Page 40

Litmus Test For Psychopathy

Isobel blinked her eyes open on Thursday morning, the scent of Kalen and Mikel still saturating her sheets.

Another night without fear.

It had been two days since her “punishment,” and she was still trying to get used to the new sensations of her healed bond, but she had a feeling the blood-soaked dreams weren’t coming back because, somehow, that fear now seemed a million miles away.

The bond was whole again, and there would be no more side effects.

She unfurled in the blankets, happily burrowing her face into the pillow beside hers, saturating herself in the sensation of stormy skies and heady vanilla.

The bond hummed bright and happy inside her veins, little sparkles of energy in her periphery letting her know which of her mates were still inside the dorm.

Everyone except the two who had slept on either side of her last night, but Kalen and Mikel were always up earlier than everyone else.

She closed her eyes against the faint morning light, snuggling deeper into the pillow and trying to pull back the fading images of her dream, wanting to bask in that euphoria just a little longer.

She couldn’t remember what it had been about, but the novelty of a dream so pleasant held her in soft bliss until her phone vibrated, jolting her fully awake again.

She clicked on the message, familiar dread weaving back into her stomach.

Bellamy: I don’t know what to do.

Her happiness burst in an instant, dread flooding back in.

Isobel: We’ll figure out a plan together. I promise.

She quickly swung her legs out of bed and raced through her morning routine, tugging on exercise clothes and jogging to the front of the dorm, where Niko met her a few seconds later.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, utterly unchanged by their healed bond, because the damage done to him had been real; it wasn’t a pesky side effect.

Aside from briefly acknowledging their changed bond at the gym the morning after it happened, she hadn’t had time to unpack the rest of what had happened with any of them.

It was like a wrecking ball had been taken to a careful barricade, eliminating all the nuanced idiosyncrasies that held some of them at a distance from her.

With others, like Niko and Moses, it didn’t so much eliminate that barrier as it did remove their aggression over others touching her.

Things had changed between them, and between all of them and her. They all knew it. They had acknowledged it. But in true Alpha fashion, they weren’t going to dissect it more than that—except for Elijah and Gabriel, who were probably already penning the abstract of a new research paper on it.

She jogged with Niko toward the chapel, and quickly found herself panting a little harder than usual when he dropped behind her on the path, and his thoughts became tangled, lust shooting through their bond. The same thing had happened the morning before.

Niko liked watching her run.

They reached the chapel, and Isobel stalled before heading in to check on Sophia. She trailed behind Niko as she caught her breath. He turned toward her, sensing the question she was building.

“Um …” She rubbed the back of her neck as he wordlessly prompted her with the cocking of his dark brow. “I was wondering if you could show me how to pray.”

“For what?” he asked simply.

She shrugged self-consciously. “Bellamy and Sophia, I guess. I just … can’t figure out a solution. I know you guys said the gods aren’t straightforward, but surely one of them has a jurisdiction overlapping some of this stuff?”

He rasped his nails across his jaw, considering her question. “You could pray to Sannara for healing—for Sophia. But you meant the other situation.”

Isobel nodded.

He flicked his eyes around the dimly lit room, the dappled sunlight from the stained-glass window only stretching halfway into the space.

There were five semi-private prayer niches along either wall, a small altar with a candle in each of them and a long banner hanging above.

Isobel hadn’t ever paid much attention to the banners.

They depicted figures far too strong and beautiful to be human.

“Stygian, maybe?” Niko thought out loud. “He already seems connected to you in some way … and what’s happening to Bellamy and Sophia right now isn’t balanced at all. You could pray for him to balance the situation in their favour?”

“Okay,” she said eagerly. “How?”

He smirked at her, taking her by the shoulders and steering her to one of the altars.

The banner above her was of a huge man with dark eyes strewn with twinkling stars, turning his stare into a vast, deep galaxy.

The structure of his face was delicate, but his pretty lips were twisted into a scowl, his face half cast into shadow.

She began to recognise him the longer she looked, seeing similarities between this man and the image Sophia had shown her in one of her books.

His hands—one a darker ebony, the other a lighter dusk—held two apples.

One was full of decay, the other full of life.

There was a plaque on the altar before her, words embossed in a faded bronze.

Stygian.

The Duskfall Warden.

Niko picked up the pack of matches and lit the candle for her, his breath brushing her ear as he curled over her. “Just close your eyes, call his name, and speak to him. That’s how you pray. Do you want me to stay?”

She nodded, closing her eyes as his hands returned to her shoulders, the weight of them comforting. It was a little lame, needing emotional support to pray, but here they were.

Stygian . She called the name inside her head, tightening her eyes, the faint scents of wood polish, smoke, and beeswax mixing with the comforting aroma of whiskey that curved around her.

I need your—I mean, can you please … restore balance to … She shook her head. This was so fucking stupid.

A sudden flash and a deafening crash of thunder had her yelping back from the candle in shock. Niko gripped her protectively against his chest. The scent of smoke and sulphur rose into the air, heat creeping across her sneakers, and then Maya began to scream.

“What the—” she spluttered as the door to the chapel crashed open .

Bellamy appeared with fretfully messy hair and wild eyes. “What happened?”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Isobel asked, terrified that her clumsy little prayer had somehow summoned him in a flash of lightning.

“I’ve been right outside all fucking night,” Bellamy growled. “Was hiding in the trees—you really think I would leave her alone after?—”

Maya screamed again, and they all moved as one toward the residence, Bellamy beating them to the door as he yanked it open. Flames greeted them, licking over the kitchen in a ravenous rush.

“Go around the other side,” Niko snapped in Alpha voice, forcing Bellamy away from the door. “I’ll heal, you two won’t.”

She raced after Bellamy, rounding to the front of the residence and tugging open the door only to stagger back a step with the force of the heat building inside.

“Get back!” Niko shouted, Luis already in his arms. He tossed the burning kitchen table into the cabinets to make room for Maya, who had a limp body tossed over her shoulder.

Isobel backed away from the house, her throat tight with fear as Maya laid Sophia down on the grass, her torso …

steaming. She was burned, smoke curling up from the charred black of her shirt.

Bellamy fell beside her, cupping her face, his forehead pressed to hers, muttering things too low for Isobel to hear.

Maya pulled herself to her feet, stumbling back a step in shock, her eyes lifting to Isobel’s.

Her voice was a croak of disbelief. “She was struck by lightning.”

Isobel swallowed, her attention tugged back to the chapel, watching as flames climbed from the residence to engulf the roof.

Niko was staring at her like she suddenly had the power to smite people.

A shudder took up residence in her body, and words stuck in her throat.

What the fuck?

Bellamy rocked Sophia back and forth, smoke curling between them. Niko handed Luis over to his mother, who whispered to him that Sophia was going to be fine; the gods were going to bring her back.

They all waited.

Bellamy began to cry, the sounds guttural as he tried to hold them in. That familiar dread wasn’t simply flooding back into Isobel’s body; it engulfed her in a blink, swimming through her blood with ease, taking over her entire body and stalling all thoughts in her brain.

Luis screamed. He no longer believed his mother, and when Isobel looked up again, the dread had spread all over Maya’s face.

For just a moment, Isobel cracked under the weight of her dread and faced the harsh possibility before her, but then Bellamy spoke.

“She’s breathing,” he whispered before his voice rose into a hurried shout. “She’s breathing! We need to get her to the hospital!” He staggered to his feet, pulling Sophia up with him. When he turned to face them, he had one green eye and one brown eye.

It had worked.

It had worked?

She met Niko’s hazel eyes as they raced off to fetch a cart to carry Sophia in. He looked as confused and disbelieving as she was.

She had prayed to Stygian … sort of … and he had struck Sophia with lightning , forcing her and Bellamy to bond.

It definitely wasn’t what she had in mind, but she supposed, in a way, it did solve their problems.

“Maybe we should keep praying to a minimum,” Niko muttered beneath his breath.

“Probably for the best,” she agreed on a whisper, adrenaline prickling through her system. “I don’t think communication is their specialty.”

He choked back a laugh, which immediately warmed her blood.

She might have completely failed at her first prayer attempt and accidentally called down lightning on one of her best friends, technically killing her , but at least she made Niko Hart laugh.