you love? Ask me about Hope someday, and I’ll tell you what pride is worth.” Hunter’s face was stark with remembered pain. “It’s worth exactly nothing, my friend. Exactly nothing.”
Before Bane could respond, the hours-old vampire turned his back and walked away.
Chapter Forty-Five
Two days later…
When Meara finally answered her phone—and Ryan had only gotten the number by sending Annie to threaten Katrina the shop owner with a lawsuit—she didn’t open with hello or how are you. Instead, she only spoke six devastating words.
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
“Meara! Just tell me. Is he okay?”
“He’s…he’s alive.”
And then she hung up.
Ryan finished dressing, having finally talked the doctors into releasing her, although they couldn’t understand how she could have healed so quickly. It’s not like she could tell them that she’d been literally touched by an angel.
Her father. Ramiel.
One of the Fallen.
He’d only stayed for less than a minute, healed her, and said he’d be back. And every minute of every hour since then, she’d tried—and failed—to remember exactly what he looked like. There had been light.
Lots of glowing, golden light.
Warmth.
An overwhelming sense of tremendous power and tremendous peace.
And then she’d woken up the next morning, completely healed. It had taken some fast talking to keep anyone from checking her bandages or repeating any x-rays. In the end, only the fact that she was a doctor on staff and was threatening to check herself out AMA—Against Medical Advice—convinced them to let her go. Annie had gone home, finally, to get some sleep, so now was the time to escape.
She was going straight to Bane’s house, and he’d damn well see her and talk to her, whether he wanted to or not. She was furious.
Livid.
Who the hell did he think he was to make her decisions for her?
Because that’s exactly what this was. He was afraid, because she’d been hurt. He didn’t want her to get hurt again.
She got it. She felt the same way about him.
But Bane had said forever. And promise you won’t leave me.
And, unless she was totally crazy, he’d been about to tell her he loved her. Now, though, he thought he could get rid of her so easily, for her own good, no doubt.
“Oh no, you won’t, you arrogant ass,” she told her empty room.
She was Nephilim, not some ordinary human he could brush off. She’d kick his ass if he even thought about trying. Moving slowly, in case anybody saw her and wondered why she’d healed so miraculously—talk about your puns—she picked up her backpack and headed out.
She had a few stops to make on her way to convince a vampire that he needed her in his life.
Chapter Forty-Six
The doorbell rang at five minutes past sunset, and Mrs. C called out that she’d get it.
Bane, pacing the floor from kitchen to parlor and back, over and over, with brief breaks to check his phone for status reports, barely registered his housekeeper answering the door until she called his name.
“What do you mean, she left the hospital? Where the fuck is she? What am I paying you a damn fortune for if you can’t keep track of one wounded woman?” he shouted into the phone.
Mrs. C leaned around the open door and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Bane? I—it’s for you.”
“Send them away,” he snarled and kept pacing.
“Nooo, I think you need to see this.”
He started to snap at her, but Mary Jo didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his rage, so he walked over and yanked the door open.
A young man holding the strings to what looked like dozens of balloons stood on his porch.
“Are you Mr. Bane?”
Bane just looked at him, and the boy’s face paled.
“He is,” Mrs. C said, smiling broadly.
Traitor.
“I have to sing, dude,” the boy said, shrugging. Then, much to Bane’s horror and Mrs. C’s amusement, he burst into song.
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
You’re wrong, wrong, wrong, but I’m coming for you
Happy birthday to you
Bane stared at him, willing him to stop. Wondering why his own skin was trying to leap off his body. When the kid finally quit making that hideous noise, Bane glared at him and said the first thing that came to mind.
“It’s not my birthday.”
And then the reason electric sparks were jumping off Bane’s nerve endings stepped out from the side of the porch, where she’d been hidden.
“Don’t scare my balloon guy,” she said, a little smile playing on her luscious lips.
Ryan.
He automatically started to reach for her but then came to his senses. First,