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My father was a reaper, as far as I could tell, and my mother was that woman from the vision, one who had dropped me off at a fire station because she couldn’t deal with me anymore.
I wasn’t supposed to exist, and maybe that was the point—the world couldn’t get rid of me, but it could ignore me.
I hadno one—even Gran had left me. When she could have chosen to fight harder, to stay, she’d given up, too.
The emptiness grew inside me, consuming everything, dragging me down until I saw nothing except the gaping void between me and anyone else.
I was completely and utterlyaloneand always would be—
Hands wrapped around my arms and shook. “Ava!”
I twisted to find whiskey-colored eyes drawing me in.
Hunter.
Just seeing him helped me find the ground beneath my feet.
“I’m alone,” I told him, the words empty and full of the fears that had plagued me my entire life.
“You aren’t alone, shadow-girl.” He captured the nape of my neck.
“I am. I’ve always been alone, and it’s never going to change. I’m not good, and everyone knows it. I’m not supposed tobehere.”
“Course you are.”
“There hasn’t been anything like me before because I’m wrong.”
“Being unique isn’t the same thing as beingwrong. I’m the only hellhound who isn’t out there murdering people for fun. Kase is the only vampire as old as he is who isn’t sadistic. Grant has power no mage has had before. Troy is annoyingly boring in a way no mortal or immortal hasevermanaged. We’re all unique.”
His words sank in and reminded me of what I’d somehow forgotten.
Kase. Grant. Troy. Hunter.
I wasn’t alone. Somehow, in this place, I’d forgotten that. I’d forgottenthem. I had people in my life, people who loved me, who had followed me into hell, people who knew exactly what I was and hadn’t turned away.
Hunter’s lips curled into a smile. “You’re getting it, aren’t you? You’ve literally got four possessive and stubborn men who won’t leave you be for more than a few hours at a time, so how are you going to stand here and say you’re alone?”
I swallowed, trying to push away the sound of those steps.
Something shifted, the scene changing. The bed was gone, a new scene taking its place. It was the day that asshole had died, the day I’d watched him fall down the stairs and break his neck.
Except…
This time something was different. The first time, when I’d lived it, I’d seen it through the eyes of a traumatized child, someone who wanted to see the world in the safest way.
I wasn’t that kid anymore. I was an adult, and even if it was hard, I saw the truth now.
Age allowed me to catch what I’d missed before.
A shadow stood beside him, floating, menacing.
A reaper.
The man’s eyes widened, just as I remembered, but he didn’t fall out of nowhere like I had always thought.
The reaper reached out, curling his fingers into the man’s chest, and ripped his spirit free. The man’s body collapsed backward, his neck snapping, but his spirit was in the reaper’s grasp.
As quickly as it happened, the scene faded away.
