“Loyalty,” he says, turning sideways and slipping into the pass.
Just like Vanguard’s tunnel, Jonah’s closes over the moment he’s fully within it.
“Striker?”
Striker studies the remaining doors, his gaze far away. “Choose carefully,” he murmurs to himself, an echo of my earlier warning to him. He points to the fifth door, the one whose symbol Jonah couldn’t decipher. “This is the one for me.”
“Are you sure?”
The energy around that tunnel is pushing me away. Hard. It concerns me that it’s drawing him in.
“I’m sure,” he says, not a hint of doubt in his expression.
Accepting his choice, I turn to the two remaining doors: bravery and perseverance.
My instincts tug me toward perseverance because it’s most aligned with my Fury nature, but I pause before I would step into it.
I have a sense that my former self was brave. She stared evil in the face and survived all of its manipulations, and there’s a part of me that…
My heart suddenly squeezes.
There’s a part of me that wants to feel what she felt.
Not the bad, but the good. The parts where she felt connections so strong that she fought for them.
Striker and I are now standing at the first and last doors, our paths as far away from each other as they could be.
His expression has smoothed out. Calm again. So much calm that it confuses me because it’s contrary to a hellhound’s nature. Even when he could have pummeled Jonah into a mushy pulp, he held back. Oh, it was with difficulty. He wanted to act out his pain and trauma.
But… he didn’t.
He steps toward the door he chose and slides into it; the box held firmly to his chest. I catch sight of his disappearing shoulder before I wedge myself into the bravery door.
I’m prepared to struggle against the closeness of the rock and the challenge of squeezing through it for however long the tunnel extends.
I’m not prepared for when the rock closes over, blocking out the misty landscape I’m leaving behind, and I discover that my surroundings have changed once more.
25. PEYTON PRICE
I’m standing in a cozy bedroom, morning sunlight streaming across a bed with blue cushions on it. An armchair sits in the corner of the room with a small wooden table beside it while pale blue curtains waft softly at the open window.
It’s peaceful. So quiet. A breeze rustles through leaves in the distance, telling me there must be trees outside. A bird calls a cheerful sound.
My moment of disorientation vanishes as I brush my hands down the loose jeans I’m wearing and plant my hands on my hips.
I’m not sure why I was off balance for a moment there.
I came up here to collect my sweater, but the bed wasn’t made, so I straightened it, and now I’m ready to head downstairs again.
Mentally shaking off the remnants of my confusion, I scoop up my sweater from the end of the bed and turn back to the door.
“There you are.” Striker’s voice is a low rumble as he appears in the doorway with a smile on his face. “We thought we lost you.”
He angles inside the room and then straightens to reveal the little girl propped on his hip. She has the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen, the softest-looking brown hair, and the sweetest smile. My heart jumps to see her.
She holds out her arms to me, her little voice wrapping around my heart. “Mommy!”
“My darlings.” I hurry toward them both, twining my arms around them, the sweater tangling between us. “I wasn’t lost. Well, maybe my sweater was lost. But I found it.”
