Page 113 of Hunted By Fear

“That’s rich coming from you!” I hiss, throwing a punch and hitting him square in the jaw.

Fuck, that felt good; good enough that I do it again and again until one of my hits lands him on the ground, sprawled out and bleeding like the bitch he is.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to kill him here and now, but I can’t bring angelic steel into the dream plane.

Ironic how my own dream is unattainable.

He pushes himself back up, wiping blood from his lip, staining the pristine white of his shirt. He doesn’t deserve to be unmarred and unmarked; he didn’t long before what he did to Aerilyn. This is just the fucked-up icing on the cake.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he huffs as he pushes to his feet again, wobbly and pathetic, but that’s fine. I have no issue knocking him around a bit more.

It’s almost therapeutic.

So is the laugh that’s ripped from deep down.

“You didn’t mean it?” I don’t even try to hide my disbelief because there's no fucking way he just said that.

“You own her soul, Rome! You’ve pushed yourself on her foryears,made her life such hell that she left her whole life behind and ran. So desperate to escape that she fell into our laps.”

His face twists in disgust, but I’m not sure if it’s because he regrets what he did or because of the reminder that he chased her right to us.

It doesn’t matter, though.

The only thing that matters right now is keeping him from Aeri. She’s been through enough; she’s in enough pain from all of us. The least I can do is try to keep her sleep painless.

My fist finds his face again, and this time, I feel the crunch of bone, and he lets out a shout. It’s amazing the power that flows through me from his pain. My beast pushes to the surface, wanting to devour him, but I push it down.

His ass is poisonous, literally.

It’s almost worth it, though, to devour him. I would most definitely die, but so would he…

“I love her!” he croaks. I pause, fist pulled back, ready to hit him again. I don’t know when I grabbed him, but his shirt is bunched up in my hand, holding him close enough that I see the tears well in his eyes. Tears that have nothing to do with the ass beating he’s currently getting.

I narrow my eyes and really look at him.

This isn’t the Rome I knew, the one I ran from; something’s different, but the longer I look, the more sure I am that he’s fucking lost it.

He really believes he loves her.

“If you loved her, you wouldn’t want to cage her. You don’t know the first thing about love, Rome.” I shove him away, and he stumbles but catches himself before he crashes to the floor again.

“Teach me!” His brain must have been scrambled from one too many hits because he moves toward me, reaching out as if he’s going to touch me. “Please,” he pleads.

I watch in shocked horror as he falls to his knees before me, his hands folded as if in prayer, before he bows his head low to my feet.

“Teach me how to love her, please. I can’t live without her.”

I swallow hard, feeling like I’m choking on the air as I try to piece this Rome back together with the man I knew before.

What happened? When did he change?

Standing in the midst of Aeri’s mind, the answers are written all around me in the memories he took such painstaking time to create. The life he built for them brick by brick.

I look back down at the man at my feet as just that.

A man.

Not an angel, but a man confused and lost.