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ChapterThirty-OneMateoKat was dead,
actually dead like her heart had stopped, and I thought I killed her. I just
took her from this world and away from Ezra. She was muttering under her
breath, she was fine one second, the next, her entire body jolted, her back
arching, and she went limp.Ezra tapped her
face, the mark on my neck burning, and he clutched his as well when suddenly
her heart stopped. Didn't slow, didn't increase rapidly, just stopped along
with her breathing."Kat?"
Ezra asks, shaking her shoulders as her face pales, the color draining out of
her as she turns gray.My stomach sinks,
and Ares howls in my head when Ezra rips her from me. Places her on her back
before performing CPR. I completely lose it, and can't function while he tries
to bring her back. I stare, panic freezing me. Each second that passes feels
like hours, Ezra cracks one of her ribs as his hands compress her chest.I lose all sense of
time as I watch the nightmare unfold in front of me. I can’t lose her, I only
just got her, now I am the reason she is dead? Not only that, but I will never
be able to live with that guilt, live with knowing I killed her and destroyed
Ezra in one cruel act.Ezra pauses, looking
at me, I brush her hair from her face where it is sticking to her, yet she is
warm to the touch still, despite looking dead. Ezra's head sags, and horror
plays across his face, heartbreak is destroying him.“Kat, please,” I
whisper, I can’t be the reason she dies. “Kat?” I pray for some miracle, that
she comes back to us. When she suddenly takes a deep breath, Ezra jumps, and I
grab her face, her eyes refocusing, the color in her face returns as she gasps
for air, staring at us frantically. Relief hits me when I hear her speak.“What...what
happened?” she asks, looking at us with her brows all wrinkled, as if she's
just as confused as we are.“You were fine, you
were awake, then you just stopped breathing, and your heart stopped,” I tell
her. The words leave my lips, terrifying me as I clutch her face. “You’re ok,
you’re ok,” I whisper, pressing my head to hers and inhaling her intoxicating scent.
Kat calms me when I feel Ezra do the same, his hand clutching the back of my
neck, his thumb brushing it softly while he has his other hand on Kat. Relief
floods me when I realize he doesn't hate me for almost taking her from us.“I am okay, we are
all ok,” she comforts, sitting up. Her voice is like music to my ears. I never
want her to stop talking, her voice calms me, and Ares, who is clawing at the
inside of my mind, he wanted to check for himself to make sure.Ezra rubs her cheek
softly, he is always so gentle with her, she brings out a different side to
him, she calms him and Maddox.“Your mark…it’s
different,” he points out. I lean around him as he brushes her hair aside, his
thumb trailing over our bite marks. It is a deep blue color on her skin, my
bite overlapping Ezra’s when I realized where I saw the same marking, only the
color was different.“She is a Gemini?” I
whisper to Ezra, and he looks at me before we both turn to Kat, she stares
back, but by the look on her face, she already knows what she has become. Kat
chuckles, and I stare at her, trying to figure out what she thinks is so funny.“You just died, and
you're laughing?” Ezra asks, just as shocked as me, what the heck can she find
so funny right now?“She killed me,” Kat
giggles, making me wonder if the lack of oxygen tampered with her brain. Ezra
laughs nervously, it was the only way to describe his laugh, like he doesn’t
know what else to do as she erupts into fits of giggles over dying.“Well,
she is alive, she may be batshit crazy now, but she is still ours,” Ares reassures, peering out my eyes when her laughing stops, and her
face falls. I know she is in shock. I can feel it in her emotions, she can’t
believe what is happening like she is trying to comprehend that she had just
died.“Kat?” Ezra asks
softly, touching her face, and drawing her attention back to where her mind
just took her.“To give life, you
must take it,” she mutters to herself, like she is trying to figure out a
riddle.“What?” Her words
don't make sense.“That’s why she
killed me. I had to die to become the Gemini and break the curse. She gifted me
with life, but I was cursed with death, we all were. They were all rejected or
were killed by their mates, you two broke the curse by marking me and accepting
each other, you freed Kora,” she rattles off like she is trying to process the
information.“What’s Kora got to
do with it?” Ezra questions.“Kora was with all
of us, she just never remembered those lives, she needed her mates to set her
free, all of us did to break the curse/blessing, whatever you want to call it.
Unfortunately, the only way to break the curse was to become a Gemini Healer. Josiah
was the first person she cursed, he broke the curse, but in the end, he made
the wrong sacrifice which cost him his life.”Her eyes dart to me,
and sadness ripples through the bond, while Ezra and I try to work out who the
heck Josiah is before I remember the man from the journals.“Josiah?” I ask,
trying to piece together the information. Kat just stares at me like she is
looking at a ghost, as if she could see straight through me. “Kat?” I ask when
she continues to stare. I grab her face and brush my thumbs underneath her
eyes, and she leans into my touch, her hands going over mine.“I won’t lose you,”
she whispers so low I nearly don’t catch it.I kiss her forehead,
pulling her onto my lap. “So, does that mean if you bite us, we will die now?”
I ask, leaning back on the headboard. I try to remember the journal and the
information in it.“No, it works as our
saliva does, I have to want to kill you, just like your saliva has to change to
heal me.” She leans forward before reaching into the bedside drawer and pulling
out her nail file.Ezra and I both
watch her when she suddenly stabs it into her hand. Ezra rips it from her
before both of us hiss in pain, and when I look at my hand, I see an identical
wound to hers, though hers heals quickly while ours slowly heals. Ezra places
the nail file down away from her, eyeing her worriedly.“I’m tied to you,
that's how Josiah was able to heal,” she explains before sliding off my lap and
rushing out of the room before either of us could grab her.I focus on my hand,
while Ezra stares at his own before wiping it on the towel he still has around
his waist. Our hands were healed.“So she can heal
now, like the Gemini,” I whisper to myself.Just as I was about
to ask where she went, she returns with the journal. She flicks through the
pages before stopping on the page about the Gemini Healer. “It doesn’t say
whether you are tied to me, or I am just tied to both of you,” she stresses.Ezra sighs before
grabbing the nail file and stabbing his hand with it. Kat hisses and looks at
her hand, but there was no mark like we had when she did it to herself.“I can feel your
pain, but your injuries don’t affect me,” she thinks out loud before nodding.
To her, it made sense, while to me, it made none, all this curse stuff gave me
a headache.Ezra wipes his hand
on the towel again to reveal it is healed once more, and Maddox presses
forward.“I don’t know what
it means,” Kat huffs in frustration.Kat is frantic
inside. Her thoughts are tumultuous. Through the newly formed bond, I can tell
she is terrified of something, panicked every time she glances at me. She
shakes her head and comes back to me, climbing into my lap.She is alright,
that's all I care about. Anything else we will deal with later, but for now,
she seems fine. Ezra moves closer to me, their mixed scent invading my senses.
Hers is stronger, seeing as I marked her already. My eyes instinctively go to
his neck as the longing to mark him takes me over.Ares also wants to
mark him as he presses beneath my skin, peering out at our mates, Kat runs her
fingers through my chest hair, and I grab her hand, kissing her fingertips. I
don’t feel adequate compared to them and am undeserving, yet I can’t live without
them. I need them.“I love you,” Kat
whispers, looking up at me. I lean down, kissing her soft full lips, they part
as she kisses me back, her tongue brushing mine softly before she pulls back.“I love you too,” I
admit, wondering what she was so fearful of. Ezra watches us, or more
specifically Kat, like he expects her to evaporate into thin air. He wants to
touch her, his hand trails up her bare thigh before he leans down, pressing his
lips to hers. He sucks her bottom lip into his mouth, and she moans, wriggling
on my lap and her excitement sparks through the bond. My cock throbs at the
sight of them. Ares whines in my head, he wants both of his mates. It makes me
wonder if Ezra would ever allow me to mark him.Ezra pulls back
before startling me when captures my lips with his own, not gentle like he is
with Kat, but demanding and dominating as he leans over the both of us. He
grabs the short hairs at the back of my neck and forces me in place as he
thoroughly kisses me, his tongue invading and controlling mine before he pulls
far enough away to bite down on my bottom lip just until blood wells and he
lets go with a hungry smirk.I stare at him. It
is still hard to believe this is really happening, that Ezra of all people had
just kissed me, and a possessive kiss like that, like he wants to show me just
who I belong to. Is it the bond he's reacting this strongly to, or did he want
to kiss me? It is hard to tell. Ezra has always been good at hiding his
emotions, he had to, he was Alpha, if he hadn't learned early on how to do it,
the rest of the world would have torn him to shreds.Glancing down, I
notice Kat watching us with a small smile on her lips, and I forgot she could
tell everything I felt, making my face burn.“Mateo wants to mark
you,” Kat remarks, and I stare. She raises her eyebrow at me like she is daring
me to deny it.She is right. I do
want to mark him, I have since I was 18, but I have loved him even longer than
that. I would have taken him as my chosen mate at 14, I have always loved the
man, but now with Kat, things are different. I love her just as much, but I know
if push came to shove and I had to choose. She would be my choice. I know that
is what Ezra and I both would want. She is ours to protect, ours to love, just
like we are hers.“You only have to
ask, Mateo,” Ezra growls. “And, since when do you get tongue-tied? Usually, I
can’t get you to shut up,” Ezra adds, and I realize I am just staring at him
yet haven’t agreed or denied what she said. I swallow, suddenly overwhelmed at
the thought.