Devils Roses 04 - Witch

perfect.
    "Sleep." He pulled her into him.
    She laughed, "I can't sleep with you here. What if you do something creepy to me in my sleep."
    He looked offended, "You honestly believe me capable of that? If I do creepy things to you, I want you to be awake for it."
    "That’s creepy, just saying that is creepy."
    "Well aren’t you glad you're awake then?"
    "No I wish I was sleeping and this was all a dream."
    "You feel it when you're with me don’t you? You feel that we are meant to be together?"
    She laughed again, "This is so fucked. I need to find my ruby slippers so I can click my heels and then go home and graduate and go to college like a normal girl."
    "Well if this were OZ I think I would be wizard to your Dorothy. I would force you to stay with me forever and never go home."
    She smiled feeling sleep taking her, "No you would be the tin man. You wouldn’t have known you had a heart all along." Her eyes got heavy and she fell asleep, feeling his lips against her forehead and his warm breath in her hair.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    Sam

    Roland looked older and more worn.
    "You can fix it but you have to go to the dark witches."
    Sam nodded, "I know. I just don’t know where they are."
    Roland rubbed his forehead. He sat in the comfy worn chair in the den that looked out of place compared to the niceties everywhere. He brought his glass of scotch and ice up to his lips and sipped at it for a moment. Sam watched him silently.
    "Lydia was raised by dark witches. She grew up in the south. They had been teaching her to be a dark witch when Annabelle and her grandmother stole her and raised her in the light. A lot of the dark witches live in the south. It's the reason Lydia came to the west coast. They were trying to escape the hunters, the dark hunters."
    Sam didn’t know the story of Lydia at all. She never shared details.
    "How do you know this?"
    Roland smiled, "I come from a very dark and powerful family. I grew up in England but a couple hundred years ago I came to the new world. I met Lydia then."
    Sam frowned, "What are you?"
    "Fae. I'm a Were."
    Sam raised an eyebrow, "Why can't we smell it on you?"
    "I don’t shift, ever. It's why I'm aging so rapidly. I never let the magic touch me."
    "You loved Hanna's mom didn’t you?"
    Roland nodded, he looked broken. "A long time ago. She loved me back."
    "Fae are a hard one to avoid for us."
    Roland laughed bitterly, "I made it pretty easy for her." He cut of his laugh with a sigh, "I loved her so much. I swore I would protect her forever. She met the doctor and that was it for me."
    "Why didn’t you leave?"
    Roland's dark eyes looked stricken, "I had already made a bond with her. I would feel her. I would love her. I would serve her."
    Sam felt his face twist, "She let you?"
    He nodded slowly, "She did."
    "That's sick."
    Roland sipped his drink, "Perhaps, but it was the way things were done. The doctor and I suffered together. Both stricken with the same illness, us and Marcus."
    "Is that why she had the match broken to remove the effects on you all?"
    Roland's face crumpled painfully, "She almost killed me that day. I was the only one blood bonded to her. The pain was unbearable. She broke all the bonds. The doctor never knew but Marcus did. She acted so well that she was in love with the doctor that Marcus believed that she had broken the match and rematched with the doctor. She did it to spare him, he truly was the only human. I was Fae and Marcus was vampire. Her pity for us was not great. Her pity for the doctor and wanting a normal life drove her to the decision."
    "Then when she couldn't love her own child she took her life?"
    Roland's eyes flashed with anger, "Young man you will never repeat that story. If Hanna knew…"
    Sam shook his head. "She will never hear it from my lips."
    Roland looked broken, "When the young miss came into our lives everything got better. But the act grew too stressful on her. In the moment of her death I saw her for the weak thing she was. I let Marcus believe that she did it to stop him and his lust for her. With no match she was almost impossible to be around. The bracelet calmed it but never took it from her. The day she did it was the worst day of my life." His old eyes filled with tears.
    Sam had no pity or remorse though he wished he did.
    "The best day was when Miss Hanna came home to live here. I see all the best things of her mother and father inside of her." He looked up at Sam, "You must fix what you have done to her.