Antaeus looked amused. As much as someone whose facial expressions didn’t vary from I’d just as soon knife you as smile at you could look amused.
Alice sighed. “Would you please excuse us for a moment, Mr. Stavrou? Apparently my intended and I need to talk.”
His gaze flickered from Alice to Sebastian and back again. It then darted to the window next to her bed. She studied it too, realizing there was no obvious way to open the glass without breaking it. He must have been satisfied that Sebastian wouldn’t try to escape through it because he gave a curt nod. The room still tingled with his energy once he’d left.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Sebastian barked as he whirled on her.
She stared back at him.
“Well?”
Silence.
“Alice, now is not the time...”
“Let’s agree that’s the last time you’ll speak to me like that,” she said softly and with purpose.
He stormed up to her side. “Then we’ll agree that’s the last time you’ll make a decision for me like that one. You actually expect me to abandon you in this place? You are my mate. Mine to watch over.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Not yet, I’m not.”
“What?” Sebastian leaned closer. “What did you just say?”
A deep breath. “I’m not your mate. Not yet. And if there’s to be any chance that I will be, you’ll set aside this grizzly bear rudeness you’ve got going on and talk to me. Voice lowered. Calmly.”
Sebastian seemed to realize then that he’d been yelling. More plumes of smoke rose from his nostrils, the scent of a burned-out match almost overtaking the small room. He visibly shuddered before closing his eyes. She waited for him to collect himself and a temper she feared had been borne out of concern. Still...
“I won’t leave you,” he whispered.
Alice glanced at the equipment surrounding her. “And I won’t let you ignore the Council’s request, nor deal with that hulk out there unnecessarily. So it looks like I’m going with you.”
He looked defeated. “Until I can get approval to turn you, I need you to stay well, Alice. We don’t know when the next seizure might be. If the people here can help you through it, you need to stay here.”
She considered his words for a moment but then came up with a conclusion of her own. “The final seizure is coming, whether I’m in the hospital or out of it. If my brain’s gonna turn to mush because of one, no amount of doctors or nurses surrounding me is going to be able to help. Think about it. At best, they’ll be able to revive my body, put me on a feeding tube or something, and then you get to watch me slowly rot over the next forty or fifty years. Think you can handle that? I gotta tell you, from where I’m sitting it doesn’t sound very appealing. If I have my way, I won’t meet my end like that. Besides, we don’t even know when it might happen. For all we know, I’ll be fine for the next twenty years and then one day while I’m watching TV, it’ll come then. I’ve spent the past two years waiting to get here, hospitalized with no future ahead of me. Then I met you.” Alice looked at him through shimmering vision. “I don’t want to just exist anymore, Sebastian. I want to live whatever time I have left to the fullest. Without regret. I refuse to do it from a hospital bed. Can you understand that?”
“I wish I was as certain as you. I wish I didn’t have this weight here.” He thumped a fist against his chest. “This thing that tells me that I have to do anything and everything in my power to keep you safe. Especially when I don’t know how to do it. Every instinct is screaming at me to keep you surrounded by people who know what to do and how to take care of you. But then the pain tells me that no one will or can care for you better than I will or can. I’m torn on what to do.”
“Trust me,” Alice insisted. “Trust yourself. Trust that we weren’t brought together, only to be broken apart so soon afterward. There’s a plan for you and me. Trust it.”
Sebastian tilted his face toward the ceiling, indecision almost visible in the air surrounding him. She would win this discussion whether he realized it or not, but it would be so much simpler for everyone involved if he came to the decision himself. Alice knew what she was asking of him. How hard it would be to just allow fate to guide their courses. But fate was what brought her to him in the first place. She couldn’t be wrong that they were meant to be together.