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“No.”
Hope surged and died when I saw the certainty in his eyes.
“I am.”
“No. You can’t!” My fingers sharpened to claws, pulling his chest towards me. I cut his shirt, scratching the flesh underneath, but he didn’t flinch. “We can run. You can portal us somewhere… or we can go to another realm.” Surely Cole could find another Libra demon. We could escape this if we just tried.
He only shook his head. “It will never stop. Hecate was able to hide you with her magic, but it was nothing more than borrowed time.”
Borrowed time. Every moment flashed before my eyes, the weeks of uncertainty with Cole, of hiding from my feelings. A waste. I’d had him for only a day when a century wouldn’t be enough. Time spent training with Hecate, but what was it for if I couldn’t stop this?
“It demands its due.” He said the words almost tenderly. Like he knew what he was doing.
Like he knew he was breaking my heart.
“I won’t let you.”
I tried to call on the magic to fight the quaking ground, but my powers were dormant.
The look he gave me was something I’d never seen on Cole’s face.
Pity.
My throat felt like it was shut.
“We can’t fight this, little Alpha.” Even now, he’d slowed his jumps, the chasm only a hundred feet away. I twisted to see it, but he pulled me back so the only thing I could see was his face.
“I need you to know, Avery… it was worth it. You own my soul. You’re etched on every part of me. And if I only had you for a moment, then it was the only moment worth having in my entire lonely existence.”
It was now that his mask cracked. His amber eyes were pained as the heartbreak flooded his face.
“It should be me, Cole,” I pleaded.
He didn’t reply, just pulled me in for one final kiss. It was searing. It was sorrowful.
I tried to summon my magic, to push him away so I could throw myself in. If ever there was a time I needed to overpower the stubborn male, it was now. Green sparks flickered on my fingers. I raised my hands as if to pull him in when I needed to push him away to distract him.
But Cole knew me as well as I knew myself.
He broke the kiss and looked down at me with infinite tenderness. It was an expression I couldn’t help but memorize, a face I could never forget in thousands of years, across a hundred lives.
“Forgive me for leaving you alone.”
A whirl of dark magic that tasted like smoke and darkness teleported me away. It wasn’t far, only a hundred feet. I pushed myself up from where I’d fallen and surged forward. I could get there. I could. Ihadto. There was no other choice.
I called on every ounce of my shifter speed, the speed I’d never had as the weak pack Omega but that I had found in death. The speed that should let me do this. I’d been horrified when I thought I had to die, but if that was the price for Cole to live, there was no contest.
Ninety feet away.
Eighty.
Seventy.
Sixty.
But I didn’t even make it halfway before Cole turned and gave me one final look. Even at the distance, I read the apology on his face. Apology, but no regret. He wasn’t sorry at all that he was doing this. He was only sorry he was leaving me behind.
And then he turned into the massive canyon that had opened between us and fell in.
