“Noble but useless. You’ll be dead, Alec. You won’t have any powers to save her.”
“Then what? What?! Is it over? Is that what you’re trying to convince me? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with all of you, but I won’t give up on her. There must be something we can do.”
“Can we take a minute to weigh our options?” Professor Parasite finally spoke. “We are damned souls like you said, which means we are ending up in Hell after the apocalypse. If Belle becomes the queen and the prophecy is fulfilled, we will be there with her.”
Kayden squinted at him in disbelief. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes. I’m saying perhaps it’s not such a bad thing after all. If we can’t have her now, all we have to do it wait it out, and eventually we will reunite.”
“You want us to wait it out?”
“We’re used to it. For two hundred and fifty years the three of us had waited for her to rise from the dead and choose one of us and break the hearts of the rest, to spend some time with her before she was dead again. Neither the wait nor the agony of losing her is new.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Give it to the leech to speak. That’s the talk of a desperate monster.”
“I am. I simply can’t see a way out of it, and this seems like the only logical scenario that still gives me Belle.”
Kayden ran a hand through his hair and then folded his arms over his chest. “What about what the archangel said? Hell is gonna change her. What if she doesn’t want us anymore?”
These two were driving me out of my fucking mind. “For fuck’s sake. Why are you even considering this? Don’t tell me you gave up too, Alpha?”
“I’d never give up on her, but we’re running out of options and time.” I’d never seen my brother more defeated. “The coronation is happening as we speak. We’re locked out of Hell with no means to get in until it’s over. Even if a demon agrees to go to her after, they can’t do anything to change her mind about doing her part in the prophecy. Destroying Heaven is the only way she can have a child. She’d do anything to have that.
“The way I see it, Belle is going to be the queen of Hell whether we liked it or not. When she comes for the Darkborns, we’ll be dead souls in her kingdom. Our only chance to have her back is when Hell wins and she’s no longer barren, that is if her heart remembers us by then.”
A huge pressure crushed my skull, like the weight of the world had fallen on my head. “And if it doesn’t?”
Kayden dropped on the rubble, his eyes misting. “Then we would have lost her.”
“Isabella loves us,” Asher said.
A shaky sigh fled my brother’s chest. “But she loves him more.”
“No.” Asher shook his head vigorously. “He only influences her.”
I fell next to Kayden, the pain ripping my chest too much to take. “There’s no point in denying it, Asher. Our Belle has a dominant dark side. That side has always wanted him more than anything, and when they dip in the River of fire shit—”
“The River of the Molten Fire,” Katrina corrected.
“Whatever. When they do that shit, that dark side will be all she is. She’ll never remember us.”
“So what?” Panic seeped from Asher all of a sudden. “We can’t save her before the coronation and after she’ll forget about us? Have we just lost Rena forever?”
The vision of her while she was dying right in front of me two centuries and a half ago attacked me. I couldn’t lose her then. I wouldn’t lose her now. “Katrina, you got us a deal with Damien to save her before. Can you do the same now?”
Her shoulder lifted in resignation. “What deal, Alec? What do you have now to give Damien in return? He has everything he wants, and he’ll never let it go.”
Any hope I had left was gone. My eyes wandered around the cabin, the home, the life we’d built together with Belle, all destroyed, all gone. “Look at us. Three immortal, strong, undefeated beasts and a powerful witch, and none of us could save the girl we loved so much.” I scampered to my feet and turned.
“Where are you going?” Kayden asked.
“For a run. I can’t bear my own skin on me.” I headed for the door, but then I glanced back at Asher. “You and I killed her and delivered her to the devil long time ago. We did this. That’s why we never deserved her. We don’t even deserve to live.Wedid this.Welost Rena, Asher.”
Chapter 29
Zavariel
Hand on sword, I descended in the Frozen Valley on the Westside of Hell. Guards were not at full capacity in this secluded area of the kingdom. Most of them were positioned closer to the unholy rivers and the Royal Domicile.
