Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
He scoffed. “As if what we fall into each night isn’t strange?”
My teeth gnawed at my bottom lip. “I know. The number of times I wondered if I really was crazy. If I’d made it all up. If you were real.”
Tension bound his shoulders, and he didn’t look at me as he continued pulling things from the bag.
“Do you regret coming for me?” I whispered. Trying to break through. God, how was I supposed to handle this? I’d ached to see him for so long, but I never could have imagined that it would feel like this.
“Why would you say that?” The question grated into the dense air.
“You seem angry.”
He shocked me by whirling to face me. “Of course I’m angry, Aria. They locked you away in that place. Left you vulnerable. Some monster almost got to you. And now—”
His teeth snapped as he stopped himself from saying whatever had been on his tongue, and he turned back to the supplies he had laid out on the bed.
A tremor rolled beneath the surface of my skin.
As if he’d felt it, he sighed in regret. “Please sit, Aria.”
My nod was slow as I sank onto the edge of the bed. “I’m going to be running for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”
As short as that was likely to be.
Because we both knew my time would run out.
Pax roughed his right hand, which was tattooed with the gruesome face of a Kruen, over his head. The action was something I’d seen him do in Tearsith when he was upset, and it clearly carried over to here. “We don’t know that.”
“Don’t we, though? I knew the second I bound that Kruen while awake that it set me apart. That the Kruen would take note and come after me. I’d never fathomed it could be a Ghorl. That they even really existed.” I looked at him, unashamed to offer him the truth. “I’m scared, Pax.”
I didn’t want to be.
I wanted to be brave. I wanted to find the courage that I had in Faydor.
To fight.
But what had already happened had been terrifying, and I wasn’t foolish enough not to know it was just the beginning.
Pax angled toward me, his raspy voice a murmur. “I know, Aria. It fucking scares me, too. But I’m here, and I’m not leaving you until I know you’re completely safe.”
“Ellis is going to—”
“You can’t worry about what Ellis says or thinks right now.” His words were shards of aggression, cutting me off. “Right now, the only thing that matters is getting you away from the dangers in Albany. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
Warily, I nodded, and he stood from the bed.
Towering.
Obliterating.
Stealing oxygen and reason.
My nerves scattered at his proximity, a frisson whipping through the room as he took the one step required to stand over me. White flames licked in the depths of his gray eyes as he looked down at me. I didn’t realize he was holding a T-shirt until he muttered, “Here. Put this on.”
Rather than handing it to me, he unfolded it and carefully worked it over my head.
I wound my arms into the armholes before he pulled it the rest of the way down.
The material swallowed me, and in an instant, I was surrounded by his scent.
Leather and soap and something deeper that whispered of masculinity.
As if his magic had been woven into the threads.
Or maybe it was just him.
His aura and his potency.
The one I’d found only in my dreams, who now was right there.
Alive and vibrating with an energy that was more powerful than anything I’d ever known.
I pulled the towel out from under the shirt and tossed it to the floor; then I tipped my face up to him, barely able to get the words off my thickened tongue. “Thank you.”
Reaching out, Pax swiped the calloused pad of his thumb over the small scar at the edge of my mouth. “I was created to take care of you, Aria, and I would never turn on you.”
A shiver rocked down my spine.
Before I could say anything, he’d torn himself away, turning his back as he pulled something from the duffel bag.
A second later, he was kneeling in front of me with a first aid kit. A flash of heat rolled through me when his hand curled around my ankle. He lifted my leg enough that he could inspect the bottom of my foot.
“You’re hurt.” It was close to a growl.
My laugh was ironic. “I’ve suffered much worse.”
Gray eyes jumped to my face. Fury blazed in the roiling pools. “You shouldn’t have to.”
The air grew thick, so dense it was close to suffocating, and I struggled to breathe. “There have been so many times that I prayed for it to go away. That I’d be saved from the misery. And when I bound the Kruen awake . . . ?”