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Reagan
Ilay on my side, curled and content in my slumber. The bed beneath me was warm and hard—harder than a bed could possibly be. My eyelids cracked open, then I blinked.
This wasn't my room, not from back home or the one in Caius’ castle.
Panic said I should sit up and scramble away, but my body didn’t move. The thought of paralysis sent a chilling fear through me. What had happened?
While my thoughts were racing, my head tilted back, as if I were controlled by someone else. I peered up at a beautiful and familiar face. A smile graced my lips as I stared up at Caius. His strong chiseled jaw was slack with sleep. No tension lined his eyes. His features were smooth and at peace. I could reach out and run my fingertips over his straight nose and high cheekbones—if I wanted. I could taste his full lips—if I were in control.
None of these actions were my own.
Instead, my hands splayed across his broad chest and his bronze arms encircled me. The short style of his hair was replaced by a long, thick braid that disappeared beneath his heavy body.
He looked different than how I’d seen him only hours before, but there was no mistaking him.
Slowly, my body sat up. My fingers trailed over his abdomen, testing to see if he stirred.
While I wasn’t in control of my actions, and I could feel everything this body felt, my thoughts were still my own. Gods, I had questions. First off, what was happening and what kind of mushroom-induced nightmare was this? Was I in the body of one of his former lovers? I really hoped not. The idea made me queasy. How could I throw up if I was in someone else’s body?
When Caius didn’t wake, I lifted one bare leg, gliding it across his hips so that I, she—whoever she was that I was in—could straddle him. Oh, dear lord. This was really happening. I was going to have sex with Caius, and it wasn't even me.
Caius groaned as she lowered her hips, grinding against him. Nausea swirled in my gut as the nameless woman arched her back, stretching forward like a cat. I could feel her love for him, her desperate longing . . . but something about it wasn’t right. It was distant.
While she grazed his lips with her own, the woman used her free hand to reach for something in the far corner. A glint of metal made my pulse quicken. She grabbed a knife from the table on the other side of him.
Ohgods. It was like watching a scene in a horror film where you wanted to scream and let the person know they were about to be murdered.
Only this wasn’t a movie, and Caius was alive and well, not to mention he was a primordial that couldn’t be killed. Even with that knowledge, fear lanced through me.
"Abraxia," he hummed against her mouth, still half-asleep. His eyes didn't open as he deepened the kiss, and she parted her lips in earnest. I was going to be sick. Not because of what they were doing, but because of her intentions. I could see them all too clearly from the passenger seat and I couldn’t stop it.
Her fingers curled around the base of his braid where the hair was only a couple of inches from his skull.
"I love you," she whispered.
The knife swiftly moved with a flick of her wrist.
Confusion swirled within me, followed by agonizing pain. She’d cut his hair, not his throat—and yet somehow I knew this was worse.
This felt deeper.
This was betrayal.
I closed my eyes against the agony, or I tried to at any rate. I was still inside her head, still watching in complete shock as she shifted her gaze between the ten-inch-long braid and the balcony. Uncertainty seemed to lodge within her throat.
I wished I could scream. That I could convey the bone shattering, soul-cleaving pain inside me. That I could curse her by name.
Abraxia.
It hit me where I had heard that name before.
She was the first guardian. The first woman to bear Caius’s soul.
I had no idea how or why, but I knew without a doubt that what she held in her trembling hands was his very soul. Or a piece of it.
Caius shuddered, his muscles spasming as they tightened in shock. The ground beneath her feet quaked as Abraxia leapt from the bed and began to back away.
How could she do that after saying she loved him?
