Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 14
Zora
It’s not the words that hurt, it’s his expression that does me in. It was devastation I saw before he blinked away and I feel Maddox’s pain so deep in my soul, my lungs compress in on themselves.
I can’t breathe.
Which is ridiculous because I could swim to the bottom of the ocean if I wanted to.
Panic seizes me, and I don’t bother looking back at my brethren as they continue to discuss the message from the Scryer. I bend distance through dimensions to my home in Switzerland where I once again face the windows that overlook the north side of the Bernese Alps across from the Swiss plateau.
Only a few days ago, I was screaming out my pain and anger when Cato destroyed that dimension. Maddox was here to get me through it.
Now I can’t breathe, thus I can’t scream. I also don’t have the strength to want to breathe, or stand, or even live like this. I fall to my knees, hands pressed against the hardwood, and try to ride out the despondency created by my rejection of Maddox.
The look on his face when I told him I didn’t love him.
A burst of agony through my chest reinflates my lungs and I moan against it. It hurts so fucking bad to have done that to him. It is a million times more torturous knowing that I gave up the best thing that could ever happen to me in this life.
But I had to do it.
I can’t survive in this harsh new world without tamping out my humanity. The only way to do that is to disconnect from those emotional ties because being hard, calculating and ruthless gives me the strength to make hard decisions and to stand up to the other four gods.
I’m sure it’s the only way.
In fact, it has to be the only way because what I just did to Maddox means he’ll never look at me again. Not with care or tenderness.
Not with love.
I’m vaguely aware of wet noses and warm tongues giving me snuffly kisses.
Uorsin and Mattia read my emotions and snuggle into me as I roll to my side on the floor. After several minutes of petting their fur and responding to the tentative nudges of their heads against me I realize I’m actually breathing again.
My chest still aches—a dull throb that keeps the same cadence of my heartbeat. I push myself up from the floor and consider finding Maddox. I should apologize and let him know the reasons why I can’t love him.
It would be more lies though, because I love him terribly. If I didn’t, nothing would ever hurt this bad.
“Time,” I whisper to myself. All I need is time, and the memory of him and what we had—what we could have had—will fade away.
I rub each dog’s head and ask, “You two hungry?”
They know what that means and start prancing with excitement. I turn toward the kitchen and come to a dead halt as I take in the large man standing there in black robes with the hood pulled low to hide the top portion of his face.
For a split second, when I first notice the man, I think it’s Maddox, but the robes disabuse me of that quickly. Not his style, plus… I told him I didn’t love him.
He wouldn’t come.
In fact, he won’t ever come to me again.
It’s not this cloaked stranger’s unwelcome appearance in my house that has me immediately on edge but the fact that he wears a piece of jewelry suspended by a thick chain around his neck. A mammoth gemstone of deep red hangs from a thick bevel, so dark it’s almost black except where a thin ray of light streaming through the windows hits it.
The Blood Stone.
But that’s impossible. Carrick has it.
Mattia growls low in his throat and takes a slow step toward the intruder who turns his head toward the threat.
Instinct kicks in to protect not myself but my dogs. With nothing more than a brief thought—a wish to make something happen—I immediately send them away, transporting distance to drop them safely in Carrick and Finley’s home. It not only ensures their safety but sends a message that I’m in danger.
That split moment I spend sending my dogs away costs me. Before I can pull on my power, a wave of energy from the robed man slams into my body.
It doesn’t knock me over though, merely wrapping my entire being in some type of numbing blanket that renders me weak as a baby. I search deep for my power and locate it, calling it to rise and break my prison. I feel strength returning and sparks crackle at my fingertips.
But then I am hit square in my chest and it feels like something is being pulled out of me. Whatever is happening is painful and I shriek against the invasion. I glance down and see a red glow emanating from my sternum, getting bigger… hotter.