by A. K. Morgen
I opened my mouth to argue… and stopped short when something flickered in his mind. Images coalesced one after another, freezing me in my tracks.
Blood ran in rivulets across a white, tile floor.
A hazy figure gaped at the gun in his hand, his mouth moving as if he were speaking.
Familiar, green eyes stared vacantly.
A black bag zipped over a body.
The images were brief, no more than split second flashes, there and gone as quickly as they appeared, but sorrow ripped through Dace like claws tearing through flesh.
I cried out, stunned by the sudden, intense pain.
Dace’s hand fell from my arm.
“What was that?” I asked, still swaying beneath the dizzying cloud spinning through me even without physical contact. Black spots swam before my eyes.
Dace didn’t say anything.
“Dace?” I blinked away the spots swimming in my vision, forcing myself to focus on him. “What was that?”
He met my gaze, his expression bleak. His mouth twisted. The haunted look in his eyes deepened. “My father.”
“You were there?” I whispered. Dace’s dad was killed in a robbery right after Dace’s fourteenth birthday. I knew that. But I hadn’t known…. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged a shoulder.
A soft, mournful sigh whispered through me, coming from Freki.
I closed my eyes, my heart physically hurting. I’d assumed Dace hadn’t been with his dad. That he hadn’t seen him die. I didn’t like his dad because of the messed-up crap he’d done to Dace so long ago, but knowing Dace watched him die… There were no words for how sad that made me. Dace was a kid. Only a scared, fourteen-year-old boy.
No matter how bad the parent, no kid should watch his parent die.
“He was shot?” Ronan asked.
I opened my eyes, nodding when Dace didn’t say anything. “In a robbery.”
“I’m sorry, son,” Dad said, clamping a hand on Dace’s shoulder.
“Me too,” he said, looking down at me. His gaze pinned me to the bed. “The guy panicked when my father came up behind him at the register. He swung to face my dad, and, somehow, the gun discharged. Dad died before his body hit the ground.”
“Wrong place, wrong time,” I whispered, the same thing Dace said to me when he first told me about his dad what felt like lifetimes ago now.
Dace nodded.
I hesitated and then gave in. “No guns.”
I didn’t like the decision, but I wouldn’t give Dace something else to worry over. He hurt enough already.
“Have you considered getting her out of town?” Ronan asked instead of arguing.
I gaped at him, stunned.
For a bird, he had the nerve of a freaking grizzly.
“I already told you she’s not leaving,” Dace snapped, whipping his head in Ronan’s direction.
They’d had this discussion before? When?
I glanced between the two of them, frowning.
He brought it up a few days ago, Dace said. He’s an idiot.
Geri rumbled his agreement to Dace’s insult.
“She’s not safe here,” Ronan said.
“Would she be safe somewhere else?” Dad frowned like he was really considering the possibility. I couldn’t blame him for that. I didn’t want to be in the middle of this any more than he wanted me in the middle of it. Unfortunately, destiny didn’t ask what we wanted.
“No, she wouldn’t.” Dace clenched his jaw so hard it creaked again. One day, he was going to snap the bone.
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you. You want to use her as bait,” Dace snapped, glaring at Ronan.
“Bait?” Dad’s eyes widened.
“He thinks they’ll follow her if she leaves town.”
Ronan shifted his gaze to me. “I don’t know if they will follow you, but I do know we’re no closer to drawing them out than we were when you came home two weeks ago, or two weeks before that. We need a different plan.”
Translation: we needed bait.
But there was no way I could just leave Dace here. None.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not leaving.”
Ronan stared at me for a moment, his expression as inscrutable as ever. “Fine,” he said then.
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and I didn’t ask.
Shrill, inhuman screams clashed with roaring howls behind me. They drowned out the terrified sobs ripping from my throat and drove me blindly through the woods.
Bare branches scratched my skin. Roots and decaying leaves tangled around my feet.
I stumbled and fell, catching myself with my hands.
A branch gouged into my palm, stinging and burning.
I tried to scramble to my feet again, panting from my mad flight and the terror holding me in its grip. I lurched forward, trying to find my center of balance and stay upright.
A mass of tree roots threatened to drag me to my knees on the overgrown forest floor again. I kicked my way free, and started forward.
A shadow moved ahead, so much denser than the black surrounding me.
I stopped moving. Stopped breathing.
Baleful, yellow eyes peered at me through the darkness. White fangs flashed like silver in the pre-dawn moonlight.
Hati.
Fearful cries bubbled in my throat. I swallowed them down, and backed away. One foot behind the other, slowly. Carefully.
I tripped again.
The black wolf paced toward me, stalking me like a cat stalks a mouse. He lowered his head; his yellow eyes, no less feral―no less scary―than Fenrir’s, stared right at me. The threat contained there, the malevolence in his expression, terrified me.
My heart skipped a beat before racing to a new, frenetic rhythm.
I opened my mouth to scream for help, even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. There was no one close enough to stop this monster.
Hati leapt at me before I made a sound, flinging me backwards into a tree stump.
My head slammed into the old trunk with a loud thwack.
Starbursts ruptured before my eyes. Pain rushed through me, spiraling outward from the bloody gash behind my ear. I lay where I was, dazed.
Hati wasted no time. The monster landed on top of me, pinning me to the ground. He dug his claws into my skin, snarled, and then tore into my side.
His razor sharp teeth ripped through muscle, piercing organs.
Pain engulfed me, so intense it blinded me.
I screamed again and again….
“Arionna, wake up.”
I jerked upright, a fearful cry ripping from my throat.
Dace loomed over me, cupping my face in his hands. His eyes were wide, the emerald color almost blotted out by black and fear. His hair was a mess, his dark t-shirt wrinkled as if he’d run to my room from a dead sleep on the couch.
Geri snarled in his corner, lashing his head back and forth in a frenzied rage. His thoughts slammed into me too hard for me to catch most of them, but I got the gist. He wanted to rip Hati’s throat out.
“Dace?” I blinked up at him.
“I’m right here, baby,” he whispered, relief ghosting through his strained expression.
Baby.
I must have woken him with my screaming again. I always screamed when the worst of the nightmares came, and Dace always called me baby when he plucked me out of them, as if I were more fragile than an infant in that moment when my nightmares pressed in on me, more vivid and real than anything around me.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. My tongue felt thick, my mouth dry. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Tears dripped down my face.
“Shh. It’s okay.” Dace lifted me up and dragged me onto his lap, then rocked me back and forth.
I shook in his arms, curling into him and breathing him in, trying to push Hati out of my mind. He wrapped his body around mine as if to physically protect me from the memories ha
unting me, but I struggled to banish them. It was so hard to forget about Hati lurking in the shadows, waiting for me. Waiting to kill me and free Fenrir from his chains.
More than anything, I wanted to stop Hati and his twin brother from freeing Fenrir. I wanted those chains around that monster’s neck, where they belonged. And I was so scared we wouldn’t be able to stop them this time. So terrified we were too broken to save ourselves this time―let alone the rest of the world. Soon, the bond Fenrir had been forced into would shatter, and nothing could save us then.
Geri stopped raging and curled his mind around me. His thoughts flickered through my head, nothing specific, just soothing flashes glowing like little fireflies in my head.
They helped me find myself again.
“Did I wake my dad?” I asked when I could speak through the fear threatening to crush me.
“Not this time.”
I sighed, relieved. Dad and Dace rarely slept peacefully anymore. I hated that my nightmares haunted them, too. It was bad enough they had to care for me during the day. They needed sleep. We all did.
“I’m fine,” Dace murmured.
“No, you aren’t.” I snuggled into him. The heat of his body against my freezing skin seemed almost feverish. I wanted to wrap myself in his preternatural warmth and forget the rest of the world existed. “You haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time in weeks.”
“I sleep enough.”
We both knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.
He held me in his arms, neither of us speaking.
I stopped trembling and yawned.
Dace settled me back down into my bed, tucking the covers around me. “Can I ask you a question?” He brushed my hair away from my face and crouched at my bedside, his eyes level with mine.
I nodded, yawning again.
“Do you really want a gun?”
“I just want to protect myself and my dad,” I whispered, reaching out to run my fingertips across the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“Do you trust me to keep you safe?” he asked, searching my face.
My heart twisted in my chest at his soft, uncertain question. He looked so sad with fear lurking in his gaze and a pained frown on his face. He always looked so sad and haunted these days. I hated it.
“Always,” I promised. I didn’t doubt Dace for a minute. But… he struggled so much and fought so hard to keep everyone safe, and I felt like a burden. I was supposed to be strong like him, and I wasn’t. I was someone else he had to protect. I hated that, too.
I didn’t want to be the girl who did nothing but wring her hands and fret while her boyfriend went off to slay dragons. Dace was a warrior. He and Geri were made to fight this war and to protect those they loved. I think they forgot I was built exactly the same way. I couldn’t shift anymore, but that didn’t change anything. Freki still shared my soul, and I remembered what it felt like to fight beside Dace.
I wanted to fight with him.
“I don’t want that for you,” Dace said, his breath washing across my face on a sigh. “You’ve already lost so much because of me.”
“I didn’t lose anything because of you, Dace. None of this is your fault. Why can’t you see that?” I asked. He wasn’t supposed to drown in guilt over something he didn’t do, and the way he blamed himself killed me. It wasn’t fair to him.
“Because you’re wrong,” he whispered. “Before my dad died, I used to wish for someone else like me. I knew it was wrong of me, but I wished anyway. I didn’t want to be the only person like me out there. I wanted… I didn’t want to be the abomination he thought I was, and I thought if there was someone else, he’d realize I wasn’t cursed. He’d accept that I was exactly like I was meant to be, and he’d stop looking for a way to cure me.” He swallowed convulsively. “And now you’re here, and he was right all along. I am cursed.” Sorrow and grief twisted through him.
“Dace, no.” Tears sprang to my eyes, blurring my vision. “You aren’t cursed.”
He brushed his thumbs beneath my eyes, wiping the tears away. “You died because of me. If you’d never met me, you wouldn’t be in this bed, scared to close your eyes again. You wouldn’t feel like you need a gun to protect yourself.”
“Dace―”
“You know the worst part in all of this?” he asked, cutting me off. “I brought this into your life, and I’m still too fucking selfish to let you go.” Self-loathing and defeat filled his choked laughter.
“You love me. That’s not selfish.”
“Isn’t it?” He looked at me, his lips twisted into a bitter, mocking smile. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose.”
I tried to find words to tell him how wrong he was about himself, but they wouldn’t come. I froze, unable to speak through the weight of sorrow pressing down upon me. Even through the worst of the last month, I’d never seen him so lost before. He looked as if he’d simply given up even trying to fight the demons threatening to drag him under. He’d given up on himself.
That scared me.
He pressed his lips to my forehead before pulling away again. When he did, his gaze was hard and cold. The emotion flowing through him matched. “You won’t need a gun,” he whispered, his eyes blazing with promise. “I’ll keep you safe, Arionna. I swear to you, no matter what, I will keep you safe.” He reached out and ran his hand down my cheek again. “Get some sleep.”
I closed my eyes obediently, hot tears dripping down the sides of my face.
Dace’s expression hovered front and center in my mind, haunting me as surely as my dreams of Fenrir and Hati haunted me. I hated that there was no end in sight.
We needed hope, Dace most of all.
flipped through the book lying across my lap, aimlessly shuffling through the pages instead of reading. Split-second views of the black and white etchings inside looked like an animated comic, one that got more disturbing the farther I flipped. Smiling gods and goddesses turned into grim-faced, weapon wielding threats. The pious masks on their worshippers’ faces slipped and twisted into something harder, crueler. Flesh rent and tore beneath wickedly sharp blades. Ragnarök, or one artist’s representation of it, unfolded before my eyes.
How much worse would the end of the world look in living color, playing out all around me?
My stomach threatened to rebel at the thought.
I heaved a sigh and set the book aside.
Ronan glanced over at me from his seat at my old writing desk and then back down to the book in his hands.
Unlike me, he was actually reading, which was all kinds of strange. He didn’t seem like the reading type, and I never would have pegged him as intelligent, but he was. That irritated Dace to no end. I think he would have preferred if our raven was all muscle, no brain.
I watched Ronan for a moment, but he didn’t look up from his book again.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked, tired of waiting for him to acknowledge me.
“Yes.”
“How did you and Dani meet?”
Probably none of my business, but I couldn’t help but wonder. Ronan was strange. I’d never seen him laugh or crack a joke. He rarely smiled unless he did it to intimidate someone. He’d been cocky the first time I met him, angry, but I wasn’t so sure that was the real Ronan. He wasn’t like that now. And I didn’t really think the change was because he lost Dani. I barely remembered him in past lives, but I think he’d always been somber and scary, and Dani’s murder was simply the icing on the cake for him.
Dani, though… well, she was the exact opposite. She’d been happy-go-lucky, always smiling and laughing. She’d thrived on social interaction and people. Even in the brief time I’d known her, I could see how charismatic and well-liked she was. How had she and Ronan fallen in love when they had nothing in common?
I didn’t get it.
“She came to the club where I work,” he said.
I waited for the rest of the story, but he didn’t finish. I briefly considered le
aving the conversation alone, then decided I didn’t really want to. Dace was in the shower, and I didn’t want to read or sleep or worry about an increasingly grim Dace anymore. Talking to Ronan was my only other option. Besides which, I wanted to know. He’d been an almost permanent fixture since I awoke in the hospital. We had to talk at some point, and I found myself growing more curious about him by the day.
“What happened?” I prompted.
He closed his book deliberately before setting it aside and turning in my direction. “She tried to sneak in,” he said. “I went in after her, and she dragged me onto the dance floor.”
I think I heard a smile in his voice, but his wooden expression didn’t change.
“How long were you together?”
He tensed. “A year.”
I fought the urge to reach over and squeeze his arm in a show of support. I doubted he would appreciate the gesture. He wasn’t very touchy feely or emotional. In the two weeks since his confrontation with Beth, he hadn’t once mentioned it. I think he wanted to forget it happened. Hell, I think everyone wanted to forget the entire ugly scene.
“Dani never knew what you were?” I asked him.
“No.” Ronan moved his gaze back to the book on the desk. “She didn’t need to know.”
“Did you―” I broke off, too uncomfortable to ask him that particular question.
“Not right away,” he answered, seeming to know where my thoughts lay even without me finishing. “I found out who she was after we started dating.”
“Oh.” I plucked at the blanket thrown over my legs. I thought, had he known who she was before, he would have avoided falling for her. I didn’t ask him that, though. It really wasn’t my business.
“You never met her before that night?”
Ronan shook his head. “We ran in different circles.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Where are your friends anyway?”
He looked at me levelly.
“When I met you, they were with you,” I said. “Where are they now?”
“Elsewhere.”
What did that mean?