Page 187 of Pareidolia

I can fix this.

But first… I swing, my eyes narrowing on the human I should have killed in the library. I walk across the room and slip one tendril carefully from my back, twining it around his neck while keeping my focus on Aspen and his injuries.

I can be slow.

I can take my time.

I can show him what happens when he touches my mate.

My mate.

My little monster, so close to death that I can almost feel the bastard breathing down my neck.

He won’t take him… and I’ll show him what happens to any creature who tries.

One arm swipes out, and a claw takes Noah across the face. He screams—a mixture of pain and terror as he wakes from the wound—and then his gaze flicks to Aspen.

“Couldn’t save you. Couldn’t… Alex, I’m sorry. Sorry, I—” My claw takes him again, this time across his chest.

“Don’t look at him,” I hiss, and the red in his irises fractures, bursting and flooding the whites of his eyes. “Look at your death, Noah, and know that you’ll feel it a thousand times over before I’m finished.”

“Alex… Alex, please…” I can’t tell if he’s begging Aspen for mercy, but it doesn’t matter.

There’s no mercy here. No god to beg to. There’s only the shadows—only agony for what he tried to do.

“I could keep you alive for a thousand years—I could drink your pain and terror until the universe dissolves and it still wouldn’t be enough.” The furious snarl spilling from my chest makes me shudder.

I can feel Aspen’s pain behind me where he leans with his back pressed to the door, and it’s almost surprising how much energy it takes to funnel my strength into him to keep him standing.

The black thread connecting us feels so… weak.

He feels so weak.

I pour more of myself into him instead—I’ll take his weakness for now if it means he’ll keep standing.

“Nox!” Aspen calls, but I’m too focused on what I’m doing to turn. “N–” A loud pop spills through the air and a burst of black splatters from my chest.

Gunshot. A gunshot? The ranger doesn’t have a gun.

It hurts. Pain that blossoms as the bullet tears through skin and rips a hole in my wings.

“Monster,” Noah whispers. “Monster, monster, monster.” And then… “Dad?”

That word is said with a clarity he shouldn’t have after what I’d done to him, and when I turn, Aspen is standing with a gun pointed at his head.

“Dad,” Noah says again, and the soft confusion in his voice as he looks between his father and Aspen tells me that he does care about him.

I tighten the tendril I have around his neck with a snarl, forcing him to silence.

It’s not Noah who calls to the man next.

“Ewan, stop.” Aspen’s voice is soft, and his hand on his stomach clenches as he groans in pain. I try to spill another tendril from my back, to reach across the room and rip the gun out of the man’s hand… but I can’t. I can’t focus to control my shadows and keep the pieces of me inside Aspen.

Trying to fight calls those parts of me home.

“I knew you were real.” Ewan isn’t even looking at Aspen as he holds the gun to his head. “Knew you took my son.”

I don’t even know who his fucking son is, but Aspen’s instant flare of shock makes it easy to figure it out.