Page 13

Chapter 13

Wren

T he sound of someone dying woke me, though I’d barely been sleeping to begin with. There was tension running through my body that I didn’t understand, that I couldn’t quite describe.

It had been there since I’d caught Theo in the alleyway after we’d fought. He’d probably saved me by tackling that Enmity—I hadn’t had my bow. A fight with two of them was dangerous even when properly armed, but he’d thrown himself at the creature like he had nothing to lose. He’d torn it apart while I’d cut the other one down before breaking its neck.

And then he’d fainted in my arms, and all my intentions to take him for food and clothing faded away at the weight of him there, at the sight of the wounds on his back slowly knitting together while black swirled in the red of his blood.

I didn’t have to look at the place on his chest to know he’d nearly changed again—and I didn’t think about it when I picked him up and carried him back to the hotel and gently tucked him into bed.

I went back to my room and closed the door between us… because for just a moment I was tempted…

I wanted to wake him up and thank him. To run my fingers along the wounds on his back until they’d healed.

I wanted to stay with him.

And I couldn’t do that. But leaving him there, exhausted and pale… it was…

Difficult. It left me feeling empty.

It was a hollow sensation in my chest that made me feel restless, made something in my stomach ache. It was like I could feel Theo in the room beside me, and I had to write it off as my instincts warning me that there was a creature just a few feet away from me, capable of transforming into something that could kill me at any moment. I’d seen it when I turned—his eyes were ringed in red, his claws covered in blood. He was my enemy. He was the very thing I’d just killed.

Which was why it made no sense when I heard him scream and I jumped from the bed without hesitation. I grabbed my blade, and I didn’t realize I’d splintered the adjoining door between us until a spray of wood hit against my bare chest.

Fuck, I was in nothing but boxers. I’d stripped down after the fight, too tired to shower but wanting the blood off me. I should have slept in my clothes, because it was clear something was attacking by the way he screamed, by the way he sounded like he was in agony. By the way…

He was lying on the bed and thrashing, his hand grabbing his chest and clawing like he was trying to peel back his own skin.

“Theo?” I said it carefully, but I was still stepping toward him. It was stupid—I didn’t know what was happening. For all I knew, Sephtis was full of shit and he was turning in front of me. It didn’t stop me from getting closer. I kneeled on the mattress and leaned in. There was nothing there but the red string trailing from his chest to mine. The sigil was still in place.

“Theo, wake up.” I reached my hand out to shake his shoulder.

His skin was on fire.

As soon as I touched him, his eyes flew wide. They were black, sparking with a red that held endless depths of rage and fury—the same color I’d seen when we first met, the fury that tried to kill me. It was the color they’d turned when he attacked the Enmity. I’d thought it would fade when he rested… I’d thought…

“It hurts,” he moaned between clenched teeth, and his nails dug into my forearm so hard they left half moons of blood as he grabbed for me. The moment his palms touched my skin, he shuddered.

“I…”

“Fuck, Wren . Please. Please, it hurts. I can’t breathe. Just—” He gasped as he pulled my hand over his chest… and for a moment I could feel it. The pain shooting through him, so violent and sharp it made me double over and collapse on top of him.

The moment my bare chest brushed his, it felt like the air was sucked from the room.

The pain stopped.

Everything stopped.

Everything froze as I watched his eyes slowly swirl from black and red to that soft, wet, dark brown.

“Wren? Are you okay? Did they hurt you… did they…” His gaze focused after a second, and I saw some clarity return. I watched him realize we weren’t outside anymore—we were in our room again—and then the pain came back, contorting his features.

Shit. When I tried to push myself up, he winced… and I saw it then. That same darkness in his chest that I’d seen when Sephtis first came to stop him from dying. It was trying to grow while I wasn’t looking. Trying to break him apart when the thread between us was the weakest.

I’d closed the door. It was just a fucking door , but it was apparently enough to let it seep through.

When I was away from him. When I couldn’t see him—when I wasn’t touching him.

Impossible .

“It’s… Theo…” I shifted slowly, and he watched me with wary eyes as I stretched out on the bed beside him and slid my hand until my palm rested over his heart again. I felt it stutter, speed up… and then slowly calm. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

I didn’t have an explanation for it; I didn’t need to have one, apparently. The reality of the situation was in front of me. If I left him here… if I let him out of my sight… if I went too long without touching him… that darkness in his chest would eat him, eat up the line that ran from his heart to mine…

And we would both die.

And he’d probably made it worse when he helped me.

“Wren, I—”

“Just shut up.” I snarled the words, but my hands were gentle when I pulled him to rest flush against my chest. “Just… don’t talk, Theo.”

If I had to hear his voice sounding broken and lost instead of angry, instead of sullen or furious or dangerous, I didn’t know what I’d do. I just knew when he spoke in that tone, I could feel it along the lines of my skin, through that bond I’d never meant to forge.

I could feel it, and it made something inside me that was never meant to feel burn.

At least he stopped speaking. It took him a few minutes to work up the courage to wrap his arm around me, and when he did, I could feel the way his fingers were trembling, the way his body pulsed for a moment before he settled against me like he was meant to be there all along.

I tried to ignore that every curve of him fit against every line of me, like two broken pieces finally coming together to be whole.

I was engulfed in flame. I wasn’t sure when I’d gone to sleep, but somewhere in the midst of it, Theo had half crawled on top of me. He was all I could feel, and the heat of him was a scalding thing that threatened to eat me whole. I couldn’t breathe around it, couldn’t think around it… couldn’t feel anything but the desire that was coming off him in palpable waves.

It was easy to say it was all his. It was better to pretend none of it was coming from the depths of my chest and the streak of warmth that pooled lower.

“Please.” He said it like he had earlier, but this time I wasn’t sure if he was awake when he spoke. I tried to pull back, but he kept his face buried against my neck as his arms spasmed and his lower body gave a small, needy thrust.

How had I not realized when I’d burst into his room earlier that Theo was completely naked?

“Theo, you need to wake up.” I murmured the words softer than I should have. I was still confused about why I was in here at all, with a half Enmity wrapped around me like an octopus. When I tried to gently push him away, he winced and opened his mouth.

The feel of his tongue swiping the column of my throat made me pause—his teeth catching just below my jaw and biting made me moan. The sound drew another rock from his hips and he whimpered again.

“Wren? Wren, it’s… Fuck, it’s all burning. I can’t breathe. Please… your hands, I—”

It didn’t make sense. I sat us both up with him still clinging to me, and glanced down at the line between us, pressed nearly flat with how he was plastered to me. I’d seen the red of soulmates swirling in it… but… my eyes narrowed.

Pink. Lines of hot pink burning to crimson.

Lust.

Fuck .

My wings sprang from my back, and I wasn’t sure if it was in recognition of fight or flight. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. I…

“Theo… this isn’t really you. This isn’t what you want.” But it was. I knew how my arrows worked. They couldn’t influence someone who didn’t want what I was giving them, not really. My essence was pure, capable of detecting exactly what two souls needed. Proximity… touch … it always brought those feelings to the surface. Those needs. It solidified the soulmate bond after I’d made it.

And apparently Theo needed—

“Wren.” He sobbed my name this time, and his teeth sank into the juncture between my shoulder and my neck. When his arms circled around me and his fingers clasped my wings to drag me closer, my whole body froze.

I should have panicked from the touch—should have thrown him off me and ran a blade through his chest. An Enmity touching a cupid’s wings was tantamount to suicide. It was dangerous. Deadly.

It was…

“Fuck you, Theo. Just… fuck .”

The most erotic thing I’d ever felt.

His fingers splayed, stroking the skin around the base of my wings, and I shivered in response, my arms tightening around him in a spasm that nearly crushed the breath from him. Apparently, that was enough permission for him to buck his hips again, and his body slotted against mine perfectly as he squirmed. It was impossible to deny that I was just as hard as he was when Theo ground himself against me. I wasn’t sure if the wet spot on the front of my boxers was from his cock or mine, but the heat of it shot straight through me and made my back arch as he gently ran his fingers along the feathers of my wings in a tease again.

I shouldn’t have liked it.

I shouldn’t have wanted it.

And I definitely shouldn’t have rolled until I was on top of him, pinning his larger frame with my weight and finally looking down to see that his eyes were wide open and burning. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to find in them, but there were no answers. There was just need.

I could blame it on the thin line running between us.

I could blame it on fucked-up arrows and Fate being an absolute bitch, or on the fact that we’d fought and he’d nearly changed, so now he needed proximity to find himself again.

I could blame it on a lot of things, but it was my shoulders tensing, my body jerking when he stroked the length of my spine. It was my lips that crashed against his in a kiss that held all the anger and confusion I felt. He moaned into my mouth, his body writhing against mine, pantomiming things that were impossible and forbidden—things you didn’t do with someone you hated.

With the enemy.

With a monster .

But his fingers came up again and slid along the length of my wings, and I groaned at the touch, the line of heat shooting straight from the feathers to my cock. Fuck, how did that feel so good ? Why did him touching me feel so…

So…

I wanted to tear the clothing from my body and fuck my way inside him. I wanted to make him cry, to beg, to tell me he was sorry for ever making me feel this way . I wanted…

I don’t trust people to touch me , he’d said, but he was begging for it now.

Then touch me. I’d offered. I’d meant my hand, but… I pulled back from our kiss and stared down at him again, then swallowed hard before I sat back.

“You can touch me,” I whispered softly, an echo of my earlier offer. “I won’t hurt you.”

He looked up at me in confusion, his kiss-swollen lips forming a small frown.

“Wren?”

“Take what you need.”

It was horrifying, offering it. I crawled back until I was in the center of the bed and dropped my hands to the top of my thighs, palms up.

For a moment, clarity burst across Theo’s face—his eyes were all pupil, blown wide and black. His brows knitted together in a mixture of pain and confusion… and then he came up on his hands and knees and crawled toward me.

I was engulfed by the look of need painting his features dark, drowning in the echo of it ricocheting through my body and leaving blossoms of frantic desire in its wake. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

This wasn’t how I was supposed to be.

But my arrows were never wrong—the line between us drew us together, and I couldn’t fight it anymore.