Page 51

51

DEXTER

I was safe.

Rod Shadowheart was gone.

Poppy Shadowheart was gone—they were all fucking gone!

I curled into myself, knees drawn tight to my chest. My shadows slithered over my skin, coiling and writhing as if they, too, could not contain their agony.

My breath hitched, ragged and uneven, as I pressed my forehead to the corner walls of the closet. I squeezed my eyes shut against the memory of my father’s eyeless skull underneath my feet, the gurgling sound of his disbelief before silence took him, his bones embedded into the sole of my foot.

I was free.

I forsook the Shadowheart name.

Now, I was a nameless thing in Kalista, but I was stripped of the last thread tying me to a past soaked in blood and cruelty.

And yet…Pandora still loved me.

I felt it through our matebond. A constant pulse in my chest, threading through my ribs, whispering promises of love I knew she felt.

Another tug.

She was close.

I could feel her—but I didn’t move to meet her.

I couldn't.

My hands, still trembling, dug into my arms, claws biting my flesh. I had no right to touch something pure, something so fucking perfect.

Not when I wasn’t in control of my shadows like this—I didn’t want to hurt her again.

The shadows murmured in my ears, a chorus of voices urging me to give in, to let them swallow me entirely. Madness was always lurking within me, like a beckoning hand in the dark. It had been there since the first time my head was cleaved from my body, and it was there now.

The faintest scent of caramel hit me just before the closet door creaked open.

Pandora stepped inside, shutting the door quietly behind her. Her feet padded as she walked over and sat beside me, pressing her warmth against my side. She tucked her legs under herself and, without hesitation, she reached for my shadows.

They curled toward her, coiling around her hands, waiting for her to flinch away as she had before. But she didn’t. Instead, she let them twine around her wrists, her shoulders, her waist, until she was wrapped in them, in me .

She accepted them.

She accepted me .

Even when I wasn’t in control.

A broken sound escaped my throat, something between a laugh and a sob, as I let my head drop onto her shoulder. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”

Her fingers traced gentle lines along my forearm. “You’re shaking,” she murmured.

“I don’t know who I am now,” I confessed. “Not without the Shadowheart name. Did I do the right thing?”

“Well, that’s easy. Yes, you did, and you’re my mate. I love you, Dex.”

A shuddering breath escaped me. “I love you.”

“Come here.” She shifted, wrapping her arms around me, pulling me in as if she could hold together all the pieces that had fallen apart.

And fuck, if anyone could, she could.

The bond between us thrummed, stronger than the fear, stronger than the insanity.

My shadows no longer sought to hide me. They reached for her, and she welcomed them, welcomed me .

Here, not in the closet, but in her embrace, I was no longer confused or lost.

I was found—I was hers.