I look up at him, then glance from him to my sisters. I don’t know how or when, but at some point, they seem to have come to an understanding.
Closing my eyes, I accept all of the support around me. “Okay,” I whisper.
Matter-of-fact now, Taniya smooths her hands down her shirt as she stands, her talons disappearing. “Breakfast,” she announces before pinning Roman with her sharp stare. “Where’s the kitchen?”
Within minutes, Taniya stands at the stove, cooking up a meal made of what smells like bacon and eggs, except that the bacon is white, and the eggs are blue. Each time she asks Roman if he can conjure a particular food, he strikes a rune and produces it.
“How do you do that?” she asks him. “Summon food from the air?”
Roman folds his arms. “It’s not from the air. My power is connected to the land. I gather the building blocks of food from the earth and fashion it into food you recognize. If it helps, it used to take me a day to conjure a single vegetable. Now I’m more practiced at it.”
Taniya thinks a moment before she points at the white substance. “So… this isn’t really bacon, is it?”
Roman laughs. “It isn’t, but it contains all of the protein you need and the taste you’re used to.”
She shrugs, seeming to accept that.
Roman’s kitchen is large and open, the cabinets all white, the stone tabletop a gray that matches the color scheme of his bedroom upstairs. It’s a fancier version of our kitchen back home and seeing my sisters sit around the island when it’s time to eat reminds me of my mom.
Missing her hurts so much that I have to take a moment to breathe.
I tell myself that I’ll make it back to her.
Once we’ve eaten and showered, Malia and Taniya draw me back to the lounge room, where my wolves crowd in and Taniya braids my hair.
“How are you feeling?” Malia asks, as she and Taniya hover over me like a pair of mother hens, and I’ve never felt so grateful to have these women in my life.
“Terrified,” I say. “I want to believe that I can find Arga’s fear, but I know I might not be able to. And worse… Koda is…” I exhale quietly. “I’ll have to kill Koda if Arga doesn’t, and there’s a part of me that…”
I can’t finish that thought.
I’ve seen Koda’s fear and I’ll be able to use it against him; but having seen his fear, I also understand it. Hell, I can fuckingrelateto it, given how hard my sisters and I fought for our existence among packs that didn’t want us. Koda has fought to survive against older siblings who beat him down at every opportunity.
He won’t go down without a fight. Not against me or Arga.
Malia’s voice is harsher than I’ve ever heard it as she breaks through my thoughts. “You have to survive, Nova. No matter what it takes.”
My eyes fly open at her vehemence, and I give her a single, firm nod, reaching for her and Taniya. “No matter what happens, I promise, you will both walk out of this damned world.”
Roman meets my gaze and I remember the burn of the death bond on my right forearm. It only makes me more determined to survive this fight, but if I don’t, my sisters will be safe with him.
When Taniya finishes braiding my hair, Roman takes a moment to conjure a rune that settles over my clothing. “You need armor you can move in but will also protect you,” he says, circling me.
His fingertips trace my shoulders and across the back of my neck, and warmth flows over me at his touch. A light-as-air suit forms from the base of my neck, covering my torso, arms, legs, and even my feet, every inch of it flexible. It even accommodates my claws when they extend from my fingertips. It’s a deep amethyst, the same color as his skin in his true demon form—the same color as his wings.
“Your rune will still work if you need to shift into your wolf form,” he says, brushing my wrist.
I test the suit by drawing on my nightmare power. Roman’s eyes turn black in response, and I can see my reflection in them, the swirls of nightmare power around me, the violet glow in my eyes that’s highlighted by the color of my new armor, my long braid resting over my shoulder.
“Now for your sisters,” Roman says, surprising both me and them.
Neither of them flinches when he transforms their clothing into armor like mine and creates two glowing daggers for each of us, slipping them into harnesses that rest securely around our torsos.
As my sisters step up behind me and my demon wolves join them, I say, “I’m ready.”
CHAPTERFORTY-EIGHT
Iwalk ahead of Roman along the busy streets toward the arena, while my demon wolves fan out around us. With a single rune flicked at the nearest light beam, Roman shuts down the travel system on the path ahead, forcing the demons on the beams to stop right where they are.
