I clung to him, allowing myself the comfort of a parent—something I’d always craved. “You’re the best dad ever.”
“You give me far too much credit, daughter. I might not be able to make up for all the times I wasn’t there for you, but I promise to try my best.” His voice cracked. “Are you sure you don’t need me to come to Infernal Grove with you tomorrow? I’d be more than happy to.”
“I’m coming,” Nebula hissed. “And you can’t tell me no.”
I let out a watery laugh as I pulled back from Dad so Nebula didn’t get crushed anymore. “It’s okay. We’ll have the supernatural agents with us.”
“I trust you to handle yourself, and your mates are fully capable of protecting you. The supernatural agents are an extra layer of protection that makes me more comfortable, but I’ll see you at the Supernatural Council meeting afterward, okay?”
“Okay.” My heart swelled with love, and it spilled over, down to all of my mates from our matebonds. “I’m glad.”
Dad trusted me to protect myself, and I had the same confidence in myself now.
25
BRAM
Infernal Grove was alive. Not in the way enchanted forests typically breathed with the whispers of wind through branches or with the way they magically sprouted flowers along the path, but in a way that made my skincrawl.
The trees loomed in unnatural angles, black bark pulsing with veins of crimson light as if the entire forest had a heartbeat. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and something acrid.
Dark magic aside, this grove was made with demonic magic. History books claimed that the fire and earth fae sacrificed demons to create this grove. It held many demonic ingredients.
Every step we took forward sent a ripple through the dense, almost liquid shadows stretching between the trees.
“The shadows aren’t natural,” Dex muttered, his gray eyes glowering at the trees. “I can’t even fucking use them to shadow travel in here.”
“We won’t need to shadow travel until after we leave the forest,” Jesper assured him as he led the agents and us with confidence. His white hair was a stark contrast against the dark backdrop of this fucked up forest.
“Still, I don’t fucking like it,” Dex growled, keeping his focus on Pandora and our surroundings.
He wasn’t the only one with his head on a swivel. We were all the same.
“None of us do.” Jesper’s brown eyes flickered with focus, assessing the dangers lurking in the unnatural grove. “But this is our target location.”
Hunter, Skel, Reed, Dex, and I were circled around Pandora as she walked. Her long black hair swayed in its ponytail. She was stunning, even in the eerie glow of this grove. Black leggings, a tight tank, and boots—practical, and hot as Fates.
I shoved down the thought.
The deeper we went, the harder it became to breathe. A familiar pressure settled against my chest, like the weight of old memories clawing their way to the surface.
Nostalgiaalmost, bitter and laced with pain, coiled around my rib cage. My fingers twitched involuntarily, and Chaos stirred within me. He paced just beneath my skin, as unsettled as the other chaos manifestations in my body.
Everyone else seemed to be as on-edge as I was, so I tried not to think too much into it.
Maybe it was just the demonic souls sacrificed to this grove by the fae warning us to stay away.
“It’s just ahead,” Jesper told us.
The dark magic ritual site emerged from the dark like a festering wound. The clearing holding the ritual site was burnt in a perfect circle, but that didn’t surprise me. What did was that it felt like I’d been here before.
At the center lay a slab of stone, half-buried in the soil. The surface was stained with more than the thick, old blood coating it. Dark magic circles were painted into the rock.
Every fucking thing reeked of sulfur, heavy and cloying like a rotting corpse.
I felt sick.
Reed’s violet eyes flickered toward me, but his expression was unreadable. “You have a memory being blocked,” he said softly, furrowing his brows. “Deep in your subconscious. You’ve been mistaking a memory as a nightmare.”
