I could have imagined what it looked like… but I wasn’t so sure.
“Tell me…”
“His kind… they aren’t built for balance once the bond forms. An angel’s mate becomes his purpose, his anchor. Without their grounding presence, he falls. But with her…” Damien exhaled almost like he was too afraid to speak any further “…with her, the angel burns. Bright. Wild. Uncontrollable…”She’d free himfrom any kind of control.
“Then where is he, Damien? If you both feel the bond… if he even communicates with her in some ways… where the hell is your brother?”
He was silent for a few moments until he found his words again. “I haven’t seen him… at least not in the last fifteen years.”
I was shocked, how could he be aware of a possible bond between Gwendolyn and him and not yet tried reaching out to his brother?
“After my father banished me from Aetrum, he vanished. No letters. No whispers. Not even in my dragon form could I find him.”
“You’re telling me you’ve known this bond existed, and you didn’t think to look for him?”
“I did look. For years. But I was sure he didn’t want to be found. He probably feared the prophecy more than we did. While I thought thenightmare bringerwas a fairytale, he truly assumed it could pose a danger to us.”
“And now Gwendolyn’s caught in the center of it. You, me… and a ghost of a brother who could return any day and claim what’s his,” I said. My voice trembled with frustration. I couldn’t deny that I was angry with the entire situation.
“He won’t claim her for himself. Despite the jealousy of his kind, he knows to respect the bond we share.”
“Then the bond might break him, knowing he won’t be able to have her for himself,” I said.
“Or the bond might bring him back.”
A beat of silence and then we both stared at her… Gwendolyn, she was still so beautifully asleep, so completely unaware of what was going on.
“It could tear her apart…” I muttered, unwilling to say more. If Gwendolyn really felt the connection to him before, that must be one of the reasons she wasn’t fully letting go here—she hadnightmares and felt anxious. It wasn’t her feelings, but his.
“Worse, it would not only tear her apart. It could tear us all apart. Brother against brother. Friend against friend. One pull too strong, one moment of jealousy, and the bond begins to fracture. And when angels fracture… it’s worse than any downfall of any other kind…”
And my realm already felt it… I felt it. I might have been too caught up in wanting her all to myself, but if we make one wrong move it could break her heart… it wasn’t just her we would lose.
“We could become monsters,” Damien said quietly. It was something he had been afraid of for so long—that his inner dragon would take over and destroy everyone else around him, including the ones he loved.
Chapter 16
After what felt like days of sleep, I finally stirred, the heaviness in my limbs slowly dissipating. The pounding in my head had dulled to nothing, and the nausea that came over me in bed had vanished. Fresh air drifted through the open window, causing the curtains in front of me to sway with a soft breeze. I sat up slowly, blinking into the golden light. It must have been morning… or was it already evening again? I had lost all sense of time.
The room was quiet, but I knew I wasn’t alone. I smelled him, I felt him.
“You are finally awake,my little demon,” Xavier’s voice stirred behind me. I turned over to see him lying on his side, with one knee bent, making him look incredibly arrogant. He was dressed fully in black with his usual red hair bands in his raven hair. He had also positioned his arm under him and placed the side of his head in his palm, like he had just been staring at me the entire time.Why were his eyes so terribly beautiful? Damn it, what was going on with me?
“You slept for over fifteen hours.”Fifteen hours, when was the last time I had slept that long?
His fingers caressed my hip and went under my night gown, sliding over my naked thigh and making me realize that I wasn’t wearing any kind of underwear. The memories of what we had done last night flooded through my brain.
How could I let myself become so desperate that I begged him to touch me down there? Especially after he had ignored me after our kiss, and then didn’t even come to pick me up for the ball?
I slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me, I don’t want this,” I declared. I knew my body betrayed me, and he felt I was lying. But if I allowed him to touch me again, I didn’t know what would happen. Would I even be able to resist him?
Xavier looked hurt as he rolled over and walked over to the dresser. He threw a slip into my face and said, “Weird, I can recall that you were just asking me to touch you. You literallybeggedfor it.”
“I did not beg, I would never be that desperate for your touch,” I assured him. “I was also drunk… you took advantage of me. You should have said no.” Anger must be flowing through his body as his eyes darkened to red.
“Gwendolyn… you weren’t drunk anymore, and you fucked yourself with my hand. You were even greedy for more, yearning to touch me in return.”
Was I that desperate? That sounded nothing like me, however since I crashed into this world so much had happened, so much had changed. I had changed.
