Chapter
Twenty-Three
Nik straightenedfrom the hallway’s granite wall, his ice-green eyes lingering on Race’s exposed arm where he’d torn off the sleeve. “Everything okay?”
Race tipped his head back against the stone, his gaze tracing the curved ceiling beams, as he tried to calm the fuck down. “Is it ever okay for males like us?”
A soft grunt. “I feel you.”
“The tremors, the static—it was Ash’s power. She’s exhausted…” He exhaled roughly. “It’s been a harrowing time back in Lemuria. I don’t know how to keep her safe.”From someone like me.
“For us Guardians, love is the hardest battleground,” Nik murmured. “Once you’re bound, your peace goes where she goes.”
Wasn’t that the godsdamned truth?
“Need anything?” Nik asked.
“No…” Race scrubbed his face, then lifted his stare to his fellow Guardian. Nik had always been the easier one to talk to. “The obsidian dagger? Is it true we were just keepers of our mate’s weapon?”
“Yeah.” Nik eyed him curiously. “Problems?”
Hell, Race rubbed the ache in his chest, remembering the hurt in her eyes. He’d messed up badly. “She found out the truth about the obsidian and thought I rejected her.”
Nik’s brow furrowed. He scratched his chin. “Don’t you remember anything Gaia said when she took your allegiance?”
Race shrugged. “Just her throwing me into a horde of demoniis. I killed them. Later, when I saw I had the same inked sword and dagger as the rest of you, I figured I was a Guardian, too.”
“I don’t know what happened to you in Tartarus…” Nik slid his hands into his pockets, his stare steady, though the tic in his jaw betrayed his own ghosts. “It’s never good. But you were the last to join. Gaia said something to each of us when we chose our blades.Your dagger is an embodiment of your one weakness and your ultimate strength. When it fails to return to you, you have found your salvation.”
He dug through his mind for things that occurred over millennia ago…and not even a flicker of memory.
And he should’ve remembered something that important.
He only knew the rattling chains and screams in his head quieted whenever Ash was near, that the darkness no longer dragged him under like lead.
Without her, he’d fall back into that abyss of endless screams.
“Race?” Nik’s voice came from afar. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”No.
Nik lingered a beat, then nodded. “Gotta go. Work calls.” He dematerialized.
But his words lodged deep within Race’s skull. He had existed in a vacuum, living only for the job, the only way he knew how to survive his endless nightmare. Kill and destroy.
Until Ash crashed into his life.
The primal side of him already knew the truth, a truth that had just now slammed straight into his heart.
Ash wasn’t just his salvation—she was his reason for existing.
But for her, he was death waiting.
Godsdamn.Race paced the corridor like a caged beast, thrusting his fingers through his hair.
He had to find a way to keep his mate safe from his own damned seed. By all those useless gods, how the fuck did he do that?
Race telepathed Blaez.What the hell did you mean by the cryptic crap you threw at me? ‘In the space between heartbeats, where shadow swallows light, mortality weaves immortality’s chains?’
