“Fuck.” I snarled. “I can’t take much more of this. I need to find Roxy. I need to find my mate. There’s still so much from that fucking day missing from my memory. I know there’s more. I can fucking feel it…here.” I thumped my fist against the center of my chest.
Relic sat back. “I get it. I know what it’s like firsthand, and yeah, I’d lose my fucking shit if I wasn’t able to go after Fern immediately. At least you know Roxy can protect herself, yeah?” He leveled me with a stare identical to my own. “It might take you a while to find her, not trying to piss you off, but Wills is right. You need to let yourself heal or you won’t get far. One more day’s rest, you’re almost there, and you’ll be good to go.”
My fucking eyes drooped. Willow’s sleep drafts were strong as hell, or at least the ones she gave me. She’d knocked me out when they first brought me back here after the fight. I fought to leave then, even though I couldn’t fucking stand. In the end, War and Relic had held me down while Willow poured that shit down my throat. I’d refused it since, which was why she’d taken it upon herself to slip it in my drink.
I rubbed at my eyes. “I can’t sleep right now.”
Relic chuckled. “You sound like one of the pups, you grumpy old fucker. Shut your damned eyes and get some rest.”
My lids drooped again, and I snarled. “When I’m better, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Impossible. I’m the newer, stronger, highly improved version of you. It’d be like you trying to win against a supercharged version of yourself.”
Somehow, he always managed to make me smile—even as my head tipped to the side and my body had become a deadweight. I blinked heavily.
Relic stood, lugged my huge ass down the bed, tossed the extra pillow aside, and pulled the covers up. “When you wake up, you can go find Roxy.”
I tried to answer, but only muttered incoherently.
Relic patted me on the fucking head and chuckled. “Sweet dreams.”
The nightmare rushed forward instantly.
Sera shoved me on the bed, climbed up and started riding. My stomach rebelled. I wanted to throw the fuck up. Her scent was disgusting and made the churning in my stomach worse. If Lucifer hadn’t given me a powerful tonic, I would be lying here flaccid and emptying my stomach all over her sheets. The concoction was the only reason I was able to get hard.
I gritted my teeth when she dug her nails into my chest and moaned.
I was doing this for Roxy. I was doing this for us, so we could be together like Lucifer promised.
I squeezed my eyes closed. I didn’t want to think about Rox, not now, not while Sera touched me, not while she called me hers. I would never be hers.
“Good boy,” she crooned. “You’re mine now, aren’t you, Lothar.”
The door crashed open on the other side of the room.
Sera spun around with a hiss.
Oh fuck. No. I shoved Sera off as Roxy flew across the room with a bloodcurdling scream.
She slammed her fist into Sera’s face with another cry, right as the angel snatched up a blade from the bedside table and thrust it into Roxy’s side, then dragged it downward.
With a roar, I shoved Sera away, grabbing for Roxy, clutching her to me.
She swayed on her feet, then looked up at me, her big blue eyes wide and filled with agony.
She shook her head wildly. “Roxy, please, I can explain?—”
“No.” Her hand was a flash of movement, she drew it back, and that’s when I saw the knife she held, a split second before she thrust it into my heart.
She dropped her hand, leaving it imbedded in my chest. I clutched at it, gasping for air. It wouldn’t kill me, but the pain radiated through me so fiercely, I fell to my knees.
She held my gaze, and a tear streaked down her face. “Now your heart feels like mine,” she choked out, then stumbled from the room, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.
My eyes snapped open with a gasp, my hand fisted against my chest.
The dream, the memory, those images flashed one by one through my head. I slid my hand away and looked down at the darker patch of skin there. I’d never known what it was. I assumed it had always been there. There had been nothing special about the blade, it shouldn’t have been able to leave a scar, but it had. That knife, it was the same one I’d been carrying around with me since, that I hated being without, the same knife Roxy had now. I rubbed at my chest. I realized I’d been carrying Roxy’s pain around, a physical manifestation of the agony I’d caused her all this time and I’d had no fucking clue.
Roxy had lived with this, these memories, this pain for so fucking long. She thought I’d betrayed her. And I had. I thought I’d felt broken and desperate, the last couple of weeks, but that had been nothing.
