The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,179

put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, lowering her head.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said hoarsely. “If I die, I’ll wait for you in the Fade just like everyone else does. Hell, I’ll watch over the two of you from the clouds. I’ll be an angel to you both. But you … you have to stay with her.”

Bitty, after all, was going to live longer than he would. That was the way you hoped and prayed it worked. Children succeeded their parents, took their places, walked in future paths carrying on the traditions and the lessons so that that which had been passed down could be passed on again.

It was immortality for the mortal.

And that was true whether you birthed your young or opened your arms to them.

“You stay here, Mary.”

As the implications of Rhage’s request started to sink in, Mary felt her heart pound and her body break out in a cold sweat.

Even though she had confessed a desire to keep him on the planet for exactly the rationale he was laying out, to hear him put it like that? The whole thing made her queasy, returning her to that moment when she’d thought she was going to lose him—even though, at that time, she’d been aware she could go find him in the Fade.

It was as if he were once more lying there gasping for breath he could not quite catch, bleeding inside his chest, slipping away even as his body stayed before her.

Then she thought of Bitty in the back of the GTO, crying, lost, alone.

“Yes,” Mary said roughly. “I will stay. For her. For however long she is alive, I’ll stay with her.”

Rhage exhaled long and slow. “That’s good. That’s…”

They met in the middle, each walking toward the other, and when they embraced, she put her head to the side of his heavy chest, hearing his heartbeat right next to her ear. Staring off across the dimly lit gym, she hated the choice she had just made, the vow she had just taken … and at the same time, she was so very grateful for it.

“She can’t know,” Mary blurted as she pushed back a little and looked up. “Bitty can’t know about me—at least not until after she makes her decision. I don’t want her fear of being alone coloring the choice she’s going to have to make. If she wants to come with us, it has to be because she chooses to freely. All the death in her life can be part of it, but it can’t be all of it.”

“Agreed.”

Mary went back to being close to him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They stood there in the gym for the longest time. And then Rhage switched his hold on her, extending one set of their arms out to the side, and snaking his other around her waist.

“Dance with me?” he said.

She laughed a little. “To what kind of music?”

“Anything. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Just dance with me here in the dark.”

For some reason, tears pricked her eyes as they started to move, swaying at first, the shuffle of their feet over the smooth floor and the rustle of their clothes the only auditory accompaniment. Soon, they found a rhythm, and then he was leading her in a waltz, an old-fashioned, proper waltz that he was far better at than she was.

Sweeping around the empty space, she discovered that a symphony started to play in her mind, the strings and the flutes, the timpani drums and the trumpets giving majesty and power to their dancing.

Around and around they went until she was smiling up at him even as a tear fell.

She knew what he was doing. She knew exactly why he had asked her to do this.

He was reminding her that the future was unknown and unknowable.

So if you had the chance … even if there was no music and no ballgown, no tuxedo or gala … when your true love asked you to dance?

It was important to say yes.

SIXTY-THREE

Vishous stood outside of the gym, looking through one of the steel doors that had the glass windows with chicken wire running through them.

Rhage and Mary were dancing in the empty space, twirling around, the female’s smaller body held tightly and led by her male’s much, much larger one. They were looking at each other, staring into each other’s eyes. Shit, you could swear there was a quartet or maybe a full orchestra playing in there, the way they moved so well