Predatory eyes fixed on her, more red than topaz, and his pupils… Dear goddess! They’d narrowed and elongated into slits.
“I’m not running,” she rasped, fighting to keep calm while her heart crashed against her sternum.
“How are you not afraid?” His eerie guttural voice caused the goosebumps on her skin to spread. “Everyone runs when they see this.”
“I’ve faced worse dangers…” She swallowed. “What…what kind of demon are you?”
“Your vilest nightmare.” He tracked alongside the cage bars, claws clicking on the granite floor, his talons screeching eerily against the steel rods.
If she were anyone else, she would have bolted the moment she saw this side of him. But she’d fought those blights from the Dark Realm, and the Narakas—
Nate stumbled as if unused to his feet. An agonized groan flooded the basement. He grabbed the bars and rammed his forehead against them, and they shuddered with each crack of his head.
“Nate, stop! Please!” she begged.
Blood seeped from the split skin on his ridged brow, matting bits of his hair to his skin. His red-streaked eyes reminded her of a wounded animal, full of agony and rage. He stumbled backward, spine hitting the wall, then gripped his head, tugging at his hair as if to tear it out.
“Nate, what’s wrong? Let me help you.”
“Laika…” he groaned, but his tugging slowed.
Hearing his name for her shredded some of her panic. She moved closer to the cage.
“No!”A thunderous roar erupted, stopping her dead in her tracks, causing bits of rubble from the ceiling to clatter to the floor. He spun in an ungainly arc and punched the granite wall repeatedly—
“Nate!” She dashed forward, grabbing the bars, wincing at the sounds of his bones splintering. “Fight this, come back! Please…”
He stilled, shoulders heaving, head lowered as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.
Most Dark Realm denizens had an alter-ego demonic form, she knew, and they accepted it. She’d seen enough during her time as a Guardian and also while training with Gaia’s shield-maidens. So, why was he fighting his other side?
Her gaze focused on his straining, tattooed back. Bony nodes on his upper vertebrae pushed out. Frowning, she counted five of them, starting at his nape to the last one mid-back…
A ruby-red glow pulsed there.
What the hell?
The truth hit her like a punch to the chest. Shit, not nodes.
Symbionts!
Urias!What had happened to him to possess those things?
CHAPTER14
“Nate?”Ely pressed a hand to her agitating stomach, her gaze fixed on the pulsing red glow on his spine. “Are those symbionts on your back like the ones Shadow has?”
While Shadow had transformed into a Fae, Nate was definitely Other, and with a scary-looking demonic alter ego. But Shadow’s symbionts didn’t hurt her. If anything, they exhilarated her when she let her wings free.
Nate wheeled around, and she hastily stepped back, even though the bars stood between them. His eyes glowed an eerie bloodred, his rage palpable. He didn’t speak for several long minutes, prowling the caged space. His ruined, morphed, scaly hands hung at his sides, dripping blood on the dusty floor, black horns jutting from his brow. Gods, he was fearsome and terrifying.
“Nate?” she whispered.
“How will admitting it make a difference?” he snarled in that guttural voice, grabbing the bars again, his damaged, bleeding fingers not quite locking around the steel rods. “This is what I am. No one can change that, don’t you get it? Or, is this half beast, half male what you want, and why you can’t stay away from me?” His icy rage enclosed her, his words like metal barbs, spearing her chest, but she tried not to let it hurt.
“If you want me to leave, you’re going to have to do better than hurling insults at me.” Now, finally, she understood why he pushed her away.
Well, she wasn’t some fragile female.
