Arsen, who thought himself intractably alone, the experience leaves him without foundations.

The same for me.

But aside from being in the same place, with Nikolai as my maker and claiming me, this virus, and the plain obvious fact that someone wants all vampires swept from the face of the Earth, the only thing standing between the end of vampire kind is me. It is more than humbling; it is soul bending.

There is so much room for failure and so little space for success.

I do not want to leave. Here with Arsen I can shut out the world.

My phone beeps, and a text pops up from Jackson asking if I want to get together for practice today. I don’t know what this means because I thought I made myself clear yesterday.

“Jackson?” Arsen peeks over my shoulder.

I shrug, not knowing what to say. I love Jackson as a friend, a brother even, but in my current circumstances that’s a deadly relationship to have.

“If you spend too much time with Jackson, no one in either clan will trust you, Sasha.”

Maybe he didn’t get the memo when we joined that I all but torpedoed my friendship with Jackson.

“I don’t plan on it.”

But another emotion rolls off Arsen, and it is not pleasant. In fact, it makes my skin itch.

Jealousy.

“Stay. Spend more time with me. Let me show you what I feel is real.”

His resentment and anger toward Jackson sweep over me like a tidal wave. I fight it, like a swimmer in a riptide, but I’m not getting any closer to shore. Damn it. Doesn’t Arsen know that I’ll always want him? It hurts, like a hari-kari knife jammed into the gut that he doesn’t trust me.

It’s too much and the only way I know to deal with it is to leave. To give us both some time to process. Right now, I feel like I’m strapped to the front of a high-speed train, and I’m about to go off the rails.

“I don’t have time for this, Arsen. I’m late.”

“For Jackson?”

His words ooze bitterness and it batters my flayed psyche. I scuttle off the bed and fling on my clothes. If I answer, my words will only cut, and I don’t want to do that.

My anger flares and bursts like a Fourth of July firework. “What? Do you think you’re the only man I spend time with? I’m allowed to have male friends.”

Arsen regards me with arctic coolness, his outward control absolute.

“No, I don’t.

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