Page 143 of Pareidolia

“Go on then, Aspen.” Nox leans in close, and that tendril gives one last squeeze around my throat, pumping me full of the echoing memories of a thousand people he’s said the next word to before. “Run.”

CHAPTER 17

NOX

“Run, run, run, little monster.” The words are a whisper that spill through the air and get caught in the trees, echoing around Aspen as he gives me one last look before taking off into the forest. I’m willing to give him a head start.

I’m willing to let him try, because I know in the end I’ll catch him. There isn’t a world where Aspen could outrun my shadows, my wings. He’s never going to escape his fate.

I always thought Fate and mates, finding another and knowing they were destined for you, was a folly for creatures who were so caught up in their desire to need that they couldn’t find contentment within themselves.

That was before Aspen.

That was before I realized that sometimes a person simply did belong to you, whether they were willing to admit it or not.

With each fall of his feet on the forest floor, every bit of distance he puts between us, I’m more sure that I’m right… that he’s mine.

That I’m never letting him go.

I wait until I can’t hear him crashing through the trees before I take off—at first, I run, making as much noise as I can. I can smell him in the air, taste him on my tongue. Aspen grabs the terror, the panic, the sense of being prey, and wraps it around him like it’s the finest silk, as though he’s ready to come undone and sprout his own wings so he can fly on the feeling of his newfound emotions.

There’s a difference, though, between Aspen and the memories I fed him.

He’s clutching the fear to his chest, clinging to it desperately like it’s something precious. Each step he takes away from me pushes another emotion to the surface, a scent that burns through the air so hot I’m surprised he isn’t starting a wildfire.

Lust.

The harder Aspen runs, the more that scent overtakes the fear I gave him. He pushes through low-hanging branches and cuts his cheek on the tangling underbrush, and his arousal is so strong it floods the entire forest and makes it hard for me to pinpoint his exact location.

With a low growl that echoes around us, I take to the air. My wings slice through the chill as I rise above the trees, glancing beneath me until I catch sight of white and blue—Aspen’s hair as he ducks through the forest, running and jumping over fallen trees and tangling in wild bushes as he desperately tries to escape.

He’s close—close to the edge of escape. Close to the road that would technically buy him his freedom. Just close enough that I let him think he’s going to make it. I feel the strangest mixture of savage triumph and disappointment scream through the forest and into the air as he tumbles out, trying to find his freedom in the clear sky and a path to lead him back to Duskfen.

That road is for humanity, though, and there are no humans here. Just one monster and another—we’re both shapeshifters. I wear the form of a moth and Aspen wears the face of a man who can feel, but inside we’re both wrong.

I swoop down when he’s less than ten feet from the road. His shoulders tense, but he doesn’t make the mistake most humans do. He doesn’t look back at the sound of wings cutting through the air—if anything, he runs harder.

Hard enough that he almost makes it.

His foot lifts and he dives for the asphalt, and I catch him before his hands can touch it, dragging him up and into the clouds as he turns in my arms and starts to fight.

Aspen beats against my chest, his mouth finding my neck and biting down, until he comes away with skin between his teeth that turns to shadow and slides down his throat before he has a chance to spit. I carry him until we’re so high in the air he can barely breathe, so high the chill makes him shiver. I fly up until the only thing I can feel is the heat of his lust and the way he’s clinging to that sensation of fear like it’s the only thing making his heart beat…

There’s a moment there in suspension where we’re so high that he glances up and his expression becomes serene… and then he bunches his legs up and kicks hard, ripping from my arms and sending himself plummeting back to the earth.

I don’t know if he’s suicidal or just that sure of me… though they could be considered one and the same.

My body turns, and I catch up to him as he descends—I don’t touch him this time, instead letting the tendrils of my shadows spill out to wrap around him, slowing his speed as we fall to the ground, so by the time we crash through the tops of the trees, I can drop him and it only knocks the air from his lungs.

“Do you want to die?” I snarl, and Aspen tries to bark out a laugh. The fear he was feeling earlier is starting to fade—it was a fleeting taste, after all. In its place is just that blazing lust and a determination that’s so fierce I want to wrap myself in it and bathe in the depths of how much he wants. His apathy is nowhere to be felt…

This has to be strange for him, to be completely consumed by emotions.

“No, I want to feel alive.”

Alive.

Is this the first time he’s truly felt alive?