Page 2

Chapter 2

Theo

I t burned. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it ripped from somewhere in the middle of my chest with angry fingers that tried to tear me apart.

At first, I thought something bit me. It was too big for a spider bite, though, too hot and furious for something so simple. I couldn’t see a mark on my chest, even though my body was flush to the touch, burning with a fever that made me tremble.

But that’s all it was.

Just heat. Just burning.

Just pain.

It was agony that nearly drove me mad, aching until I was driven out of my shitty little motel room into the cold rain that was pouring down in sheets. It wasn’t safe to wander the streets at night, especially not in the area where I lived, but I was too restless and reckless to care.

I’d almost welcome someone attacking me. Fighting would take my mind off the pain trying to curl my limbs in on themselves, like it was trying to eat me from the inside out and fill me with fire until there was nothing left but ash.

It was a shame I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor—I would have broken and hauled myself to the ER otherwise—but the hospital didn’t give a shit about me. Knowing my luck, they’d hold me for a psych eval, and the only thing I’d accomplish would be a big fucking medical bill.

That’s how things were for people like me. That’s how the world always was for people like me, and I knew it wasn’t going to get better any time soon.

So… the cold rain was my only option. It soaked through my T-shirt, and I should have felt it penetrating the burn in my chest at least a little. I’d never wanted to shiver from the cold before, but my insides were practically begging for it now.

I couldn’t feel anything but the flames licking inside my ribs and trying to make my heart burst.

I half ran, half stumbled into an alleyway and collapsed against the wall. Ignoring the way it scraped against my bare knuckles, I punched the brick in an attempt to alleviate the feeling pouring through me—desperate to distract myself from the scorching for even a second.

It didn’t work. Even when my knuckles turned red, and blood streaked down my wrist in pink rivulets mixed with the rain, the fire was still trying to eat me alive. It ripped up my throat in a scream that felt raw, and it took me a second to realize that scream had drawn attention.

I didn’t notice the two men until they were peeking into the alley.

“Ty, don’t—”

“He looks hurt, Alex.” He approached me with a warm, friendly expression, only biting his lower lip for a second before he spoke. “Are you okay? Do you need some help?”

The man behind him hovered like a shadow, smarter than his companion. It was completely ridiculous to approach a stranger screaming in an alley, especially one who had blood running down his arms.

There was no way to know if they were dangerous.

There was no way to know if they’d killed before.

If they were willing to kill again.

I let my eyes fall shut and tried to draw in a breath through my clenched teeth—this wasn’t the place, and it sure as shit wasn’t the time to do something stupid that would get me thrown in jail. We were in the alley, but I could clearly see the street behind them. It was late, but someone could drive by.

Unless… If Ty was stupid enough to come fully into the darkness where the streetlight didn’t penetrate, then maybe I…

He stepped forward until the shadows fell across his face, and the man who was definitely his lover followed in behind him. When he got closer, the fire in my chest raged into a full-on inferno. It was strong before, but this was on an entirely different level. Choking. Aching. Scorching everything in its path.

Not good.

This was not going to be good.

There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it when the clawing pain behind my ribs seemed to streak along my nerves and seize hold of my body, so sharp that I thought I was seeing red.

Red.

Red, trailing like a string between the two men.

Red, in a sharp, swirling line that burned my eyes the same way the pain burned my chest. The sudden sear of agony tore another scream from my throat as it all swelled to a head and I turned my bloody hands inward, trying to claw my chest open, trying to let some of the heat out . If I could rip myself open, maybe I could finally breathe—maybe the rain would get under my traitorous skin.

Or maybe I could just bleed out on the dirty fucking ground and be done with all of this.

When Ty lunged forward to stop me, I sprang up with a snarl, my fingers greedy to grab that red line.

Maybe I didn’t have to bleed out… Maybe there was another way to make it all stop hurting. Because I was suddenly sure of what was hurting me the most—the fucking red line, burning so bright I couldn’t see around it, couldn’t think past it. Couldn’t breathe with it so close to me.

If I could break it, maybe it would finally stop the hurt.

If I could snap it, maybe I could finally draw in a breath without feeling like my lungs were scalding.

I had to break it.

“Ty, get back .” Alex sounded desperate as he yanked him away from me. It just made the red line burn brighter, so intense I was surprised my skin wasn’t blistering.

It suddenly didn’t matter if they went back to the street. I didn’t care who saw. I didn’t care what the consequences were.

I needed to rip that line clean out of their chests.

I needed to make them both stop shining so fucking bright .

“Come here.” It should have come out as a snarl, but my voice was nearly a purr. For all the pain still wrenching deep in my chest, I could feel something more dangerous trying to birth itself from the ashes left in its wake. That something spoke in a light, seductive voice… and it made me step forward slowly instead of lunging like a complete madman.

I felt like a complete madman. I just wanted… Fuck, I wanted to tear them apart. I wanted to rip the line between them to shreds, and something inside me knew I would have to kill them to do it—maybe not in the physical sense, but it would kill something inside them.

It would extinguish that light forever .

And it would sate the burning in my chest for a moment… just a moment… so I could breathe.

I couldn’t breathe .

“Get the fuck back, Ty. We need to go. We have to—”

So much for staying calm. I dove forward and tackled the taller of the two. My body was just as big as his. I was six feet, and even though I was slender, I had enough sinewy muscle that I took him by surprise and sent him crashing to the ground in a dirty puddle of water collecting by the trash bin.

The red line between the two flared so bright it blinded me, and I felt hands wrapping around my shoulders, jerking as hard as they could. Trying to pull me away.

“Get off him.” Apparently, Ty didn’t want to help me anymore. That was fine. I could rip the red line from either of them. I turned and my hand shot out—it slapped against his chest and tore another scream from me when I realized the thread felt like acid on my skin.

I could take that pain.

I could take any pain if it would stop the light—the fire.

My fist tightened, and Ty’s eyes flared wide as his breath caught in his chest. When I jerked, he almost collapsed. His lashes fluttered like he was going to lose consciousness… and then someone wrapped their arms around me and tried to pull me away.

His lover.

Alex.

But now that I had hold of the line, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let go. Nothing was going to make me let it go.

I was going to shred it. Destroy it. I was going to—

Confusion tore through me as a bright, white light burst from my shoulder. The pain was dull compared to the inferno in my chest, but it hurt.

Fuck, it hurt .

I let go of the red line and tried to tear the light from my chest—it looked like an arrow— and my body slowly turned in the direction it came from while I sliced my palms open in my frenzy to remove it.

In my confusion, I was too slow. Strong hands wrapped around my shoulder and flung me down the alleyway with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible.

Then again, arrows made of white light and lines made of crimson running between two men shouldn’t have been possible either, so…

I lifted my eyes, and even though I could still see the halo of the red line burning bright behind my attacker, I felt blinded in a whole new way. The man in front of me was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He was smaller than me, but he seemed to make up for it with lean muscles and compact strength. His chest and arms were littered with black tattoos, and his eyes were an impossible shade of purple… but I barely saw any of it. I was consumed by the sight behind him.

Spreading out like they wanted to touch the heavens was a pair of gorgeous black wings, darker than the surrounding night, looking softer than the velvet sky.

Impossible.

Impossible.

Impossibly beautiful.

The word was starting to lose meaning with how much I’d thought it, and my mind was losing its grasp on logic. My body was still burning, and I couldn’t stop myself when I screamed again, because the two men—and the red line that trailed between them that seemed to haunt my very existence—were scrambling away.

I snarled and lunged forward, but my beautiful attacker let out a sharp laugh and caught me by the arrow in my shoulder, wrenching it and making me gag from the sensation and stumble into him.

As soon as I did, something more impossible happened.

The pain gave way for a moment to… relief.

For just a second, the fire in my chest stopped burning, and I drew in a breath that tasted like cold, wet air. Tears sprang into my eyes and I gasped, drawing in as much of that chill as I could while trying to get back to logical thought.

The world was bliss and silence and the gentle fall of rain… The world was the intake of his breath and the sound of his heartbeat that I could hear thrumming in my ears… It was the subtle shift of his feathers as his wings rustled behind him.

And then everything was roaring back to heat, a blazing inferno that sent streaks of agony rocketing through my body and threatened to tear my chest open. He pushed me away from him, further into the alley.

He did this.

My entire body surged with a hatred I’d never felt before, a fury I couldn’t begin to understand.

He’d taken the pain away just to bring it back, and now it was worse.

Worse , because I knew what he felt like. Worse , because he felt like heaven.

And now I was in hell.

I was going to kill him.

I forced myself to stand without worrying about my shoulder or the blood I could feel spilling in rivulets along my skin. It washed to the ground with the cascading rain, anyway.

“Look at you, all worked up. You’re barely changed and you’re already rabid.” The man’s voice was silk, sweet, honeyed.

Hatred .

I lunged for him, and he sidestepped my movement, leaving me with nothing more than the sensation of my fingertips brushing a feather. My vision blinked in and out as the pain faded and reappeared so quickly it made me dizzy—it made me even more angry to see how he was taunting me.

He was some creature with feathers who could take away the torment I’d been feeling for weeks— for my entire life— and he was taunting me.

Help me.

The sane part of me tried to remember how to form the words on my lips, but when I inhaled to speak, all that came out was a senseless growl.

He laughed again.

“Right. I guess I should make this quick before you completely change, hm?”

His fingers snapped at his shoulder, and he drew an arrow from thin air. I watched it materialize between his fingers, all red and liquid, like heart’s blood. He wasn’t even looking when he fired it, instead glancing over his shoulder to make sure the two men had made it out of the alleyway safely.

I was looking when it slammed into the middle of my chest.

Pain.

Pain and… something else.

Something empty and sucking, drawing and needy. I think he noticed it too, because his gaze snapped to the shot he’d fired, painted with confusion and disbelief.

“What the fuck?” He stepped forward, his eyes focused on the burning in my heart, the sting he’d notched between my ribs.

He was slack-jawed and distracted.

It was enough.

I charged forward without thinking, without caring, and I didn’t stop until we were both slammed against the wall.

The arrow lodged deeper into my chest, stealing away what breath I had left.

But it was enough .

I’d done what I wanted, because when I looked at the ground between us, the red quill of the arrow was at my feet.

The splintered shaft was skewered through the center of his chest, connecting us together.

Making him bleed. Just like me.

Liquid heat.

Fire.

And then…

There was a soft moment of clarity when I looked up, because his eyes were wide and shocked.

And they were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. Purple flowers. Like a dream.

For a moment, I could breathe again.

For a moment, all I could feel was him.

I swayed forward without thinking and brushed my lips against his—he didn’t have a chance to shove me away or protest. Before he could draw a breath, the world around me dissolved and went black.