Reaper

Lilly had been gone a few minutes before Sawyer got the courage to speak.

I had bombarded her with questions once that sentence had left her mouth. She told me that she had examined the cells in Sawyer’s blood – they were completely human. And the poison hadn’t killed him. Once I thought about it with what I knew about Reapers, the solution – that Sawyer was a human – well, it made sense.

I’m just not quite sure whether or not I wanted to believe it.

I was slumped back in the chair now, staring idly into space.

If Sawyer wasn’t a Reaper anymore, did that mean that I wasn’t his mate anymore? The thought sat like an icy weight on my chest. I wasn’t quite to the point where I had accepted the fact that Sawyer and I were mates, but now that he was human, the idea that that possibility could be gone forever was more than I could handle. We didn’t even have the chance to know for sure because we had never… well.. been intimate enough to know.

But maybe Sawyer being a human was a good thing. Maybe we didn’t have to be mates anymore. Maybe without it he would realize that he was wasting his time with me, and he’d find someone else. I didn’t want that, but I also didn’t want him to be forced into the relationship like he would have been.

Oh, god, I felt like I was going to be sick.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Charlotte.”

That certainly yanked me out of my thoughts. My head snapped up to look at him, eyes wide, as he ran his good hand through his curly black hair. “What?” I said hoarsely, bracing my hands on the arms of the chair.

His mouth hung open like he was going to say something. He opened and closed it a few times, trying to figure out exactly what to say. “When I was fifteen, Hunter changed my life. Knowing what was wrong with me, why I was the way I was…” He clenched his fist tightly. “For the first time, I felt like I knew who I was.” He looked me straight in the eyes, his emerald irises burning. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

His face broke in a way that I never expected to see from him. His shoulders slumped and he leaned back against the pillows on his massive bed, clenching his jaw tightly and letting his eyes slide shut. I saw his chest move up and down slightly, but that was the only indication that he was alive.

Slowly, carefully, I pulled myself out of my chair and crawled into the bed next to him. He stiffened – I wasn’t sure whether in pain or in surprise – but he made no move to stop me as I climbed under his good arm and rested my head on his chest. After a pause, he wrapped his arm around me tightly, like he never wanted to let go.

I’m not sure how long exactly we stayed like that. It could have been hours, for all I know. I listened to his heart – his human heart – pound away beneath his skin. He was alive. The bullet hadn’t killed him, but hearing news like Lily had just told him might.

“I might have been your mate,” I said softly once I mustered up the courage.

He didn’t say anything for a long time. His thumb stroked the top of my forearm idly, and I wondered if he had heard me or if he had just chosen to ignore me.

“I know,” he said finally. “I’m almost sure you were.”

I pulled away slightly so that I could look up at him. “Do you think we still… I mean, do you still…” I was frustrated because I wanted to ask him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

He leaned forward and kissed my forehead gently. “Yes, Charlie. I’m still in love with you,” he admitted, staring down at me.

I felt my face flush. I didn’t think I could ever get used to that. “This doesn’t change how I feel about you,” I told him earnestly, trying to convey that both with my words and with my eyes.

He looked sad for a while, trying to pick his words carefully again. “You shouldn’t want to be with me. I’ve killed people, Charlotte – a lot of people. And I hated myself for it, but I can’t take any of those back. Your brothers are right to hate me.”

I lifted one of my hands up to cradle the side of his face. “Just because I shouldn’t doesn’t mean I don’t,” I told him. And it was true – I don’t think I could stop caring about Sawyer if I wanted to, not after seeing him get shot. The epiphany that I’d had after hearing Mason talk certainly helped.

He smiled. “Yeah, you certainly have a knack for getting yourself into trouble,” he joked, and suddenly he looked years younger.

We lay there for another long while, but this silence was comfortable. He gently played with my hair, stroking it softly. I felt myself begin to doze off, listening to the sound of his heart beat beneath my ear. I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head, and suddenly I was awake again.

“I don’t know how to be human,” he admitted quietly. I’m not sure if he wanted me to hear him or not. I was betting he didn’t, but I decided to answer him anyway. “I wasn’t great at it last time. I… I fought a lot of people. I was arrested. I wanted – I wanted to get out. I almost did.”

The weight of Sawyer’s confession dropped onto my shoulders. I took in his face as he looked down at me – he was scared. I had seen Sawyer in a lot of different moods: fierce, angry, loving, happy, passionate… But I had never seen him this way before. He looked vulnerable, surprisingly so for a man who I had thought was invincible. It was like I was seeing him for the first time, and I was seeing a scared preteen who didn’t know who he was.

I didn’t know what to say to him so I leaned up and closed the distance between our mouths, pressing a kiss lightly on his lips. He returned it, and tarted to feel some of the passion that he had had with me before this latest ordeal had happened – but after a while, he pulled back, a shy smile on his face. Part of me wanted to continue what we had started, but I repressed it the best I could, embarrassed.

“Being human is easy,” I told him, laying my head back onto my chest, “You just have to be afraid of everything but pretend like you’re afraid of nothing.”

He pulled me tighter to him, laying his own head on top of mine. “So how do humans fall in love?” he asked quietly. I could hear the smile in his voice – at least he wasn’t upset anymore. I didn’t know if I could handle Sawyer being upset.

“I’m not sure,” I said truthfully, trying not to get distracted by the way my body reacted when his hand trailed down my arm. “I don’t think I’ve ever been before.”

Sawyer chucked, and I felt it rumble beneath my cheek. “Me either.” He kissed the top of my head. After a beat, he pulled back from me so that he could look down at me again with those piercing green eyes. They were full of promise. “Charlotte Scott, I want to know everything about you.”

I felt a little winded and dizzy. I think that mostly had to do with the way he was looking at me – that did something funny to my insides whenever I thought about it, and I loved the way it felt. But his words, too, made me feel butterflies in my stomach. Even if neither of us had been in love before, it was like he knew that that would be the way to get us there. God, I sure hoped he was right.

“There’s not much to tell,” I mumbled, deciding to lean on my stomach so that I could keep looking up at him. “I’m 22. I grew up in Southern California with parents who were never there, a brother who never seemed to like me, and another brother who was so protective that-“

“-He built up an army to come save you?” Sawyer interrupted sarcastically.

I felt my face flush. “Well, yeah, I guess.” Noah could definitely be unreasonable sometimes, but I left out the fact that my parents were actually the ones that had put together the organization. “I was okay at school, crappy at sports, and even worse at socializing. I made a whole two friends in high school. One was Mandi, who had given me a makeover freshman year and decided I was her new best friend, and the other was Fitch, who sat next to me in art class sophomore year and hadn’t mustered up the courage to talk to anyone else. I was way, way too shy to make any other friends.”

Sawyer seemed surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I traced my index finger around in circles on his chest absentmindedly. “I moved to New York for school… and because my parents wanted me gone. I got a job bartending to help pay the bills… The rest is history.” I looked back up at him shyly. “There’s not a whole lot to me.”

He kissed my lips gently. I could feel the smile on his lips.

“You’re taking this whole thing surprisingly well,” I mused.
He sighed and leaned his head back, letting out a long breath. “Oh, I’m terrified. Charlie, I – I’m scared. Your brothers want to kill me for what they think I’ve done to you, and being human means that they probably will.”

I chuckled and curled up next to him. “All in good time, Sawyer.”

He looked down at me in surprise. “P-Pardon?”

I suddenly felt my face heat up. I leaned up and kissed him again, pressing my hand strategically into his area of weakness. He let out a low groan, moving his good arm to the small of my back. “Good things come to those who wait. Might as well give them something to talk about.”

Sawyer looked floored. “But – But we might not be mates anymore, now that – that I’m –“ He seemed to struggle to get the words out, flustered by the sudden change in mood. “You still… you still want that?”

“Well, once you’ve healed…” I bit my lip in a way that I hoped was seductive.

Sawyer responded by kissing me again, and he took my breath away.



“This is bad,” Forrest whispered, more to himself than the others, because they obviously already knew that. “This is really bad.”

It was probably the hundredth time he’d said it as he paced back and forth in front of Lina. She would have been about ready to punch him if she hadn’t known that Forrest had had some complicated feelings for Sawyer that no one else knew about. She understood his concern for him – but this was not the time to be worrying about Sawyer.

“The wolves have built up and army,” Saphira growled. “Forrest, we have bigger problems than playing ‘Where’s Waldo?’ with Sawyer, okay? Those flea-brained overgrown mutts are going to kill everyone if we don’t do something to stop them.”

They had heard the news from whispers among the supernaturals. Someone heard it from a wolf, who heard it from a vampire – eventually the news reached the Reapers. The wolves had been almost completely united by Isis and her Reaper minions. Now, with their leader fallen at the hand of the Hunters, they were out for blood. The Hunters had done a good job at staying hidden and attacking the Wolves, Vampires, and Reapers on a case-by-case basis. But they had launched an assault on Isis.

Unfortunately, no one had known that the pound puppies were so prepared to make war with… well, everything.

Hunters weren’t the wolves’ only target. Somehow they had known about the Reapers’ and the vampires’ involvement in taking Isis down. They had already attacked the Vampires’ headquarters. Lina had felt a pang of guilt about that – It was the Vampires’ fault for being so centralized, but they had brought Charlie there for some kind of sanctuary, and no doubt the Wolves had followed her scent there.

Reapers had the upper hand in this case. It was harder to fight a target when your target was everywhere, but still. The wolves outnumbered Reapers nearly 3 to 1, they could only stay out of sight and out of smell for so long before –

Lina didn’t want to think about it.

“Those fuckin’ snot-nosed human brats couldn’t just leave well enough alone, could they?” Saphira continued, slamming her palm down on the counter. “No, they had to go grab Charlie and start a war.”

Lina was going to scold Saphira for her outburst, but she knew, at least on some level, that her sister was right. And she didn’t have to read minds to know that she was hurting because Jesse was gone, too. She had seen how close – incredibly close – the two of them had become, and it was hard to see Saphira lose another man she cared about in her life.

“We have to find them,” Hunter growled from the corner of the room where he had been sulking.

No one said a word. That much was obvious, but even if they did find Charlie and Sawyer and Jesse, then what? The five of them were Reapers, sure, but they couldn’t invade the Hunters’ base with so few people – even human, they were trained to and capable of killing Reapers. Even if they made it into the base, they could easily lose people, and that was a sacrifice no one was willing to make.

But, then again, neither would the Hunters.

“I think I have an idea,” both Lina and Simon blurted simultaneously.

They looked at each other shyly, sometimes surprised at their own compatibility.

Simon grabbed her hand and softy stroked the back of it with his thumb. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do…”