Page 4 of His Atonement

And right now, in this moment, I would have it no other way.

Foreign Torture

Oregon. Present Day.

Gods, I am a nervous fucking wreck.

I have never been so anxious in my entire eleven hundred plus years, and this isn't even my battle.

Not directly anyway, and thankfully the only indicator to anyone that I'm harboring any type of concern or anxiety is the incessant pacing I've been doing the last twenty minutes; more evidence provided by the path I'm wearing into the stone floor.

And bloody fucking hell, this uniform I'm being forced to wear isitchy.

Constricting.

Tight.

Suffocating.

Which is why I keep pulling at the collar, and tugging at the material to give my ultra-sensitive skin some relief.

Even after almost a year, I am still not accustomed to wearing anything on my body at all, anything that isn't the body of another or the illusion of clothing I could conjure up when communicating with them. Or perhaps it is simply my nerves that have me feeling every scrape of the softest fibers against my skin, every shift of the fabric as though it is full of needles trying to pierce my flesh.

Yes, that must be it.

Gods, I need to smoke.

I glance at the door for the millionth time, and tug my collar yet again, which earns me a grunt from across the hall.

"You have something to say?" I sneer with my trademark grin. "Perhaps give voice to those words you rarely ever speak?"

Andrej's eyes flicker white briefly, but only briefly, before he nods toward me and my tugging. "Stop."

I roll my eyes and resume pacing. "I shall do no such thing. It is absurd that I am being forced to dress as you do, forced to don anything at all when I could so easily convince everyone I am clothed." He grunts again and I sigh. "Yes, yes I know that the only ones in the house that would see what I conjured would be your mate as well as the mate of your twat of a baby brother, but wouldn't that be enough? Shifters are nude almost as much as demons, it would be no different from that."

Andrej frowns and crosses his arms against his chest.

"Fine.” I grin. “I understand your point. I have no desire to see your dick, as you have no desire to see mine. And surely I shouldn't tempt the other females with my obviousgift. Would hate to have to break mate bonds over what I am packing."

He rolls his eyes and nods toward the door.

“Right." I nod as well. "And I most definitely do not need to subject my sister to my naked form. That would surely scar her further and in her state… Damnit, what is taking them so long?"

A solid hand comes down on my shoulder then gives it a firm squeeze and I blow out a ragged breath.

It has been nearly a year since my gem simultaneously saved and condemned me. Almost a year since she forgave me and bound me to her in a way that has put my life on pause in both the best and worst ways.

By delaying the inevitable, my dear sweet sister has given me a taste of the life I did not know I wanted, the life someone like me is never allowed.

Because of her I've been able to almost enjoy my time stuck in Ashland—my time waiting for the punishment greater than any I've had so far—to experience what I only had a glimpse of when she was a babe, and I've even been able to forge bonds with the most unlikely of creatures.

Cora says they are mybest friends. She calls the wolf, the vampyr, and the dragon mybrothers from other mothersbecause while it was rough in the beginning, Havok and Andrej have embraced me fully as part of their clan, and spend as much time with me as they do the rest of their brothers. Colt has done the same, but in slightly different ways.

The other three dragons are starting to come around though, much like the rest of the clan they rule over.

It helps that they all love my sister dearly, trust her explicitly, and have faith in her current power over me, and little by little I find the rest of them seem to accept me as one of their own.

Except perhaps Milos; that little twat still gives me hell most of the time.