I turn and head toward the guest bedroom to start packing, if only so I don’t turn around and slap him.I don’t approve of violence, remember?
But the bastard doesn’t get the message and follows me.
Which is when a gigantic hulking shadow steps out from the corner of the bedroom, between me and Drew.
I shriek in surprise.
“My consort said she did not want you.”
Oh shit.
Abaddon flares his wings and lunges toward Drew, who screams like he’s a soprano in a choir.
FIFTY-FOUR
ABADDON
“Don’t hurt him!”Hannah-consort yells, and I growl in fury as I pin the puny mortal man to the ground with my wings, my claws extended and arm raised.
I want to rip his pretty face apart as I did Thing’s.
But remembering what that moment cost me holds me in check. I lower my arm and look over my shoulder at my consort.
It feels like a lifetime since I have seen her.
I have never felt like more of an animal than this past week without her. I have known hunger, and rage, and the blunt lessons of my father’s lash—those colors I understood—but grief is new and sticky and everywhere. Fear has sat heavy in my belly. Shame—sharp, cold—has followed me like a shadow. I am learning that there are more shades to life than the red fury I have always trusted.
I turn and sink down to my knees before her, not as a master stripping himself of pride, but as a creature unlearning the lesson of being only a beast. “I am not my father,” I tell her, voice low enough that only the stones and she can hear. “He neverloved me. Because of that, I learned to believe I was not worthy of love.”
My palms find the cold ground as if to anchor the truth. “Even if I have destroyed any possibility of you ever loving me,” I say, breath thinning, “I am beginning—because of you—to stop hating myself.”
Behind me, the mortal man’s voice rises in a ragged shriek, but I do not turn.
“Over and over, you proved you cared for me, for who I was, not for the way I look. You showed me that change is possible. Even for a monster.” My words come raw and honest; they are not demands, merely an offering.
“So now I kneel before you, Hannah-consort. Not as your equal—no. As someone who knows you are my better. I beg you for the privilege to stand at your side, to be the mate you deserve.”
I bow my head until my forehead nearly kisses the floor. It is the most human thing I have done and the bravest.
I wait for whatever answer the world will give. I hold my breath as if breath itself were a promise.
Only then, as the sorrow and hope and aching in my chest fold into a fragile pause, do I register the tiny, absurd sound that shifts the air: the cocking of a trigger.
My eyes snap open to see movement where there should be none. The quiet crack of a gun is a small, impossible thing in this tiny room, and then the world detonates.
Gunfire explodes through the small chamber.
The sound is raw and bright and wrong against the hushed weight of my confession. For a second, everything fractures into flame and smoke and a scream that is not mine.
FIFTY-FIVE
ABADDON
“Get behind me, Hannah!”the human male shouts as his bullets strike my wings. I flare them wide to shield her, fury blazing through my chest. He’s firing toward where she stands—reckless fool.
I spin toward him just as Hannah sprints past me. For one heart-stopping moment, I think she’s choosing him over me. Then I realize she’s not fleeing; she’s attacking him.
“Hannah!” he shrieks as she grapples for his weapon. “What are you doing? Stop!”
