“What did he say? Exactly,” Bo said evenly.
“One night I heard them talking in her bedroom. She was asking questions about his life and he was tel ing her about a son he had with another woman, a boy that he cal ed Boaz, and how that boy was trying to kil him. Of course, my mother was devastated. But me? I only wished that I could be the one to kil him.
“I hated him for what he’d done to her. It’s like he drained more and more of her life away with each visit. She got worse over time, like she was slowly going insane, and I knew it had something to do with what he was doing to her.
The last time he came, I heard him tel her that he had hoped that their child…me…would give him the blood that he needed, but that I hadn’t. He said he’d had to inject an unborn child. Said that he’d found one even better, one that might be linked to the Chosen One. He said that he had no further need of us.” Cade’s nostrils flared as he tried to contain his hatred of Sebastian. “She was dead the next morning. That’s when I found Annika.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A hush fel over the room, as though we al mourned the death of Cade’s mother. Annika was the first to break the silence.
“So, now you know our story. Your turn. What happened?”
After a long pause, Bo sighed deeply and dropped down onto the couch beside me. Tiredly, he rubbed a hand across his face. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and pushed a stray piece of sable hair away from his cheek. He leaned back against the cushions and, without glancing in my direction, took my hand and laid it on his thigh, covering it with his own.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
A smile flickered across Annika’s face before she realized that he was serious.
“What do you mean you have no idea?”
“Exactly that. I have no memory of my life before three years ago.”
“What?” she asked in disbelief.
“It’s true.”
Annika frowned. “Then how did you remember me?”
A pregnant silence stretched across the room as Bo struggled to find an answer. I scanned the faces, taking in Cade’s eyes, narrowed in suspicion, and Annika’s eyes as they sparked with the light of hope. When Bo glanced at me, I saw that his were fil ed with regret. My only question was: regret for what?
When Bo answered, his voice was low, uncertain. “I have no idea.”
A satisfied grin twitched at the corners of Annika’s pouty mouth before she brought it under control, careful y schooling her features into a politely blank mask.
It was when her gaze darted to me that I knew my fears were very real. Our eyes met for only a fraction of a second, but that’s al it took for me to see that Annika had come to find Bo for one reason and one reason alone—to get him back. She was in love with him.
“Wel , what do you remember?” she prompted.
“Just my life as it has been since a little over three years ago. Other than that, occasional y I have dreams that feel so real they’re like memories, but I have no real memories.”
“And yet you recognized me,” she added meaningful y.
“I might remember a lot more if I could see the places I’ve been, people I’ve known, things I’ve seen. Where did you say you’re from?”
“Lindersberg, Sweden.”
That’s when I realized the origin of the lilt in her voice.
She was Swedish.
“Sweden. Sweden,” Bo said, nodding slowly and repeating the word as if testing the feel of it on his tongue.
“Tel me about it.”
“About what?”
“Where I’m from.”
It was easy to see that Annika relished having al eyes on her, but more than that, she basked in Bo’s undivided attention. She reveled in the opportunity to paint the picture of their life together—their life before me.
Annika spoke in great detail about Lindersberg, several times eliciting a response from Bo. He was able to recal the orphanage where they met, though not in as much detail as she.
“Yes, you walked in like a confident rogue and I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. Even after you told me of your thirst, I knew that there was no other life for me. I was so glad when you agreed to turn me.”
Shocked, Bo sat forward in his seat just as the bottom dropped out of my world.
“Turned you? What?”
Annika smiled widely.
“The day you agreed to make me a vampire was the greatest day of my life. I’m just sorry you don’t remember it.
It was...”
Annika trailed off, casting her eyes toward the floor and glancing up at Bo from beneath her lashes. She was so coy I wanted to drop kick her.
"It was what?” Bo asked in that completely oblivious, masculine way.
“It was incredible,” she said quietly, her voice a husky whisper.
“Oh,” Bo murmured, almost dazed. He slid his fathomless eyes to me, the misery on his face reflected in their endless depths. “What kind of a person was I?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not that person anymore. You don’t know how much of an influence Sebastian had on you back then.”
Although Bo looked marginal y encouraged by my words, the worry carved into his features was plain to see, much like drawings of great burden etched into ancient stone.
“Do you remember Scabs?” Annika asked. She seemed as anxious as everyone else to move past the sudden tension.
Bo’s head jerked up and a smile drifted slowly into place.
It was like a fog lifting gently from the moors.
“Ohmigod, yeah! Scabs. Whatever happened to him?”
“It turns out that he was an English duke. He was kidnapped as a child. His parents final y found him years later. They identified him by a birthmark on his right cheek.”
“With al those scabs and acne scars, how could they even see a birthmark?”
“Not that right cheek,” Annika replied.
“Ah,” Bo breathed, chuckling. “So he was royalty?
Scabs?”
“Yes. He ended up marrying the beautiful daughter of some other royal family.”
“Scabs?” Bo repeated disbelievingly.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Bo just shook his head, mystified. “Tel me what happened to everyone else?”
And so Annika launched into an animated history of al the orphaned and vagrant friends they’d once shared. As they laughed and reminisced, quite a few facts returned to Bo. Al it took was Annika reminding him of certain details.