“Kaige.” His name is a whisper on my lips, and though I can’t trust a word that comes out of either of their mouths, I still find myself asking Ash, “So you didn’t actually kill his dads because they pushed back about murdering Noah, it was because at least one of his fathers was stronger than the others around here and you needed the power boost?”
The amused smirk he gives me makes me want to drive an ice pick through his eye. “Not quite. He gave me no choice in the matter and my hands were tied. He didn’t understand that his son getting chosen was an honor, and I couldn’t have him interfering when so much was at stake.”
My heart plummets into my stomach. Thankfully, Hunter grates the words out that I can’t manage to form. “Chosen. For. What?”
“For Sabrina, of course.” Ash states it so matter-of-factly, as if we’re all completely blind. “I wanted her to have as much freedom as possible while she could, to live a life unburdened by everything that we are, and I needed time to get a few things squared away, anyway. Eventually, though, she’d need to finally come home where she belongs. You, Damian, and Kaige; you were the strongest of your respective packs, and Aur-” he clears his throat and corrects himself “-Sabrinaonly deserves the best.”
Dark eyes rake over my face, blatantly ignoring the agitated sounds of the guys as they all tense with fury, hating that they can’t tear his face off. “It really was a perfect match; you balance her out well. Aurelia was always much too impulsive for her own good, but you, Sabrina? You think things through, can set emotions aside to see the practical side of things. Of all of the vessels she could have been bound to, I’m thrilled that it was you.”
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
A low growling reverberates around my skull as my inner wolf, demon,Aurelia, or whatever the fuck I should call her finally reacts. With it, a slow heat spreads throughout my body, the reminder that I’m not completely helpless, a much-needed comfort in the face of this man. I may have given Damian, Kaige, and Hunter a hard time before, but I see it now, even if I wish I didn’t.
Acheron Wilder doesn’t need to lay a single finger on a person to hurt them. He can see exactly what a person fears the most, but rather than relieve that anxiety, he exploits it, as corrupted as the humans he condemns.
Xander hisses, “You said Damian was being chosen for a-”
Ash chuckles, cutting him off. “For an arrangement with a female from across the country I was optimistic of negotiating terms with?” Eyes sparkling with laughter, he holds my gaze and grins. “Did I lie, Xander?”
Aurelia’s low growling in my head rises to headache-inducing levels, but I’m just as pissed that she didn't tell me jackshit either, so I choose to ignore her for the moment. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
He barks out a laugh. “Of that, we’re in full agreement. But you have to admit, I chose well. You were miserable until I decided it was time for you to come home and sent Adrian to Ms. Hawthorne’s courting dinner to catch a glimpse of the visage that tormented him.” The desire to burn that smug smile off of his face is so visceral that I take a step forward, only for Hunter to band an arm around my waist and pull me back against him.
“He’s trying to goad you into reacting without thinking,” he growls, not bothering to whisper. “Don’t let him get in your head.”
He shakes his head and sighs, amusement falling away as he loses himself in his story again. His eyes suddenly turn glacial as he sets them on me, boring straight into the demon using my body as a shield. “It wasn’t until the moment we needed our abilities the most that we realized we barely had any left, thanks to the traitor in our midst. But my deceptively sweet little demon let all of that power go to her head and bit off more than she could chew, didn’t she?”
My other half flinches back so hard, it forces me to mirror the action.
“Managed to imprison a good chunk of our army beneath the battlefield at our feet, but those outside of the blast zone?” The dark energy simmering around him begins to writhe in agitation, hazy tendrils snaking around his body. “Were imprisoned in the nearest vessel; the humans we were at war with.”
Xander tentatively picks up where Ash left off, and Damian keeps his attention firmly on the volatile demon in front of us instead of his father. “Human bodies weren’t made to contain demonic energy, for two souls to reside in the same body, and it resulted in... complications. Each branch of demon manifested as a different beast, becoming what we now refer to as shifters. The Nightmares became wolves, while the others took on a wide variety of forms. Our children only take after one of their parents, but some of their abilities have become amplified by merging the demonic bloodlines since we can only reproduce with other demons, and others diluted to the point they’re barely more than the shifters of lore.”
A throbbing takes up residence in my temple, and I exhale a slow breath. “If you think that Ash is right, then why did you conspire against him in an attempt to hide me?”
Ash cocks his head, looking past me. “Yes, Xander, please share.”
His voice only slightly wavers as he whispers, “I didn’t think it was possible to bring her back, that in your grief and rage you just needed to hold onto the hope in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But then you pulled it off and I-” he sighs. “I’m tired. The war was hell on all of us back then, and I can’t go through that again.”
My ears ring as the heat in my veins turns against me, making my entire body feel flushed, and I subtly lean into Hunter.
Hot to cold with his temperament, Xander clears his throat, standing straighter. “Sabrina shouldn’t have to die for our freedom when she wasn’t the one that imprisoned us. Once the human inside of my vessel faded away, it took some time to adjust to the limits of this body, but it’s beenminefor centuries. The need to be free isn’t as important as it once was.”
That’s why the color in their eyes holds steady; thereisno ‘other half’ warring for dominance. It’s simply them, at home in someone else’s body.
Once, I lamented being a defective supernatural. Now, I have everything I could only ever dream of. People that love me, are willing to fight for me, and abilities that took my mundane life to the next level and filled it with magic and chaos, but I don’t particularly like my current reality either. If we’re all possessed not just by demons, but ones that were dubbed the moniker of Nightmares? Maybe that’s why I subconsciously destroyed every good thing that came my way before Emmy, especially if the demon in my head was lamenting the fact that she was the reason everyone was cursed and we didn’tdeserveto be happy. Being miserable and alone is far safer than the pain that comes from having someone you love being used against you.
The more my grasp on reality slipped through my fingers, the more I pushed back, when I should have embraced the sense of peace that comes from accepting that everything holding us back is an imaginary construct.
One of the biggest sources of suffering for humans is failing at the hundreds of expectations society has in place for us. No matter how hard we try, it’s never enough. But what if we accept that those standards are bullshit, that they don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things? Then, there’s nothing to hold us back.
If you opt out of the game, the only rules you need to play by are your own.
Running my hand soothingly over Slade’s back this time, I narrow my eyes on Ash’s face. His eyes may not give him away like the rest of us, but everyone has a tell. “You were messing with our heads before; what’s to say you aren’t still? Just attempting to manipulate us in the normal sense of the words?”
He shrugs a single shoulder, ignoring the warning snap of Reid’s teeth as he extends a hand in offering, though he keeps his distance, remaining in the threshold. “See for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“I have no interest in taking anything from you to sit around in my brain like a Trojan horse.”
