remember me. Those… humans were not your real parents.” She pulled her
upper lip away from her teeth in disgust.
“Don’t fucking talk about them like that,” I raged, stepping closer and
preparing to deck her across the face.
“Why? It’s only the truth, sister.” Sadness darkened her perfect features
as she sighed heavily, dropping her gaze to the ground. She hadn’t moved
from where she stood beside the couch, though I could see it was taking every
ounce of her willpower. I had no idea why she was giving me my space.
Because she feared me? Or because she feared my reaction to her? Either
option gave me a splitting headache.
“Why are you doing all of this?” I demanded, figuring if she was in a
talkative mood, the least she could do was answer my burning questions.
“I just want to get the world back to the way it was before the Sins
arrived,” she whispered, and I spotted a single tear cascade down her cheek.
When she lifted her head, however, the tear was gone, and I wondered if I’d
imagined its presence.
“Before the Sins created nightmares,” I elaborated slowly, terror
inflating me like helium in a balloon.
Her lips twisted into a scowl. “You hate nightmares, Z. I know you do.”
“Not all nightmares are bad,” I insisted, thinking of my mates and Diego.
Of Axel and even Mali. Of Paco in his shed, with his flabby ass cheeks and
pancake covered bed.
“You didn’t always believe that,” she pointed out, sounding slightly
irritated.
I resisted the urge to growl. “People change. They take in new
information and form new connections.”
“Can you honestly tell me that if your precious mates weren’t
nightmares, you would still be so against my idea?” Aaliyah glared at me. “A
world without nightmares sounds like…like a paradise.”
“It’s genocide,” I protested. I hated nightmares and what the majority of
them represented, but there had never been a time in my life where I wanted
all of them to fucking perish. There had been hundreds of good ones I’d met
over the years, not even including my mates. And what about the children?
What about the millions of innocent nightmares?
“We have power, Z,” Aaliyah told me. “Lots of power. Take me, for
example.” She once more brought her gaze to her nails, surveying them in
the sunlight streaming through the open window. I took note of that sunlight
—when I passed out, it had been night. And if this was a true location and not
just a product of my imagination, it meant Aaliyah’s headquarters were in a
completely different kingdom. Probably the Shifter Kingdom. Aaliyah’s next
words stopped my internal musings. “I can exacerbate the sins of all
nightmares, but I can also eliminate them completely.”
“What…?” I gaped at her wordlessly. “What does that even mean?”
And why are you telling me this?
“I can amplify the sins in nightmares,” she reiterated. “Just like I did
with your vampire mate… I made him out of control with bloodlust until he
couldn’t concentrate on anything except getting his next fix of blood.”
“You destroyed his mind!” I bellowed, rage filling me.
She waved away my words dismissively. “His mind was never fully there
to begin with. You can’t break what’s already broken, am I right?” She
winked at me as if we were best friends and conspirators, but I simply glared
back at her. Her smile wilted. “But I can also use my powers on the opposite
spectrum as well.” She paused for dramatic effect before saying, “I can take
away a nightmare’s power. I can make nightmares human.”
My god.
My legs wobbled, threatening to give out underneath me, and I slid down
against the wall until my butt touched the cold tiling of the floor. I couldn’t
see through the red fog that clouded my vision.
If what she was saying was true…
It could change everything.
“You’re capable of it too,” Aaliyah continued, her lips quirking upwards
at my near meltdown. “You just need to learn how to harness your powers.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I demanded, finally finding my way
to my feet. My legs shook underneath me, but I placed one hand on the stone
wall to hold myself up. My eyes spewed vitriol at the grinning psychopath
before me. “Why are you working with the kings if you hate nightmares so
damn much?”
“Because…” One second, she was by the couch, and the next, she was
directly in front of me. She placed a hand on my chest, and to my horror, a
window materialized behind me. “You’re not the only one I plan to stab in
the back.”
And just like before, she shoved me.
My arms pinwheeled in the air as I struggled to regain my balance, but
before I could fall to the turbulent sea below, the castle crumbled into dust. I
crouched down, raising my hands above my head to protect myself from
fallen rocks and cement, but the scenery changed.
I was no longer in the stone palace but a dungeon.
What in the…?
I appeared to be in a cell where an unfamiliar man hung suspended on
the wall, a manic grin pulling up his pink lips. His face was covered in
bruises, but his ice-blue eyes were eerily familiar.
Ryland’s eyes.
On closer inspection, I saw that this was an older version of my shadow
mate. The same dark skin. Same blue eyes. Same cropped black hair. The
only difference was the permanent scars marring Ryland’s face, scars I still
didn’t know the origins of.
Behind the shadow king stood my shifter mate.
Lupe’s hands were bloody as he plunged a knife into the king’s shoulder.
The shadow king didn’t scream, didn’t make a single noise of distress, but his
entire face twisted with pain.
And Lupe…
His eyes were empty, devoid of the softness I’d come to associate with my
studious, passive mate. He didn’t spare a glance at the blood speckling his
face and hands as he roughly yanked the knife out of the shadow king’s
shoulder and tossed it onto a table…a table full of other bloody weapons of
torture.
A noise of distress escaped me, and both the shadow king and Lupe
whipped their heads in my direction. Lupe’s eyes widened almost
imperceptibly as shock, shame, and fear danced in his eyes.
“Z!” he begged, running towards me.
Before he could reach me, the vision changed, and I found myself in a
different section of the same dungeon. Instead of my shifter mate, however, I
found myself standing behind my genie one.
Devlin looked horrible, his familiar suit rumpled and his brown curls
disheveled. His olive skin appeared almost ashen as he pulled open the cage
to a second cell.
Was I going to witness him torture someone too?
And why was Lupe even torturing the shadow king to begin with?
What the fuck was going on?
Before I could articulate any of the questions out loud, Devlin stepped
inside the cell, and after a moment, I followed him.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the da
rk, but when they did, I saw a
lanky man sitting on the ground, shackles around his wrists and ankles. He
looked extremely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. Not with the long
beard and gashes on his face.
I opened my mouth to call out to Devlin, to make him aware of my
presence like I had with Lupe, but before I could get a word out, the world
shattered like a rock being thrown at a mirror.
And I fell once more.
But this time, I fell straight into a pool of burning lava.
TWENTY-TWO
BASH
Z’s head snapped upwards as a scream ripped from her throat.
If I ever thought my heart was nothing but a dead lump of coal,
that noise proved me wrong. I swore what remained of the black
organ shattered into thousands of pieces.
My mate was in agony, and there was nothing I could fucking do.
When Paco injected Z with more of the poison, she had fallen completely
still. I’d worried she’d stopped breathing, but Paco had assured me she was
still alive.
And then the screaming started. I could live a million years, and those
anguished cries for help would haunt me every fucking night. I wanted to
punch something, anything, but more than that, I wanted to cry.
She was nearly hysterical, words escaping her lips that I couldn’t make
out. I heard our names, though, while her tears wet her cheeks as she sobbed.
Another scream laced the night air, and Ryland, who had awakened from
his sedative a few minutes earlier, roared, punching at the wall the way I
desperately desired to.
“Please! Make it stop! Please!” she begged, thrashing in Killian’s arms.
The incubus’s face was perfectly blank, silent tears dripping down his cheeks.
He had a deadened look in his eyes that would’ve made me worried in any
other circumstance. But right then, I could only focus on my mate.
My screaming, terrified mate.
“How much longer is this going to take?” I barked at Paco, who’d pulled
up a chair and clasped his hands together on his knobby knees.
“Soon,” Paco answered, not peeling his gaze away from Z.
“We can’t fucking do this!” Ryland bellowed, moving to stand directly in
front of me and jabbing a finger into my chest. I’d never seen him so volatile
or emotional before. His black hair stood in all directions as pure panic
swirled in his blue eyes. “We can’t kill her!”
“We don’t have a choice!”
“You keep saying that—”
“Enough!” Dair didn’t pull his gaze away from Z’s hand intertwined with
his. Tears flowed freely down his face as another scream wrenched itself free
of Z’s mouth. “Just…” He choked on his words. “Just stop fucking fighting.”
I glared at Ryland, wanting to see if he’d back down or if I’d have to
sedate of him again, but with one disgruntled curse, Ryland stalked away
from me and used his shadows to hover in the air above Z.
The only other person in the room with us was Jax, though the vampire
didn’t spare Z a glance. He just…stared out the window. Just stared, his face
utterly devoid of any emotion whatsoever. I wondered if this had finally
broken him, finally shattered what little remained of his mind completely.
Hearing Z’s agonized screams was a lot for all of us to handle, but for him? I
wasn’t sure he’d ever come back from this.
I knew I couldn’t.
When Z first started thrashing and crying, tiny whimpers escaping her, I’d
tried to use my magic to take away the pain.
But the poison was made by sadistic fuckers, and nothing I did stopped
the tortured moans. I could handle the crying, the whimpers, the thrashing.
What I couldn’t handle were the screams.
I was about to lose my goddamn mind and kill everyone in this room.
Already, I could feel my powers sizzling through my body, sparking like
green lightning.
“Z…” I crawled back towards her, ignoring Ryland’s warning growl.
Killian gently placed her head down, allowing me to take his place, and I
didn’t hesitate to cradle my mate’s head in my lap. I stroked her golden hair
away from her sweaty face, cataloguing every tightening of her features,
every whimper, every flash of blue eyes before her lashes fluttered shut. I
would make Aaliyah pay for this, even if it was the last thing I did.
I placed my forehead against hers and squeezed my eyes shut to hold my
tears at bay. It didn’t work, and more than a few landed on her skin.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I know it hurts. I know. I’m so sorry.” It felt as if
someone had doused me in gasoline, lit a match, and then ran away while I
burned. Everything was on fire, and I knew the burning sensation would only
be rectified by my sweet mate’s survival. If she died, I would turn to ash.
“Did you know I had dreams about us?” I whispered, aware that my brothers
were listening in and not giving a damn. “Visions of the future? I didn’t
understand them at first, but we were so happy in them, baby. So happy. I
think that was why I pushed you away when we first met. I didn’t want to
love you the way I did in my vision because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I’ve
done…a lot of horrible things. I hurt people. I used women for my pleasure
and then discarded them like trash. I lied and stole and cheated. And I
coveted…I coveted you, because I wanted you even when I knew I shouldn’t.
I love you, Z. I love you so damn much that I don’t know what to do with all
of these feelings.”
I took a shuddering breath and lifted my forehead from Z’s, my eyes
fluttering open.
Z’s blue gaze speared me in place as she shakily lifted a hand and brought
it to my cheek. I desperately kissed her palm as my tears cascaded with wild
arms.
Her chest heaved a second before her hand fell from my face, whacking
against the ground. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her pursed lips straightened
out.
And then my sweet mate, the love of my existence, went still in death.
TWENTY-THREE
LUPE
W hat have I done?
I stared at my bloody hands as rage coiled inside of me like
a ravenous beast thirsting for blood. My eyes drifted from my
hands to the doorway, where I swore I could still see Z’s shocked eyes staring
back at me, piercing my soul.
I never wanted her to see me this way. Like I was a monster, a beast, a
creature forged from pain and suffering.
But maybe that was what I was now. My father had made me a monster,
but only Z held the reins to my beast.
As if in agreement, my bear roared inside of me, rocking backwards onto
his legs and pawing at the air.
Was the figure I’d seen truly Z, watching me with confusion and a tiny bit
of horror in her eyes? Or was it merely a hallucination? Was my
subconscious telling me that I was traveling down a dark and dangerous path,
one that would change everything? She needed to know that this wasn’t me. I
wasn’t my father, and I wasn’t prone to violence. I would never, ever hurt
her.
There may have been blood on my hands, but it was only to save her life.
Still hanging suspended from the ceiling, the shadow king released a
raspy laugh, the sound quickly turning into a cough.
“She sees the true you, Lupe,” he hissed. “A monster, just like your
father.”
“Shut up,” I told him, my entire body shaking like a dandelion. I was two
hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle, yet one look from Z was able to rip
away all of my defenses and leave me broken and shaking like a scared little
boy. I hadn’t felt this out of sorts since I discovered my mother had died,
murdered by humans from the same resistance I now wanted to help. The
same resistance that the shadow king, Seth, was a part of.
“I’m not your enemy.” I tried to convey to him with my eyes that he
could trust me, that I was only playing a part, the same as him, but his
expression simply darkened. The pure, venomous rage he harbored towards
me was impossible to ignore.
“You say that…but I don’t see anyone else stabbing knives into my skin,”
he seethed, and I visibly blanched.
Without responding, I dropped the knife I’d been holding and stormed out
of the cell, taking deep, desperate lungfuls of air as soon as I was in the
hallway. The candle at the far end of the wall danced, creating strange
shadows on the gray cement.
I lowered my hands onto my knees and worked to regulate my breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
In and—
Pain took root in my gut, curling through my veins like flames. The
sensation sent a dagger of fear into me as I gasped, blinking rapidly as I tried
to understand the source of such pain. I placed a hand over my chest, rubbing
at my skin, as agony bombarded me, shooting errant fireworks through my
bloodstream.
What in the…?
A cord materialized in front of me, glimmering like it was crafted from
the stars themselves, and I knew innately that on the other end of the cord
would be my sweet mate. I watched with awe and a little trepidation as the
cord began to vibrate erratically, jerking from side to side as if someone were
tugging at it.
I gasped, clutching at my chest, as fear snared me.
No. No!
The cord snapped in two, the silver transforming into a hideous shade of