Mateo
Kat 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.