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AUDREY
Blazingagony tore at my body, ripping into my cells, digging into my essence, and igniting my soul. Everything was on fire and every muscle had contracted. I was frozen in place with one hand gripping the side of the death god’s altar, the other pressed on top of the altar — my fingers brushing Knox’s — and my head thrown back with a scream I couldn’t release.
I tried to breathe but couldn’t. Tried to move, to think, to do anything to relieve the pressure and the inferno consuming me, but I was stuck.
Panic squeezed even tighter around my chest, an all-consuming terror that I’d made a horrible mistake. Not because I shouldn’t have been trying to break my accidental mating bond with Knox, but because the spell we’d hoped would break the unbreakable was going to burn me up and leave nothing behind. Even if somehow my body survived, I’d be a shell, my soul completely devoured.
The fire tightened around my heart, ripping at the magic binding me to Knox. It heaved the bond from my chest, wrenching me forward, stretching, tearing, straining.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for it to be over, to finally be free.
Then the fire exploded, and the force yanked my soul out of my body determined to tear it apart before slamming it back into my chest. The impact knocked me over, suddenly releasing all my muscles, and I collapsed on the smooth floor of the death god’s temple.
Bishop rushed to my side and gathered me in his arms, cradling me against his chest and wiping the tears from my cheeks.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
On the other side of the altar, Knox groaned. He hadn’t been thrown back and had collapsed on top of the coffin-sized stone slab. The weak light filtering through the hole in the domed ceiling caught in the green flecks in his eyes.
They were so much like Bishop’s and yet so different. They mesmerized me, drawing me in, stealing my breath, and connecting with that messed up something inside me that said he was mine.
“Fuck,” he snarled, and the icy hollowness of his rejection crashed over me, consuming the painful, fiery remnants of the spell.
Oh, God. The frozen emptiness was even stronger than before, and I didn’t know if that meant our mating bond was stronger or just his determination to get rid of me.
“Shit,” Cyrus hissed, laying a hand on Knox’s shoulder. “It didn’t work, did it?”
“No.” Knox batted Cyrus’s hand away, shoved past him, and stormed out of the temple.
My throat tightened and a tear I didn’t want to cry rolled down my cheek.
It hadn’t worked.
We were stuck together.
Forever.
Or at least until one of us died, and I had a horrible feeling Knox would rather take his chances on going insane when I died than spend the rest of his life with me.
A sob tightened my throat and I buried my face against Bishop’s shoulder, fighting to keep it in.
I could do this. I could live with this.
Knox and I would have to seal our bond before it drove both of us crazy, but then I could convince him that I didn’t expect him to behave like my mate. I could find a room to rent in Stonehaven and spend a quiet life cleaning houses or something.
It wouldn’t be so bad.
Except my soul wept at the thought. It didn’t want to be without Knox. He was my mate. We belonged together.
And he doesn’t want me. Never did. Never will.
That was the cold hard truth I was going to have to live with.
“It’s okay,” Bishop murmured, stroking my hair and holding me tight. “We’ll get back to Stonehaven and see if Whil can transfer the bond to me.”
Right. Plan B. All wasn’t lost. We just needed to withstand the compulsion of the bond to seal it for another nine days.
A roar echoed down the narrow passage, the only way into the enormous chamber, and a shock of ferocious fury swept through the icy hollowness.
