“You don’t have the skills to kill me.”
“You keep telling yourself that. It will help you sleep at night.”
Sorrow eyes her carefully. “He is here. I have heard the whispers, and I know the signs.”
“I am aware,” she says tightly.
“End it. I am tired of cleaning up your messes,” Sorrow warns.
“I don’t answer to you.”
“Yes, you do, unless you no longer want a home in Nightmare.”
I abruptly remember the deal we made with Diablos and want to warn her against provoking the prince. We can’t send her back to a war zone; she would never survive. Why are we still sending her back? Why does she have to go back?
She doesn’t belong here.
“I don’t have a home. I have a battlefield,” she says, echoing my thoughts.
Canto jerks his head towards her, staring with his lips parted. He’s said that a million times. He explained that it means that he will always be ready for war, always be ready to fight. He can’t rest.
Annileo clears his throat, and I realise that he and Wraith haven’t taken their eyes off Mei. I step in front of her, glaring at them.
“When you want to find out what you can really do…come find me, little warrior. I can show you how to reach the next level.”
“How do I find you?” Mei asks reluctantly.
I want to snarl, stopping his response, but I have no rights.
“The demon, Diablos, can find us.”
Raz grabs Isla and licks up her thigh, sucking on it, before abruptly sinking his teeth in, giggling around a hunk of flesh while she curses up a storm.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, you bird brain dumbass.”
She hits him with the black box again, and I swear, I see lightning dance through his feathers. He collapses back, groaning.
The Minotaur picks him up and runs at the cliff, climbing easily with one hand. Wraith simply fades from view, while the prince seizes the shadows, leaving just this strange creature and his omega in front of me.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“I’m from somewhere else, but I live in Hell with my mates.”
Mei is staring at him intently with a confused frown on her brow. When he transfers his gaze to her, it is with deep respect.
“Omega,” he says, snaps open his wings, and takes to the sky, the omega held delicately in his arms like she’s priceless.
There’s a deep and dark silence before Canto turns on Mei. I can’t do anything but stare at her, struggling to get my mind to make her and omega make sense.
“Omega? When the fuck were you going to share that with us?” I hiss.
She lifts her chin, turns in complete silence, and stalks away.
“Omega!” Canto shouts.
“Eat a bag of dicks,” Mei shouts back.
It’s so human, so unlike Mei, that we’re all rendered silent. Mei is an omega, and I kissed her.
