Until the Heart Stops: A Forbidden Vampire Romance (The Oylen City Series Book 1) by Gillian Eliza West

Author:Gillian Eliza West [West, Gillian Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

For eight nights I had not seen Callum.

I had felt him through the bond, even caught flashes of light, tiny snippets of his thoughts. A few times I’d caught the image of my face in his mind and the bittersweet longing attached to it made my throat ache. But there were long stretches where the bond appeared to close, as if he was shutting a door on his end, and I couldn’t reach him. Occasionally a few wisps of emotion slipped through, but they were muddled, only the approximation of feeling.

They scared me all the same because he was afraid.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Adrienne murmured while I brushed back her hair.

With a sigh, I started her braid, trying not to think about Callum or this connection he’d forged between us. When Adrienne had returned from her family’s house that morning, I hadn’t had the stomach to tell her about what had happened, let alone inform Noah when he trudged through the door covered in black blood and half asleep.

Twisting the braid into a knot at the back of her head, I held my hand out over her shoulder for the golden pin she almost always wore. But instead of giving me the pin, she grabbed my wrist, tugged me around until I was standing in front of her, one hip pressed against the counter of the stall.

“Talk to me.” The request was quiet, but there was still a pleading note to the words.

Twisting my mouth to the side, I swallowed back the lump in my throat, looking down at her hand wrapped around mine. She wore a new ring on her index finger, a sapphire inlaid in silver, and it reminded me of the ring Callum wore. Everything reminded me of him, which was so strange because I barely knew the male. Yet from the moment I’d seen him, I’d wanted him, yearned for him as Amayah had Deimos.

But instinct had me choosing my words carefully, regardless of how much I wanted to tell Adrienne everything I knew. Callum had said “we can’t do this” and there had been such fear in the bond warring with his desire. To admit he was the male who had been sending me gifts, who had sent me his blood, would put him in danger. So instead I shrugged, flipping my hand over to grab hers, and managed a small smile. “I have not heard from my patron in days…I suppose I’m worried he’s grown tired of me.”

Her head tilted to the side, making the braid unravel behind her. “But what of the connection?”

We hadn’t spoken of it since that first night and even now she dropped her voice to a whisper. This time my smile was bitter. “He’s shutting me out for long stretches.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

I managed another shrug, lifted our hands to press a kiss to her knuckles before letting go and returning to her hair. “Perhaps he regrets the connection and is biding his time until it wanes.

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