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How many years had I missed?
I wasn’t ready to ask yet.
Dusk hung up the phone, then opened the door to the back seat. Shatter was curled up in the far seat, clutching her knees to her chest, eyes wide with terror as Dusk got in.
I took the front beside Umbra even though it killed me. But I didn’t want to frighten her more. Decebal had said to remove anything that made her worse, and right now, the only one she was okay with was Dusk.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
He reached for her but she choked a sob, pressing herself against the far door, covering her face and neck with her hands, fists balled in her hair to obscure herself from view.
My heart cracked in two again as Umbra turned the engine on.
I couldn’t stand it.
She was everything. She’d saved me, and I’d woken too late to protect her.
“Shatter, if you don’t tell me, I will check myself,” Dusk said quietly.
She shrank further against the door, tugging on her hair viciously, but shook her head.
Good.
I met Dusk’s eyes and nodded. Whenever she answered like that, I felt a flicker of her in the bond.
She was hiding from us, as if she was afraid of us seeing her.
Shatter remained curled up in the back seat, silent, almost catatonic for the whole ride. Dusk was beside her, but she flinched every time he reached out, and nothing he did soothed her.
Her scent became more frightened the more we drove.
When we arrived, he took her in his arms and carried her to the cabin. He set her up in his room, but when I got a glimpse inside, she’d curled up on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest, eyes blank.
She was my angel. The reaper that had brought me life, instead of death, and I wouldn’t be okay until she was.
EIGHTEEN
SHATTER
I remembered, in vivid detail, what it was like to lose myself to the instincts that ruled me. Back to the time when I was taken off the meds and the world would fade, and I would return to myself, my room in ruins. Or locked in a pitch-black cellar after losing my temper.
It had happened again when I’d seen Ransom out in the dark and rain. I had felt myself fading, panic taking over.
Until Dusk’s command.
It had been jarring, suspending me in a reality to which I couldn’t have clung by myself. He’d stared down at me, rainflecked hair stuck to skin that was umber in the night, a stark contrast to piercing yellow eyes that held mine.
Absolute.
Sure.
I was coming apart at the edges, and his voice had held me together.
Time passed in a blur, and there was a rumble of a car engine around me. The warmth of a car speeding along a highway. All of their scents were tangled in the small space.
Lily of the valley, wolfsbane and blood, and dark opium.
