Page 23

The trees blurred past the window like smudges on a canvas.

Jaxi sat in the back of the vehicle, flanked by Kaos on her right and Kross on her left, but the only thing anchoring her to the moment was the weight of Kaos’s presence beside her.

But the timer in her chest never stopped ticking.

Fifty-three minutes. Clawing at her ribs.

She stared ahead, then sideways. Kaos hadn’t spoken in a while, hadn’t so much as looked at her, but she could feel it—how tightly he was holding himself back. Every inch of him was drawn taut, like his skin could barely contain what boiled under it.

She reached for his hand, threading her fingers between his. He didn’t look down, didn’t move, just curled his grip tighter around hers.

“I keep thinking,” she said quietly, her pulse in her throat. “If something happens… I don’t want to leave this world without proving to you that I meant it.”

His eyes flicked toward her, sharp and searching.

“That I love you,” she added. “I didn’t just say it because I was scared. I said it because everything in me knows it.”

His jaw shifted slightly. “I know.”

She turned in her seat to face him more fully, a knee drawing up between them. “I don’t want to disappear having only said it once.”

His grip on her hand tightened slightly. “You won’t.”

“Kaos,” she said, voice smaller. “Please look at me.”

He did.

She studied his face—so calm, but full of fire. Her heart pulsed harder. “I keep wondering,” she whispered, “if it’s really going to happen. If I’m really going to be erased.”

His eyes locked on hers. “Not while I breathe.”

“But if it does—”

“It won’t.” His voice was solid, final. Not hope. Intention.

Her breath hitched, eyes flicking to his mouth, then down to the space between them. The words she’d meant to say vanished.

“I want to touch you,” she whispered. “Like you’re mine.”

Kaos moved before she could finish, his wings unfurling and closing around them in a single, silent command.

Light vanished, sound dimmed. Only heat and breath remained.

His arms followed, pulling her into his lap, holding her.

“I am yours,” he said, the words low and shaped from something primal cracking inside him. “Nobody can see us now.”

Her breath stuttered. She moved, straddling his lap, hands shaking as she pushed her fingers into his hair. “I want to show you what it means to be mine,” she breathed.

****

Her body was fire in his lap, fueled by panic and worship. His hands locked around her waist, then her hips, pulling her tighter against him. His mind screamed warnings, ticking clocks, consequences—but her need drowned them all.

She dragged her lips across his jaw as if tasting the seconds left between them. Kaos growled deep in his throat. “Show me,” he said, voice rough with restraint.

His hands moved under her shirt, palms skating across her back. Her touch was hot, trembling, but steady in the way she kissed him—like she was carving her name into the inside of his chest.

His restraint shattered. He kissed her with the weight of every second left, every thread of fury and devotion wrapped into one impossible storm. Her mouth opened under his, and he devoured her, a god trying to burn the clock alive.

The gleaming black mantle that flowed from his waist to his feet parted at her touch—Lust and Rage yielding to her hands. Her breath struck his cock like a summons. “Jaxi,” he said, low—part warning, part surrender.

“I want this,” she said, her voice thick, trembling.

Her fingers brushed along his shaft—possessive.

Heat hit him like a war drum. “I want to taste every part of you.” Her mouth closed over him, warm and hungry, and time ripped loose from its tether.

He throbbed against her tongue, breath punching out through clenched teeth as she dragged him into a rhythm born of urgency and possession.

The heat of her lips claimed him, and he felt it—every ounce of his restraint screaming as it burned away in her mouth.

His spine arched with her raw, desperate movements.

Inexperience made holy. Made lethal.Kaos reached down, pulling her up hard into his lap, his breath ragged now.

He yanked at the waistband of her jeans, dragging them down her legs and tossing them aside, then stripping away what remained between her and the throb of his cock.

He kissed her, rough and full of heat, his mouth moving to her ear as he pressed her down against him.“I need your body,” he rasped, sucking her into his lungs, “wrapped around my cock.”

He drove into her in one fierce stroke, and her breath shattered against his throat.

Her body clung to him—tight, wet, trembling—pulling him deeper with every thrust. The rhythm was primal, their skin crashing in a silent war against time.

He gripped her hips, burying himself harder, faster, chasing the edge as her desperate shocked cries filled his ear like salvation.

Every thrust dragged him closer to the edge, breaking his breaths into ragged groans.“I'm going to come inside you,” he growled, voice shredded with heat. “I want you full of me.” He slammed her faster. “So deep the gods fucking choke on it.”

A wave of power slammed into his wings then mind. If you climax again, we’ll have more than Nominous on our backs, Kollaborator warned. Pull out, or kiss existence goodbye.

Kaos’s body locked up.

Jaxi gasped against his mouth. “What’s wrong?”

He exhaled once, hard and rough. “We have to stop.”

She looked stricken, confused, still burning. “Why?”

“Because I plan to keep you.” His voice came jagged, breath steaming against her mouth. “But if I climax inside you, I lose the one thing I’d burn heaven to keep.”

****

The vehicle swallowed the road like it knew time was waning. Kaos sat motionless, his shoulders coiled, every part of him still raw from what he hadn't finished. Jaxi’s breathing was the only thing he could hear and the one thing that didn’t make him want to burn the sky.

“Turn there,” Kollaborator said.

Kaos lifted his gaze, eyeing the coming split in the road. No signs, no markings. Just a jagged path through the trees that looked as wrong as it felt. He glanced at Jaxi, still flush but shaken. Still his angel.

He touched the curve of her jaw with his thumb. Just to remind her of what they shared. What could never be unmade.

A static like current brushed across his skin from the front. He watched Kollaborator as the pressure in the cabin shifted and something unseen passed between them like a wave.

Kollaborator flipped Jaxi’s card, his jaw ticking.

“What is it?” Kaos asked.

He looked up and around. “We’re not heading to a place,” he said. “We’re heading into one.”

Kaos exhaled slowly through his nose as Jaxi's pulse climbed under his own skin. He set his hand on her thigh, grounding his power in her. He stared out the window, watching the trees begin to blur. Lines skewed, colors deepened. The air moved in ways it shouldn’t.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Kollaborator warned quietly.

The meaning of his words registered in his generational lingo and Kaos gripped the hilt of his power. It felt like a trap morphing into a battlefield with every warped second that passed.

“What are the cards doing now?” Kade asked from the far side, voice tight.

“They’re definitely doing something,” Krave muttered, looking around, both hands gripping the wheel.

Kollaborator flipped through them. “They seem to be syncing, but not to each other, not that I recognize.”

Kaos leaned forward. “Then what are they syncing to?”

“I don't know,” he said. “They’re cycling, shuffling roles, like.... some cosmic slot machine.”

Krave lifted both hands off the steering wheel suddenly. “Okay.” He looked at Kollaborator. “Something else is driving now.”

Outside the window, the world distorted again. A row of trees repeated twice—exactly the same, like copy-pasted brushstrokes.

“Can anybody tell what the hell is happening?” Kollaborator wondered, gaze moving between the cards and the windows.

“The world seems to be repeating itself,” Krave said.

“Yes, I see that much,” Kollaborator murmured.

“That card is glowing,” Kross said, pointing over the seat.

Kollaborator looked. “That's your card,” he said to Krave.

“Mine? What’s it saying?”

Kollaborator stared, brows pulling hard. He shook his head barely. “It says the wind must open what was sealed without force.”

A landscape unfolded outside the vehicle, bleeding across the terrain like a projection forcing itself onto reality.

Krave faced him in the seat. “And what the hell does it mean?”

“It means you’re first.”

“First for what?”

The vehicle vanished.

“Holy shit,” Kollaborator breathed, looking around with the rest of them. They stood in a space of nothing, feet on smooth stone ground with a sky that spun wrong. In the distance, a narrow stone corridor stood, flanked by two towering humanoid statues without faces.

Kaos sealed his wings over Jaxi and strapped his arms over her chest, every layer of his powers loading.

Kollaborator searched around for clues. “This must be some kind of…”

“Dimension,” Kade muttered, nodding at the corridor.

A sealed gate appeared between the two humanoid figures now. No hinges. No locks. No seams.

“So, I guess I’m supposed to try and open it,” Krave said, head angled at it.

“Is that what you’re getting?” Kollaborator asked.

Krave snapped his red eyes over to him. “No, but you said I’m up.” He gestured with a hand toward the strange vision, keeping his eyes on the Kollaborator. “The wind must open what was sealed without force,” he said, pointedly.

“Does that mean the door was sealed without force or that he must open it without force?” Jaxi’s asked, the question small but relevant.

“Err to the side of caution,” Kaos said.

“Which is?” Krave demanded, whipping his head to him.

“Don’t use force opening it,” Kaos spelled out.