“I think since he was the last to bond with you, the connection was stronger. When you were dying, you pulled at our force to help replenish yours,” Ryn goes on, tapping his open palm to his chest. “Treno was more affected.”
I move to sidestep Zeph, and once again he blocks my path. The bewilderment I’m swimming in becomes an afterthought as irritation prickles through me.
“What are you doing?” I demand as my eyes move up Zeph’s massive body and settle on his honey-dipped gaze. He looks...unsettled. The unfamiliar look in his eyes swirls with the usual pissed off gleam that I find in his golden stare. I don’t know what he’s doing here. Fuck, I don’t even know where here is or why I seem to be split in two right now. The things I saw and did with Zeph while I was in Kestrel City weren’t a dream, and I’m not sure what the hell to think about the sides of him I spied when he thought no one was looking.
“Keeping you from repeating your mistakes,” Zeph states. His tone feels like a quiet earthquake, both threatening and making it hard to keep my footing.
His meaning crawls over me like the rays of a slowly rising sun, and I heat with rage. “Mistakes...repeatmymistakes?” I growl. “That’s super funny coming from you...mate,” I snarl at him, stepping into his space until we’re chest to chest.
He doesn’t move, and his eyes heat at the challenge in my tone and radiating out of every tense muscle in my body. I want to rip him apart. Eviscerate him for everything he’s done and tried to hide from me.
“The only mistake I see around here is you, you arrogant piece of shit.”
A growl crawls up Zeph’s throat, but I’m done being intimidated by him. I’m done feeling sorry for him. I’m fucking done with it all.
“You mated an Avowed. Lazza’s brother, of all the rutting marked filth!” he yells at me, like he still doesn’t see the level of fucked up that he achieved by not telling me about our connection.
I shove at him, and satisfaction blooms in my chest when he has to drop a foot back to keep his balance. “You matedmeand didn’t even fucking tell me. You forced a bond between us and didn’t even bother to explain what the fuck was happening.”
“I didn’t force you into anything,” he snarls back. “You cried my name and begged for more all on your own.”
My entire world flashes red. My fist smashes into Zeph’s cheek in less time than it takes to blink. Pain screams up my arm, but I don’t care. I pounce on him like a rabid beast, ready to break every bone in my body if it means he hurts too. Zeph does nothing other than try to protect his face from my wild hits. Arms wrap around me from behind and pull me off of him. The noises slipping out of my lips as I’m yanked away are feral bellows demanding retribution and promising pain.
I’m drowning in my need to hurt him the way he so carelessly hurts me. I’m not sure what Ryn is saying to me, but it’s clearly meant to talk me down. All I can focus on though is that Ryn is just as deserving of my wrath, and I turn on him. Pigeon surges inside of me. She wants in on the action, but I slam a vault door on her, wrap it in chains, and chuck the key as far into the recesses of my mind as I can. They’ve all betrayed me, and they can all rot in fucking hell.
“You knew!” I screech at Ryn as I twist and try to get my feet under me so I can wound him too. “You fucking knew after what happened in the woods. That’s what you were keeping from me when I woke up. Side effects of a Trammel magicked rope, my ass!” I yell at him. I get one arm out from under his hold and claw down the side of his face. He hisses and shoves me away from him.
I land on my feet and charge. He backs away, hands up, like that’s going to keep me from trying to rip the asshole apart.
“We had to know who you were once and for all. That’s why I came back to Kestrel to see what information had been recorded about your parents. To figure out if there was anything that would tell us where you’d come from and what you might be doing here now,” Ryn defends.
“I fucking told you who I was and what I was doing here, you stupid assholes.” Zeph growls, and my head snaps in his direction. “Oh, fuck off with that shit. You screwed up, not me. Maybe if you had clued me in, I would have known the warning signs of a mating and none of us would be in this situation now.Youare to blame for all of this, so go growl at yourself.”
Ryn and Zeph both step closer, clearly not liking my point, and I ready myself to go full feral bitch in my efforts to mar them both. Pain explodes in my chest, and suddenly my neck feels like it’s on fire. I gasp and grab for my throat. I feel warmth there, and a flash of what happened to me in Kestrel fills my mind. I can feel the blade again as it slices across my neck. The shock and panic crawl back up my esophagus to bleed out of the open wound in my throat. Clawing fear ices through my veins, and my eyes land on Zeph’s. He looks just as panicked, and then everything blurs and I feel myself falling.
Was this all a dream? Am I still back with Lazza, hallucinating and dying? Something catches me, and booming yells bounce all around me as I pant through the pain and try to comprehend what’s happening to me. I hear the faint sound of laughter as I lose all my strength, and my hands fall powerless from my throat.
I can’t breathe.
I struggle silently to pull air into my lungs, but it’s useless. The shouting all around me fades to white noise, and just when I’m about to give in to whatever is happening to me, a blinding light flashes, and I’m suddenly being sucked out of the arms of whoever has me and thrown into a never-ending darkness that sets every nerve ending inside of me alight with pain. A silhouette of a man’s body, somehow bathed in both shadows and light, burns itself into my mind, and then as quick as a sharp inhale, everything in and around me just...stops.
2
My heart beats steadily in my chest, and my breaths are even and quiet. I lie breathing in and out, worried that one wrong move will invite back the pain. I know I passed out again, because the light teasing the other side of my closed eyelids is bright. I can tell it’s daytime instead of nighttime like it was the last time I came to, and that means, once again, that my body called it quits and shut down.
If I never pass out again for the rest of my life, I’ll be a happy fucking camper. I’m starting to be really not cool with taking involuntary little naps and waking up in strange places. It has not worked out well for me so far, and my body needs to get on board with staying awake and alert. It’s time to toughen up.
I peel my lids back and immediately regret it. Fuck, it’s bright. I thought we were in a cave; why the hell is it so damn sunny in here? I try again, slower this time. A headache is already starting to pound steadily at my temples, and I feel like the living embodiment of a dust-filled mummy. Minus the cozy wrapped bandages though, because it seems I’m once again sans clothing. I’m getting pretty sick of that happening too.
The blanket covering me is gray and a little scratchy. It looks worn, and I hold it to my chest as I work to sit up. I’m weak as shit, and it makes me wonder even more how long I’ve been out. I’m lying on another blanket that isn’t providing any cushion between my ass and the rocky floor of the cave it appears I’m still in. My whole body is stiff and sore, but I’ll take that any day of the week over the pain I felt before.
A fire that’s on its last leg is barely smoking next to me, and I look up to find a large hole in the top of the cave that’s to blame for the painful brightness going on all around me. I have no clue where I am right now. I can’t tell if this is the same cave I woke up in to find Ryn and Zeph arguing—at least I think that happened and isn’t just a figment of my imagination.
I look around, but no winged assholes are here to greet me. I freeze when my search lands on a prone figure lying on the ground.
Treno.
I try to stand up, but my body doesn’t seem overly interested in cooperating with me. I end up seal crawling toward him instead, and thank fuck he’s less than a handful of feet away from me, because by the time I get to him, I feel like I just jogged a lap around the globe. What the hell is wrong with me? I lean my forehead against Treno’s blanket clad body and work to pull oxygen into my lungs. I can feel his chest rise and fall steadily, and a flicker of relief moves through me.
