Page 26

Chapter 26

Theo

I felt cold . I woke up shivering, and I instantly knew something was wrong. I didn’t have to glance to Wren’s side of the bed to know he wasn’t there, but I did glance in that direction to see the red line trailing to the door…

And all along the string were tendrils of black, spilling from my chest and stretching out.

Out.

Out toward the darkness.

To the street.

To the place I knew deep in my heart Wren had gone.

I never should have told him about Erin.

And I never should have gone to sleep while he was still awake and thinking about it. I knew he was, because I’d felt his fingers stroking my shoulders, my back, my sides. Anywhere he could touch me, anywhere he could try to take the pain away.

And it seemed in my weakness, in my need to finally let someone comfort me, I’d never considered that he was taking that pain himself.

That he could actually feel it.

My eyes glanced at the thread, to our connection and the darkness spilling from me along that line.

I knew it was leading straight to his chest.

And I didn’t have to ask where that fury would send him when he stepped into the night. It was the place I’d wanted to go a thousand times, the place I was too afraid to ever go again.

Fuck, if he got shot, would it hurt him?

Could a human kill a cupid if they filled them full of enough holes?

I’d spent so long paralyzed with fear at the thought of seeing Erin again, at the mere mention of ever being inside that house… but it didn’t matter.

It couldn’t matter.

Not when I didn’t know if Wren was okay.

Not when I reached out along that line, and all I could feel was pain and anger.

All I could feel was a reflection of the person I’d been when Wren first found me.

Fuck, that couldn’t be him.

I couldn’t do that to him.

I got dressed in a rush, pulling on the jacket he’d left behind and running out the door. There wasn’t time to worry about who might see me, or what might happen. I didn’t care if I saw two people connected with a red thread, because my thread— our thread— was slowly turning black.

I couldn’t see the end of it, so all I could do was chase it down and hope I found it before it completely consumed Wren. I couldn’t let this happen to him.

Not because of me.

“Wren!” I was shouting his name as I turned down the street. At least Erin didn’t live far away, and the line that I chased led me straight to the gate I’d promised myself a thousand times I’d never step through again.

I was doing it now without thinking, slamming into a door that was already splintered open and shoving into the house without stopping to think of all the memories associated with it.

But I was already too late. I could tell by the smell of blood in the air, sharp and coppery, thick on the back of my tongue.

I could tell by the sickly scent of perforated bowels.

I could tell, because Wren stood in the bedroom door with Erin in his grip, and when he looked up at me, his eyes were a solid black, framed and spattered in blood.

“Wren?”

“F-fuck. Theo,” Erin gurgled my name, and when he reached out for me I realized that there was just a stub where his hand had been. “Theo, please .”

Even though I was too stunned to process what I was seeing, I had enough mind to shut the door behind me so no one outside could see the bloodbath that was in front of me.

Erin was the last, like Wren had made sure he’d had to watch what was happening, everything he’d earned through every hurt he’d ever caused.

Erin might have come last, but there were too many body parts skewed around the living room for me to tell how many people had come before him. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep.

I just knew an asshole like him wasn’t worth losing Wren.

“Fuck you, Erin.” It should have felt cathartic to say, his pain should have been a balm to my soul. But all I could see was the way Wren’s entire body trembled with rage, the way the red line between us pulsed with black.

In the end, Erin didn’t matter at all.

“Theo, I—” His plea cut off in a gurgle, and my eyes snapped back to him as Wren took him by the jaw and tore his head from his body like a paper doll.

Only… paper dolls didn’t bleed. Paper dolls didn’t spray a wash of blood over the chest of their killer, leaving them painted in crimson that didn’t do a damn thing to get rid of the black that trailed along the line between us.

Paper dolls didn’t have a heart… but Erin did, and I saw it when Wren tore his fist through his ribcage and ripped it out, tossing the broken body to the side when he was done.

Those black eyes fixated on me, and I realized that I couldn’t see him in their depths. Whatever part of him usually existed, whatever warmth and heat and anger and arrogance that made up Wren, it wasn’t there.

It was just a mirror of who I’d been, of what I’d almost become.

“Wren?”

He growled in response, baring teeth just this side of too sharp in my direction.

I felt like I couldn’t move—I was terrified.

It wasn’t being in this house, or the sight of Erin’s lifeless stare coming from his discarded head.

It was the way Wren was looking at me like he didn’t recognize me—the way I’d apparently become so dependent on him seeing me that it felt like a physical blow, more painful than anything that had happened here before.

“Wren, please…” I swallowed hard and realized that it was this house… it was always going to be this house.

It was always going to be this place .

It was always going to be here where I could get hurt, where I could be broken.

And…

It was going to be this place where I could stop it from happening again.

If I was strong enough.

I had to be strong enough—for him.

So… of course it had to be here. It had to be now.

It had to be Wren .

“Wren, come on.” That darkness in his stare was haunting , like he’d somehow manifested every bit of pain I’d ever felt while I existed before I’d met him and it was shining now through his eyes. “Please.”

He stepped close to me, holding the slick, wet organ in his hand like he was showing me a prize. When his lips curled back in a snarl and his head cocked to the side, my heart felt as silent as the one in his hand. He wasn’t there in the way he looked at me.

He had to still be there.

He couldn’t be too far gone.

None of this was supposed to happen to him.

Not because of me.

I stood still as he stalked forward, silent as he dropped Erin’s heart at my feet so he could trail a blood-soaked hand along my cheek. He was covered in pain and death, and he’d done it all because of me , and now he couldn’t even recognize the person he’d lost himself for.

When his fingers slipped down to my throat and squeezed, I couldn’t stop the small sound that ripped from my chest.

“Wren, I can’t do this without you.” I whispered it, terrified at how vulnerable it made me feel, how I’d promised myself in this exact fucking room that I was never going to let someone have this much power over me ever again.

But here we were, and my heart felt like it was trying to tear its way out of my chest so it could get to Wren, like it could crawl inside him and somehow make him whole again.

“Wren… please. Please… ” I leaned into the press of his fingers, willing to give the last bit of breath I had to try to get through to him. “Please, stay with me .” When he’d said those words to me, it meant everything .

And I was saying it now knowing it was still everything —I was flaying myself open wide and raw in this room that had broken me, with every chance it would do it again.

If it did, I hoped he’d at least make it quick. If I had to die, maybe I’d see the soft violet of his eyes one more time before I went.

And if I had to die…

I pressed forward and kissed him, fingers slicking through the blood in his hair as I pulled him to me.

He snarled against my mouth, but I just used it as a chance to slide my tongue inside. I wanted to taste him.

I wanted to fill myself up with him.

I wanted to forget where we were, because I was starting to realize this might be the last place I ever saw after all.

I’d always thought I would die here… but I’d never imagined it could hurt this much.

His fingers on my throat spasmed, cutting off the rest of my air. My hands dropped from his hair to his waist, and I pulled him flush against me.

Heart to heart.

Breath to breath.

Soul to soul.

I brushed against his back, against that space where his wings usually erupted and showered me in feathers and safety.

Wren’s fingers on my throat spasmed again, and then went still.

When his tongue swiped against mine, I couldn’t stop the soft sob that escaped me, feeding into his mouth when he deepened the kiss. Wren’s arms wrapped around me, holding tight enough I couldn’t breathe for a completely different reason.

“I’m with you.” He murmured it against my lips, and those three words had the power to make me dissolve. He shivered as his wings spilled from his spine, and the feel of them made me sway and pull back. Wren was staring at me, and I watched as the black dissolved slowly from his eyes, leaving them a darker shade of violet than they’d been before.

But they were still there.

Still beautiful.

Just Wren.

“Fuck.” I gasped out the word and fell against him. I buried my face in his neck so he couldn’t see the tears that I couldn’t seem to hold back, but I knew he could feel the liquid on his skin.

He gave me a few seconds before he pulled back, and his eyes trailed from the blood on my face to the mess I was sure was on my throat.

“Theo?” He started wiping at the streaks, looking for the injury beneath. “Fuck, are you okay? Did I—”

“I’m fine.” It was hard to tear my eyes from his face to look at the thread between us.

That vicious black was trailing back from him and inside of me. That was where it belonged. Wren looked too, his fingers grabbing the thread like he could stop it.

“Don’t.” I cut him off, taking his wrists and drawing his hands back to my face. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Are you…”

Are you you ?

Are you with me?

“I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? Are you sure you’re okay?”

I’d never heard Wren sound so lost, so vulnerable. I wanted to fall apart in his arms, but I couldn’t. Not when his eyes were wide and just a little wet.

Not when he looked so broken.

I took a shaking breath and looked around the room.

“Uh… I’m better than anyone else who was here. God, Wren. I thought you were supposed to make people fall in love, not be some kind of murder cupid.”

The confusion on his face slowly melted away as he glanced around. His eyes widened, then I saw them go dark. When he turned back to me, that dangerous edge was there again.

Fury beneath a shattered mirror, molten and ready to consume him.

“Was this all of them?”

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t remember everyone that had run through me while Erin was the controlling factor in my life.

“From what I can tell. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. They hurt you. Fuck, they hurt you, Theo, and the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted to break them, to spend the rest of my life making them pay for it. I—” He cut himself off, and I took the opportunity to lean in again, to press my mouth against his to tell him all the words that seemed trapped in my chest.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I… It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters as long as you’re still… here.”

Still with me.

Wren tore his gaze from the carnage he’d caused and looked back at me. Around us, his wings rustled, wrapping forward to cocoon me in their warmth, to hide me from the blood, from the death, from every memory I would never have to experience again because Wren had wiped it all away in streaks of red.

“I’m right here, Theo.”

And fuck me… Even though I wanted to burn this house to the ground, with his arms and his wings around me, right here was the only place I wanted to be.