Page 96 of Pareidolia

I’m still here.

We’re still here, because we saved each other.

“So… you just… what? Took my heart and decided I don’t get it back?” I’m not mad about it, just confused. Helping me made him vulnerable—what will having a heart do to him?

“It was already mine.” He frowns. “I think I’ll keep it. You can’t be trusted not to damage it again.” It’s an accusation this time, and Nox pulls me even closer. “You died,” he says again, and I lean in.

“But I’m alive now.”

“For me.” He keeps on with his train of thought, and I don’t see the point in lying to him.

“Yeah, Nox. For you. Apparently on a scale of one to fucked up, I’m at the ‘sacrificing myself for a monster’ end.”

He frowns. “Don’t do it again.”

I don’t plan on it. Dying was… maybe one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. Though I’m not sure how much of it was the pain and how much of it was feeling the way Nox was breaking apart knowing he was going to lose me. I settle for a nod.

“I have a feeling you aren’t going to let me out of your sight long enough for that to happen.” Just the suggestion makes him flash his teeth. I could tell him that I don’t want to go anywhere, that if I can spend the next few weeks just wrapped up against him, listening to the beat of my own heart… that would be fine.

But…

“No. Nowhere I can’t follow. You’re mine, Aspen.” His nails dig into my back as if he’s trying to pull me in right along with my heart, to keep me there, safe behind his ribs.

My forehead presses to the center of his chest and I listen.

A familiar thump thump thump that doesn’t belong to me anymore… that probably never really did.

It was always his.

I was always his.

“You stole my heart, you fucking monster.” My fingers brush along the scar on his chest. “I think that means you’re mine.”

CHAPTER 39

NOX

Mine.

Mine.

Aspen is mine, and from the way his eyes are glowing a soft shade of moonlight, the way he’s breathing and living without a heart to pump the blood through his veins…

From the way he smells more of shadow than man now, he’s going to be mine for as long as I keep the heart in my chest safe. Living because I live, breathing because I breathe.

Mine… and I was his.

“A home in your hollow,” Aspen bites his lip as he looks up at me, tilting his head as he does.

I can’t stop myself from leaning down to meet him, crashing my lips against his and licking the taste of death from his mouth. It still lingers there, his life’s blood on his tongue. Proof that he was gone.

I need proof that he’s still here.

“Nox, I—oh, fuck.” Aspen doesn’t fight me when I drag him to the ground. He doesn’t blink when I knock away the top of Ewan Daniels’ head and lay him on a floor soaked in his blood and the blood of the dead.

He just reaches up and tangles his fingers in my hair when my lips find his again. Aspen sucks my tongue into his mouth like he’s starving for the taste of me just as much as I need the flavor of him to know he’s alive.

The low, grunting sound of Noah starting to stir in the corner only makes me want this more—that fucking broken human needs to see that Aspen is mine, that nothing can take him away from me.