Irun, each step feeling like I’m stepping on red-hot coals. My entire body crackles in pain—the bargain I made demanding that I turn around and complete the marking ceremony with Ambrose. The pain that ricochets through my body is violent and blinding. The magic of our blood deal is relentless in its command: turn around.
But I can’t stop. If I do, someone dies. Me. Nyx. I need to buy us time. I need the sun to rise. I need another month to figure out how to keep us both alive, even as the blood deal threatens to kill me first.
Another jolt through my body has me crumpling over, barely able to catch my breath. I pant, my paws hitting the ground as thick mud tries to hold them in place, making it almost impossible for me to take another step.
“Do. Not. Stop.”Ambrose’s words hit me hard in my mind, and the magic seems to ease a little as it realizes that Ambrose isn’t commanding me to finish our blood deal tonight.
I can’t send any words back. I can’t tell him that I’m not stopping; nothing can make me stop. My life and Nyx’s life depend on it.
I run, but it’s not fast enough. My legs seem to move more slowly with each step. I look up at the sky and see the first hint of sunlight peeking ever so slowly over the horizon. Just a little longer, I just have to make it a little longer.
I look over my shoulder to see if Sylara has caught up to me again, but I don’t see her anymore. She stopped to fight off a witch and told me to keep running.
I did.
I ran.
I left her.
I hate that I left her to fight alone. But I didn’t have a choice. And I know as Nyx’s beta, it’s what she would want. She would do whatever it takes to protect Nyx.
“Nyx,”I whisper into the part of my mind he used to occupy. But the word tumbles down a never-ending void, going and going and going…never reaching its final destination.
Nyx is gone, and it’s my fault. I rejected him. I severed the bond we shared. I thought it was a kindness to kick him out of my mind. If I couldn’t have him, then I at least needed to not torture him by letting him hear every thought that Ambrose and I had. I thought I was giving him peace.
But now I’d do anything to have that connection with him back. Maybe that’s selfish, because nothing will change. Ambrose is my mate. The deal I made with Ambrose will force me to be his and not Nyx’s. The only way to save any of us now is to accept Ambrose as my mate and choose a curse to break.
The emptiness might be the death of me if the deal I made doesn’t kill me first.
I try to take a breath, but the magic of the deal wraps around my ribs with a death grip, squeezing so hard that I can’t suck in a breath. So much for thinking the deal’s magic was giving me a break. I stop. Just to catch my breath.
The forest falls too quiet as a cold awareness settles in my chest. I’m being watched. It’s an unsettling feeling until I sense the familiar touch of his icy shadows hit me like a warm embrace.
I look up slowly. Nyx is standing at the edge of the clearing where I stopped. His dark eyes bore into me, as if he were trying to speak to me. But neither of us has to speak to understand each other.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Stay alive.
The words transfer between us despite a mating bond no longer existing.
But then I look closer, and I see the pain etched into every muscle of his body. How strained he is, forcing his body to stay frozen as he looks at me like I’m the very air he needs to breathe. I’ve only severed our connection for a few hours now, and we are both in more pain than I ever thought possible because of it.How are we supposed to endure a lifetime of this?
I see Nyx make a decision.
No, please gods, no.
And then I feel him on the edges of my mind. He hesitates for less than a second, and then he digs into my mind, invading it like I’m butter that he can just rip through and shred.
“Kill me,” his command comes hard and fast, pushing the magic of the deal I made with Ambrose from my body and demanding all of my attention.
Magic is strange. I’m still learning what magic trumps what magic. Which is stronger? Which is going to win out? Right now, the mind control that Nyx hits me with is all-consuming enough that the blood deal I made with Ambrose feels like a bothersome fly, not like the weight of the world will crush me if I take another step.
“You promised me. You promised me you’d never use your mind control against me again. You promised.”
I send the words out, knowing he can’t get them. But even as I do, I feel the pull to him, the magic demanding that I move closer so that I can sink my teeth into his neck and end him.