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29
ADDIE
Nothing felt real while the threat of doom hovered over my head. I couldn’t even feel the plastic silverware in my hands. I stared down at my plate, full of grilled chicken and salads that the Pack had brought to the cookout.
What did Hel mean by punish me? How could she punish someone with her own blood? The possibilities rolled through my mind, one after another. Each one was worse than the last.
The empty feeling stirred deep in the pit of my stomach until Maddox put a hand to my back. His touch grounded me. The world came rushing back, sound blaring to life and color shining bright again. I turned my face towards him like he was the sun shining after a dark night.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, true concern carving lines into his pale face.
Hel had been very clear that my duty wasn’t over. It was the only reason she’d sent me back. I could buy myself more time by disobeying, but she would run out of patience eventually. Hel was a goddess, used to being obeyed.
I didn’t know how much longer I could get away with this. Time was ticking from all sides. As a Reaper, I would be sent to my job in the afterlife, soon. As Hel’s descendant, doom would fall upon me if I didn’t follow her commands.
I gave Maddox a tight smile. Though I tried to soften it, nothing would release the tension gripping me.
So, naturally, Maddox didn’t buy it. He turned me towards him and pulled me into a partial embrace. I allowed it even though the plate was in the way, if only because I knew this wouldn’t last forever.
Everyone here had been treating us like a couple. Each time it happened, my heart fluttered excitedly. I kept stealing glances at Maddox to see how he felt, but his attention was on everyone around us. Ryder called us mates, though I didn’t think Maddox and I had a true mate bond. We were bound to one another, but not in the way that mates were.
Hel called Maddox my familiar. Apparently, that wasn’t good. I didn’t quite understand why. The only thing that she’d made clear was that Maddox was still a threat. The world was in a fragile state, and Maddox’s presence threatened to tip it back into danger.
He wasn’t soul-torn, though. He couldn’t be a threat the same way Vince had been. Could he?
Brow furrowed, I put a hand to Maddox’s chest and asked, “You’re not going to devour the world like Fenrir. Are you?”
I didn’t want the man I loved to be responsible for Ragnarök. Was this what Morgan felt like when he fell for Vi? If they could avoid the apocalypse, then we could thwart Ragnarök too. The threads of fate had been severed so thoroughly that there was no telling what could happen next.
As I fixed them, perhaps I could weave my own future. I could make it so that Maddox and I had more time in a world where we had little to worry about. He could go back to real detective work, bringing justice to humans. I could worry about what flavor of coffee was my favorite instead of how the worlds were collapsing around me.
That was what I truly wanted: a future with Maddox. I looked up at him and felt a twinge of warmth bloom in my chest. It wasn’t pain from the handprint—that had healed once the shades got the vengeance they craved. Once his soul had been dismantled, their reason for lingering no longer existed.
This was love, all-consuming love.
I would do anything for Maddox. I just had to somehow hide that from Hel.
Hel’s tired sigh rippled across my consciousness. I stiffened. Maddox pulled back and said something, but I couldn’t hear his voice.
“You have disobeyed me for the last time,” Hel said.
“Don’t you dare!” I stomped my foot as I screamed to the sky.
Everyone at the Pack cookout stopped and turned wary stares in my direction. I couldn’t hear anything they said, though. This felt nothing like the time the shades shoved me out of my body. I was being forciblyrippedout by a divine being.
Hel threw me out of the world of the living and cast me down into the underworld. I crashed into a soft surface right before a glass barrier slid over my vision.
A Sleeping Beauty coffin? Really?
Maddox
Time stoppedas Addie collapsed in my arms.
I let her plate hit the ground as I scooped her up. My heart raced. Inside me, the beast howled with rage. It sent fur rippling over my skin. I managed to pull the beast back, but not before my teeth sharpened and pressed into my tongue.
Ness, Cerri, and Vi came running up, each one wearing a look of shock and fear.
“What happened?” Ness demanded to know.
