Heavy palms stroked her back, face pressed into a hard, heaving chest, the scent of ocean breeze and amber invading her nose—no-no, all wrong! Not her Nik!
She shoved away from the archangel. Her gaze fell to the watery, blood-soaked ground, glistening in the pallid moonlight like a ghoulish elegy to the horror that just occurred. “Nik…” Blurry-eyed, she gently touched the grisly ground.
This can’t be happening.
Nik, please come back. Please…
Slender arms came around her, the scent of something summery and ethereal seeping through the impossible agony trapping her. Shadow looked up into Ely’s wet eyes.
The shock and grief on their faces revealed the stark truth. No magical hole was going to open up and spew Nik out all healed. He wasn’t coming back.
A harsh sob broke free. Tears fell in a deluge. “I never got to tell him I-I love him.”
No one spoke.
“How am I supposed to go on without him?” she whispered, swiping at her tear-drenched face and running nose with the back of her hand. Her gaze latched onto her sodden, blood-soaked top and arms. Her skin glowed eerily beneath Nik’s blood, painting her in an iridescent glimmer…when something else pierced her anguished mind. Something worse.
“Why am I still here?” She lifted her wet gaze to Michael, who knelt on the ground, staring at the gore-covered grass, his drenched clothes smeared with blood. “A soul joining means I die with him. What happened?” She glanced at each warrior there. No one seemed capable of speech. “Tell me, dammit!”
“That’s because…” Aethan swallowed, rain dripping down him. “Nik snapped the mate bond before he succumbed.”
His words were a punch her in the chest. “He…h-he b-broke our bond? He didn’t want me with him?”
Aethan simply shook his head as if he had no answers. Then he touched Nik’s blood and marked both of his own cheeks with two fingers. The others did so, too.
“Vindictae nostrum!”the harsh oath broke free from the warriors surrounding her.
Shadow wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as if she would shatter the moment she let go. She met each of their anguished stares. “Did you get the demon bastard?”
“He escaped,” Dagan said roughly, his bronze features drawn and ashy, the rain washing the blood marking from his face. “He was a higher-level demon. I latched onto one of his minion’s thoughts. Mammon’s the Demon of Avarice.”
She didn’t give a shit what he was. She would end this. End him.
“Nik’s d-dead, and it’s all my fault…” She grabbed her obsidian dagger from the sodden ground and pushed to her feet. “That hellscum bastard warned me he would kill all those I cared about. He murdered my heart because he wants me? He can have me.” Jaw set, she locked eyes with the archangel. “Please keep Liam safe.”
The winds grew, whipping strands of her wet her into her face. She wheeled away and stormed through the trees. The muscles alongside her shoulder blades hurt. As she stepped into the clearing where the fight occurred, she stopped as if entering a dead zone. Utter silence reigned here. Everything had halted, even the wail of the winds, the rustling rain.
The moon shone down over the empty glade, highlighting the burned grass patches and other parts. She lifted her gaze to the swirling rubble suspended in the air. Beneath the cold, pale light, the Narakas continued swirling and coalescing together into one, a tangle of arms, legs, heads, trees, and branches, all fusing into a spiraling heap.
Bastards!
A ragged cry tore free, and she flung out her arms, wanting it all destroyed. A wave of power rushed out. Pain exploded in her back. A boom resonated, and the spiraling column of fused demons and trees detonated, raining to the ground in clumps of wet ashes. Souls rushed out in a ball of searing black energy.
“Amazing,”a distant murmur swept through her mind. “A human…with that power, in that form…”
Mam-fucking-mon!
A massive dark shape leaped out from the woods and into the dark souls coasting toward the ground. Jaws snapping, the hellhound swallowed the flickering souls, then it stood there, like a small mountain. Watching her.
“Pithiussss, veni.”The words drifted in the night as if coming from the creature.
Michael appeared at her side, gently grasped her arm, easing her away. “C’mon. I’ll take you to the castle.”
She lifted her flat stare to him and found his cold eyes nailed on the hellhound. “No.”
Pithiussss, veni,the words rushed through her mind in demand now.
“Pithius—”
