Page 7

Chapter 7

Wren

H e was a monster. There was no other way to look at it. Theo was a monster —a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and tear the entire world around him apart. I’d seen it in his eyes when he noticed the two people behind us—they weren’t my charges, but the connection was there. Strong and pure, and apparently a siren’s call to the fury in his chest.

I had to figure out how to break the thread between us. I had to figure out how to free myself before that darkness I’d felt surge forward and try to eat him from the inside out spilled up and devoured me too.

And I had to stop touching him.

Somehow, the last part seemed to be the hardest task. I kept my fingers on the back of his neck as I led him to the motel room, and he kept his eyes on the ground the whole way. I’d seen something on his face before he’d freaked out in the diner.

The way he’d asked me to stop touching him, the soft, desperate please that made his voice tremble in fear. It spoke of a past I couldn’t imagine, a life of pain that had turned him into the man I saw in front of me.

It was rare that a human was born to become an Enmity. Most had something pure about them at birth. Most people were sculpted into monsters by the world around them, by the circumstances that broke them one little piece at a time. Until that point, I’d been all but certain that Theo was the former.

Looking at the way his dark eyes seemed like a thousand fractured pieces, broken shards that cut both inward and out, I’d let my guard down and considered that maybe I was wrong.

Letting my guard down had given him the chance to pull away. It let him go after those people—it gave him the opportunity to stab me, when I usually wasn’t injured in combat, let alone from a random man who didn’t even have claws.

I let him go as soon as we entered the motel room, like the touch of my hand on the back of his neck was burning me—in a way, it was. I could feel the heat of him scalding up along my arm, infecting me with emotion and feeling . If some part of me had thought the Ardor would eventually fade and I’d be able to control the surge of sensation pouring through my body, I was beginning to lose that hope.

That heat streaked along my nerve endings and made me feel tense, made my body feel alive. If anything, it was just getting worse with each beat of my heart sending it pulsing through my veins.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. I didn’t take the Ardor because I didn’t like touching people—touching made you feel . Touching gave you connection, even if it was usually just a temporary thing.

This felt different from the time I’d tried it before.

This felt like so much more , and I knew it was because of the damn red thread trailing between us.

Theo sprang from me like I’d been the one to stab him as soon as I let him go, stalking across the room and flattening his back to the bathroom door like I was threatening him. He looked at me from beneath his hair, his mouth set in a grim line. “Did you change your mind? Are you going to kill me now?”

Fuck, I thought about it. I thought about running my blade through him and taking my chances with the consequences. My hand came up, and I gave the red string between us an experimental jerk. The low groan that tore from my chest nearly betrayed the way my knees wanted to give out.

While I swayed, Theo straightened up. My eyes narrowed—did it give him strength when I pulled on the damn thread? If I cut the line between us, was I going to make some kind of super-powered monster? Would it feed him my aura?

Every tug made me feel like I was going to die… and maybe I wasn’t quite as ready for that as I thought, because my hands dropped to my side and I scowled.

“I’m not the one who stabbed someone, am I?”

The venom in my words seemed to give him strength. He started toward me, and I swiped my hand through the golden trail of my blood, holding it up between us while my other fingers grabbed my blade. “It might kill me to run this through you, Theo, but I’ll still do it. I won’t die alone.”

He stopped, staring at me—not at me, at the blood on my hand and the wound where it came from. The scowl on his pretty face twitched, and his eyes trailed to my knife.

“You would, wouldn’t you? You’d run that through me without a second thought. Because of what you think I might become.”

“Without hesitation,” I confirmed, though I knew the words were a lie. He didn’t, though. If nothing else, I could keep that much of a wall between us. He didn’t need to know that, for a moment, when we’d been in the diner together and I’d seen that broken expression on his face, I’d thought that maybe I could…

What? Help him?

That I didn’t want to kill him?

That he was just a broken boy who’d grown into a man, and he didn’t want to be a monster?

That had obviously been a mistake.

“Fuck you then, Wren. God—cupids, humans, angels, demons, whatever the fuck it is—you’re all assholes, aren’t you?”

My hand dropped, and I squeezed the wound on my leg. It was already starting to heal, but my fingers clenching around it still made him wince as a streak of pain tore up my thigh. “I’m not the one who started this, Theo.”

“I—” His eyes narrowed, and he whirled without saying anything else. He couldn’t storm out, since I was standing in his way, but he could turn and slam the bathroom door behind him.

It was childish, but it was better than nothing. I stalked to the adjoining room I’d booked, which wouldn’t provide much privacy, but that was kind of the point. There was no way I was leaving him alone, but I wasn’t sleeping in the same space as him either—I couldn’t let him wake up in the middle of the night and sneak out to kill someone.

I had to watch him and somehow preserve my sanity at the same time. After what had just happened, I was beginning to think it was a bigger ask than I’d initially realized.

Just the knowledge that he was in the bathroom, probably thinking of ways to kill me, left something in my chest unsettled. The fact that I could feel his unease through the thread connecting us—that if he wanted to, he could wrap his fingers around the string and yank it from his chest and I would be the one who suffered—was enough to leave me anxious. He could kill me, and I wouldn’t be able to defend against it unless I kept him chained to the bed at all times.

I should have kept him chained to the bed.

My mind flashed again to the expression he’d had in the diner before the anger had taken over. It wasn’t like keeping him restrained had done me much good the first time, had it? And I’d seen it then too. The panic, the fear of being caught and bound. It was almost too painful to picture.

At my back, my wings gave a warning shudder just beneath my skin a second before sensation tore through me. It spilled from somewhere deep in my stomach, aching along my nerve endings.

It burned and made me bow over… and it took me a second to realize what was going on.

I’d grabbed my leg and squeezed the wound to show Theo how he’d hurt me.

And now…

Now Theo was in the bathroom, and he was touching himself in some kind of fucked up revenge.