Four-Letter Words by Evans, Gabrielle (top 10 books of all time .txt) 📗

Thane, for the agony this would cause him. Fate had created them as two and then made them one. However, it seemed no matter how many times they found one another, it was just never meant to be.

The sounds of the room faded away, leaving him in a dark, tranquil place where a highlight reel of his life dominated all of his senses. It shouldn’t have surprised him that though he’d led a very long life—two of them actually—most of his best memories involved Thane. It didn’t speak well for his active participation in life, but the moment of clarity had a profound impact, rocking his beliefs to their core.

Everything he’d done, not done, or held back was not to protect Thane. It wasn’t because his mate was too weak or fragile to cope. He’d done them because he was too weak, too scared to allow himself to be vulnerable. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love. That was just something pretty he liked to tell himself to protect his heart.

The pressure against his windpipe increased until his vision began to blur and pulse at the edges. Held immobile by the spell cutting off his oxygen, he could only watch as the second witch leapt into the air, falling toward him in a graceful arc with his blade positioned for maximum damage.

Trying to protect his heart from Thane had been a fruitless endeavor. His lover owned him like no other ever would, had ensnared his heart and invaded his soul. Once he was finally able to admit it to himself, the floodgates opened, drowning him under a tsunami of emotion.

“I love you, Thane.” He didn’t know if it would work, highly doubted it would, but he pushed the thought at his mate with every ounce of his waning strength. Then he squared his shoulders, straightened his spine, and bravely faced his impending death.

Chapter Fourteen

“I love you, Thane.”

Gasping as the words he’d longed to hear for so long slipped into his mind, Thane thought his heart would shatter into a million bloody pieces. He kicked and screamed, pounded his fists against the unmovable barrier while he berated himself for being a useless piece of shit. He’d led his mate into this, and now, he could do nothing but curse the gods as he watched his mate die—again.

The golden blade glimmered in the light cast by the overhead lanterns as it sliced through the air on an impact course with Zasha’s neck. Thane cried out for his mate, yelled Zasha’s voice at the top of his lungs until he feared his throat would bleed.

Emerging from the tangle of embattled bodies, one of the werewolves flew through the air, his open mouth and dripping canines aimed for the head of the fucker who held Zasha immobile. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and Thane knew the image of all that blood would be forever burned into his memory. Under different circumstances, he might have cared.

The attack released Zasha from the holding spell, and he collapsed to the ground only a millisecond before the sword landed where his neck had been. It was such a near miss that a lock of his hair floated on the breeze, separated from his head by the sharpness of the blade.

Thane’s relief was short-lived when he realized the opposing witch had landed on his feet, ready with his next move while Zasha knelt on the ground, coughing and gagging as he gasped for breath. Once again, however, Kieran proved to be the hero Thane couldn’t be, tackling the witch with enough force to send them both crashing into the stone wall with a sickening crack.

Somehow, Thane didn’t think the douchebag with the sword would be walking away from that one.

“No!” Lynk’s bloodcurdling scream sent a shiver down Thane’s spine. “Kieran!”

The werewolf slumped to his side, his chest rising and falling in short, shallow waves. Each breath appeared more laborious than the last, and a river of crimson pooled beneath him, flowing freely from the sword wound just below his ribcage. Then, with a sad, lingering gaze at Lynk, Kieran cough twice, melted into the ground, and exhaled his last breath.

Thane had no words. There was nothing he could say to his brother that would bring any semblance of comfort for a loss so tragic. There was still a measure of hope, but there were so many more things that could go wrong. For that reason, he resisted the urge to give Lynk that false security.

Something told him his brother wouldn’t hear him anyway. The wind kicked up, roaring through the tunnel and whipping against them. There was a charge, a crackle of something alive and powerful that surrounded them, and Thane didn’t have to look far to find the source of the energy.

Lynk was channeling his grief into an all-consuming fury, and the harder he breathed, the more violently the wind snapped against them. “I will kill him,” Lynk vowed.

An elbow to the gut from Raith had Thane pressing his lips together instead of informing Lynk the man he sought vengeance against was already dead. “Do you feel that?” Raith asked. There was a grin in his voice—a dirty, cocky little grin. “Boys, I do believe Cinderella has left the ball.”

What he’d mistaken as a reaction to Lynk’s anger was actually a surge in his own power, indicating that the witching hour had begun. With half of their enemies dead or unconscious, and the other half wounded and exhausted, it wasn’t going to be much of a fight, but Thane wasn’t interested in fair play.

With an echoing cry, Lynk threw both hands out in front of him, smashing them against the protective barrier and completely disintegrating the shield. After that, it took approximately four and half minutes for them to end the fight. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as Thane had expected, though. Hell, they hadn’t even had to get their hands dirty.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, they’d cast their spells and enchantments, lassoing their enemies with ease