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B <3

P.S. Please, forgive me?

P.P.S. While it is not something that grotesques say to one another, I know my grumpy human needs to hear the words. I laughed lightly, staring at the remaining few words through watery eyes. I love you, Miko. I refuse to live in a world where I am not at your side.

I clutched the note, no, his love letter, to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut. Regret heavily swarming with guilt tore into my entrails as I pushed my glasses on top of my head, covering my face with both hands.

How could I have been so damn stupid? I have not let the human condition plague me like this since I was a child incapable of controlling and expressing my emotions.

The image of Bane, kneeling at my feet in the tea shop barreled into my mind’s eye and I flinched. Everything I didn’t let myself acknowledge at the time, now starkly obvious. My heart tripped over a beat as I remembered the once brilliant blue of his large irises turned muddy, like an ocean churning up with debris during a hurricane. What kind of monster turned a crazy-sunshiny, and okay, often manic, individual like Bane, into a morose shell of himself?

I did.

It’s almost as if my cutting words and refusal to listen sliced to the bone, bleeding all joy, excitement, and happiness from his very essence. Despair and self-loathing punctured my heart. It was the least I deserved. I snagged the nearest soft, black throw pillow and pressed it to my face, muffling my harsh scream.

I was so cruel to him over a misunderstanding. If anyone betrayed our mating bond…it was me. I’m a horrid person.

Tossing the pillow away, I sat up right and dashed away the tears trailing down my cheeks, replacing my glasses. I’d enough of the pity-party. I needed to apologize to Bane, fixing this jagged, cavernous rift between us.

Huff winked away without a word, probably giving me time to settle myself and accept the truth. The Heechus were wiser than I gave them credit for. However, seconds later, his abrupt departure made more sense as the bond fused to my sternum screeched, agony flooding from the opposite end, an echo of it alighting in my body.

“Bane!” I shouted, bolting into my bedroom and through the secret bookcase entrance before my mind fully weighed the possible repercussions of my rash actions.

I didn’t care. Something was very wrong.

My shin slams into the side of the leather armchair, jolting me into the present and kicking my senses into overdrive. Still, I don’t stop running, heedless of Bane’s roar and the thud of what could only be bodies falling to the floor.

I hurry down the staircase and trip, biting my tongue to stall my yelp of surprise as I tumbled the remainer of stairs, falling into a battered heap at the bottom. My lungs burned with the need to breathe, but I couldn’t take in any air, my graceful flight to the first floor knocking the wind from me.

Struggling to my feet, my eyes widened as purple magic flared in a massive oval shield. I dropped my gaze to the source, hundreds of tiny Heechus aiming their top paws and three tails toward an angry cloud of seemingly endless, putrid shades of rot and mold in every color of imaginable.

“Miko, run!” Bane roared as he fought a dozen witches at once.

Ignoring his order, I ran toward him only to smack into a hard wall of Heechu magic. “Let me through!” I screamed at anyone who would listen.

Huff winked onto a splintered, lopsided bookcase to my right. “We can’t Meeky. If we drop the shield, they’ll take the library and wipe all of us out.”

I slammed my hands against the purple barrier. “Please, Huff. He needs me.”

“We know, but he needs you to live more.”

Multiple, disastrous events occurred at once, heralded by Bane’s anguished cry. My eyes sought him in the choking cloud of magic, my heart falling out of my ass once I spotted him. A powerful looking whip of vile magic, the exact same shade of greyish brown of meat left in a fridge long past its expiration date lashed across his bloodied, bare stone chest, revealing the damage he’d already sustained as it spread around his torso and pinned his lashing tail and wings to his body.

My hand flew to my mouth and nausea churned in my stomach as noticed how one of his wings hung at an odd angle. His injuries tore at me with rusty claws. “Please, I have to help him.”

Huff’s eye bounced between his struggling best friend and me as a pitch-black portal opened behind my grotesque. The Heechu squeezed it shut and bared his needle-sharp teeth. “Drop the shield!”

False relief melted into desolation so heavy it brought me to my knees. “We’re too late.”

I could do nothing but watch as the Heechus charged the witches, several of them dragging Bane’s prone, limp body through the portal, their disgusting magic coating him from horns to talons. They rushed the portal to no avail. My hands clapped over my ears as dozens of high-pitched screams raised the hairs on my arms, a magical wave fling their tiny bodies into the detritus of the destroyed library as the portal closed.

My hand fisted over my sternum as our bond strained but held, pain licking my nerves and spreading outward. He was still alive. “No,” I called weakly, unable to pry my eyes away from the empty space where the portal closed.

I ignored everything around me, snuffling through frustrated tears. No. They couldn’t have him. He was mine. While logically, I knew there was little I could do as a terribly fragile human, that wouldn’t stop me from going after him.

Monstera’s voice floated into my mind, the remembrance of words spoken years prior, and cutting through my stressed, over sensitized emotions, You’re the most infuriatingly intelligent person I know, don’t let that big fucking brain of yours stop you from asking for help when you need it. Got it, Koko?

Heart competing with stomach acid for room in my throat, shaking hands patted my pockets for my phone, choking on a sob as she answered on the first ring.