Quinn's Undying Rose
Page 19

Quinn’s heart rejoiced at the sight of her. “You’re alive!”
Happiness poured through every cell of his body, making him feel alive for the first time in two hundred years. At the same time, his eyes greedily roamed her body, not being able to get enough of this vision.
She was as young as when he’d seen her last. He’d come back from the war to claim her. She’d looked just like she looked now. Her hair was golden, her eyes sparkled in a bright blue, her red lips beckoned for a kiss. Not a single wrinkle marked her flawless face. And her body: slender, young, and utterly enticing. Back then, she’d been dressed in the fashion of the day, her legs always hidden beneath layers of fabric, and just as well. Had the men of that era seen her legs the way they were encased in tight fitting jeans right now, they would have made fools of themselves in public.
Yes, public ravishing would have ensued.
Just as he wanted to ravish her now. His feet carried him to her without him even realizing. When he stopped only inches from her, he lifted his hand, touching her golden hair. She wasn’t an illusion his lovesick mind had conjured up—she was real. Flesh and blood.
His fingers connected with her skin, stroked over the silken softness of it.
His Rose was alive. As beautiful as back then, yet different: she was a vampire.
The realization took only seconds to sink in. What this meant took longer to digest: she’d been alive all these years, while he’d thought her dead, while he’d grieved for her.
At that moment something inside him snapped. The heart that had cherished her love for two centuries and kept it alive, suddenly cracked, a fault line the size of the St. Andreas fault carving itself through it.
His voice turned to ice when he addressed her again. “You made me believe you were dead.”
All these years she’d been alive, and she’d never come to see him. Had she not loved him even a little? For two hundred years, he’d mourned her, pined for her, and she had been alive all this time.
“I did no such thing.”
Hearing her voice for the first time in two centuries, nearly undid him. Despite the words, the sound was as sweet as a bird song. He knew he was a fool, but when it came to Rose, he would never truly be in possession of all his faculties.
“I went to your grave! I read the gravestone. You died shortly after I returned from the war.”
She made a dismissive hand movement. “So I did.” Then she straightened. “But I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to save our grandson.”
Shock made him stumble back a couple of paces. “Our what?” he choked out.
“Well, Blake is our great-great-great-great-grandson, but that’s just too long a word.”
God, how easy it was for her to talk to him, as if it all meant nothing, as if she wasn’t at all affected by this reunion. Her words sounded so matter-of-fact, whereas he could barely string a coherent sentence together. How cold had she become, the woman he’d once called wife?
“We had a child?” he managed to ask while he was barely able to keep upright.
“A daughter.”
The clearing of a throat made him snap toward the sound.
“I think I’ll leave you alone,” Gabriel said as he walked to the door.
Quinn hadn’t even noticed that he was still in the room, so taken in was he by Rose’s presence.
“I’ll be downstairs in Maya’s office if you need me,” Gabriel added before closing the door behind him.
Slowly, Quinn drew his gaze back to Rose, trying to digest her words. A daughter. He was a father.
“Where is she?”
A sad look crossed her face. “She’s long dead. She lived a full life, a happy—”
Quinn pounced, slamming her against the wall behind her, before he even knew what he was doing.
“You deprived me of ever knowing my daughter? You kept her from me? How could you be so heartless? How could you lie to me like that?”
She didn’t blink when she met his furious glare.
“This is exactly why.” She motioned to his claws that pressed her against the wall. “You came back as a vampire. I was afraid for her. I was afraid you’d hurt her if you knew she existed.”
“I would never hurt my own flesh and blood!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Never! Do you understand that?”
“Don’t you remember what you were like then? How you reacted when I . . . when . . . ?”
“You mean when you rejected me because of what I had become?” he hissed, hatred filling his heart, where love and grief had lived for two centuries.