“I know, but as terrible as this sounds—and gods, it probably is—right now, I don’t care.” Using my hand, he turned me around and hauled me against his chest. “That’s not what I want right now, or what I need.”
Grandma Piperi’s prophetic words came back to me. There is want and there is need… To her, those two things had been very differently entities, but right now, they were one and the same.
He placed the tips of his fingers on my cheeks, the hold heartbreakingly tender as his gaze moved on my face. “Look at you,” he said. “Your eyes…”
I stood still, letting his fingers trail an unseen path across my face. “I look a lot better half-dead or whatever, huh?”
“You’ve always looked beautiful to me, Alex.” He trailed his fingers over the line of my jaw and down my neck. His hands trembled as he slid them down my shoulders. “Gods, Alex, I’d thought after what happened with Linard, I’d never face losing you again. Even when you were connected with Seth, you were still alive. And even if you didn’t want to be with me, you were living, and in the end, that was all that mattered.”
Aiden took a deep breath. “But when I came into that room and saw Seth and Apollo, but didn’t see you, my heart stopped. It broke me,” he admitted with quiet honesty. “Because all I wanted was a future with you, and it had been taken from me again.”
I closed my eyes against the rush of tears.
“But here we are,” he murmured.
“Here we are.” I blinked open my eyes, my chest swelling with the emotion I read in his gaze. We’d been given that future because of Apollo and Seth. And there was no way I was going to dishonor that gift by not living every second of that future. “I love you.”
“Agapi mou, you are my everything.”
Aiden kissed me. Words weren’t necessary at that point. He’d experienced every moment of loss that I had, every second of desperation, and it was reflected in every touch, every sweep of the lips, and every soft moan. We were greedy with one another, finding ourselves in the bedroom. In no time, our limbs were tangled together, and when our bodies joined, everything slowed down. Our want for one another was all-consuming, but for the first time since we’d locked eyes in Georgia, we had all the time in the world to enjoy our love. And we did.
Long after our breathing returned to normal, Aiden hovered above me, his hand slowing tracing the line of my jaw. I smiled as something occurred to me. “We’re demigods now.” I laughed as a wealth of emotion built in my chest. “We’re actually demigods.”
His lips responded, curving upward and spreading until deep dimples appeared, and my heart melted in the way only he could make it. “Yeah, we are,” he said.
“You know what that means?” I stared into those silver eyes. I had an infinite number of moments like this ahead of me to share with Aiden.
“They’re going to tell stories about us.”
Aiden lowered his head, kissing me softly, deeply, and so lovingly that tears pricked my eyes. “They already are.”
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements are never easy to write. There’s always this stress when it comes to writing them, because you fear you’ll forget someone. But the acknowledgements for this book are pretty damn important to me. It’s the end for Alex and there has been so many people who’ve been with her from day one, all the way back in late 2007 and early 2008, and helped shape her into the Alex we’ve all come to love… or hate.
The Covenant Series has had a lot of beta readers during its time that lent their insightful advice and knowledge. Chu-Won Martin was literally the first person to ever read Half-Blood. She holds the first reader’s card and because she didn’t laugh in my face after reading it, we’re here where we are today. A big thank you to Lesa Rodrigues for always being eager to delve back into the Covenant world and reading early manuscripts that were nothing more than chicken scratch. Thank you to Carissa Thomas, Julie Fedderson, and Cindy Thomas for reading these books before they ever reached the hands of a reader. Thank you to the peeps over at Query Tracker for helping shape up the query letter that landed the contract back in 2010. A big thanks to Molly McAdams, who has probably read the last couple of books in the Covenant Series months and months ahead of release and always makes me feel good about the story. A huge thank you to Stacey Morgan for critiquing Sentinel and many other books one chapter at a time and suffering through all the changes I end up going back and making and not telling her about.
Of course, a big thank you to Kate Kaynak for taking a chance on Half-Blood and to the team at Spencer Hill Press for whipping it into shape, to Kevan Lyon for always being the über-amazing agent that she is, to Rebecca Mancini for introducing the Covenant Series into the foreign markets, and to Brandy Rivers for well, being awesome in general.
Now here comes the hard part, because there will inevitably be people I forget to mention, but I do want to name all those that I can remember off the top of my head. These are the readers and the bloggers who’ve done AMAZING things for the Covenant Series and were there since the very beginning. Thank you to Vee (and yes, I’m going to spell your name the way I say it. Or Vi. Or Vivian.), Valerie from Stuck in Books, Momo from Books Over Boys, the entire crews over at Books Complete Me, Mundie Moms, Good Choice Reading, all the sisters at YA Sisterhood, Kayleigh from K-Books, all the peeps who take part in the Covenant Read Along, the Greer family—especially Papa Greer—Reading Angel, Amanda from Canada, and oh goodness, my brain has not run out of names because Ghost Adventures is on the TV and I’m drawn in by the douche-tastic-ness of it all.
Of course, none of this would be possible without my family and friends, who put up with the fact I spend more time writing than speaking to any of them in real life.
And finally, to all the readers, I can never thank you enough. I’m so honored to have taken this journey with you. This may be it for Alex, but you know… stories never really, truly end.
Jennifer L. Armentrout lives in West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. Well, mostly. When she’s not hard at work writing, she spends her time reading, working out, watching zombie movies, and pretending to write. She shares her home with her husband, his K-9 partner named Diesel, and her hyper Jack Russell Loki. Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent her time writing short stories…therefore explaining her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes Adult and Young Adult Urban Fantasy and Romance.
Come find out more at: www.jenniferarmentrout.com
Table of Contents
Title
Praise for the Covenant Books
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgements
About the Author