Page 67 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

“I’ve never done it except when they insisted, when they said they’d hurt one of the other guys if I didn’t,” he adds. “But once I got started—I don’t know if I could have stopped before whatever plant or animal they wanted me to work on that time was dead.”

“Dom.” I don’t know what else to say.

In the back of my head, I can see the quiet, pensive boy who’d always dash in to help if any of us showed the slightest injury. Who used to spend a bunch of the little free time we got poring over the medical books the guardians agreed to bring him.

He always hoped he could get even better at using his talent, help even more. Instead he got saddled with a matching curse.

And the guardians forced him to act out that curse over and over.

The ache has crept right up my throat, clogging it. I want to reach out to him, but part of me still balks.

Dominic lifts his gaze again to meet mine.

“I told you before that the things that are broken, they broke before you came back. It’s true.

I think it’s true for all of us. And it’s our own fault for letting our damage get tangled up with what we believed about you.

I won’t get mixed up like that again. You’ve always been here for me, and nothing would make me happier than being here for you too.

However you need me. Whatever it does to me. ”

Sudden tears prick at the back of my eyes. I blink, grappling with the growing surge of emotion inside me.

I believe him. He’s standing here in an enclosed room with me just a few feet away, talking about things that he has every reason to think would make me angry, and I can’t taste even a hint of fear in the air.

Really, he’s always been the one I was the least angry with anyway. Jacob was horrible, and Andreas manipulated me. Zian snapped at me and berated me more than once.

All Dominic really did was not interfere—and fail to totally hide his discomfort. I completely understand his conflicted feelings about using his powers now.

But there is still one hitch.

“ I don’t like the idea of making things worse for you,” I say, my voice strained.

A little of the tension gripping Dominic’s face fades with the smallest of smiles. “It wouldn’t be worse, in the balance of things. I swear to you, I’d rather know I did everything I could to make sure you’re not in pain than keep these stupid things a tad shorter.”

The lumps of the tentacles twitch under the thin coat.

I wet my lips, still torn. Not least of all because when he looks at me like that, every inch of my body tingles, and definitely not with pain.

But we don’t know what we’re going to face in Miami. It’ll be better if I’m not working around an injury.

And it isn’t as if I really need the constant reminder of how awful my new ability is. My memories have been vivid enough to cover that just fine.

I grasp the hem of my hoodie. “I guess you could take a look at it. There’s nothing in the apartment you could draw energy from anyway.”

As I lift the bottom of the hoodie and the tank top underneath away from the bandage on my waist, Dominic steps closer. He rests his fingers gently at the edge of the bandage, waking up my skin even more.

“Go ahead,” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady.

He peels back the adhesive ever so gently and considers the mostly-scabbed-over cut. His mouth slants downward. “When did this happen?”

“Engel’s house. After the fight. I had an unfortunate encounter with a shard of glass in the window frame.”

“It’s barely healed. You’ve been prodding it so it won’t totally seal up on its own?”

I grimace. “I… I wanted the pain to remind me of the kinds of pain I’m trying not to inflict unless I absolutely have to.”

Dominic looks up at me with so much compassion in his eyes that I forget how to breathe. He’s less than a foot away now, and the familiar urge tugs at me to bring him even closer.

“I can heal it by myself,” he says. “It’ll only take a little out of me—the same amount of hurt spread out over my whole body. Easy to recover from.”

“Dom…”

He ignores my conflicted protest. “Please, let me?”

It’s the “please” that does me in. I incline my head, not trusting myself to speak.

Dominic rests his palm over the wound, just barely grazing the scab. It only takes a moment before the warmth of his healing energy flows into my waist.

The severed flesh knits together. The scab smooths over. The lingering ache melts away.

And more warmth washes through the whole rest of my body.

It’s less than a minute, and then Dominic lowers his hand. He doesn’t look any worse for wear.

He looks as pensively handsome as usual, his face just inches from mine.

He doesn’t draw back. He lifts his other hand to touch my cheek, and our gazes lock together.

“Thank you,” he says softly, as if I’ve done him a favor.

My pulse skitters. I want to lean into his touch—but the longing brings a jolt of panic.

The last time I let one of the guys get this close to me, my heart ended up torn in two.

Before I can clamp down on my nerves, my body is jerking away, taking a few steps back.

Dominic stays where he was, his fingers curling toward his palm. His face has shadowed again.

But this is for the best, isn’t it?

I shouldn’t be letting myself get distracted from the larger mission. I shouldn’t be indulging in my teenage fantasies of some kind of epic romance anyway.

“Thank you,” I say, because I definitely owe him that much. “We should get packed up before Jacob starts cracking the whip.”

Dominic manages another little smile, although it’s tighter than before. “Right. I’ll see you downstairs.”

After he’s left, I don’t actually have much to do. I wash up in the bathroom, not bothering with a shower after my soak in the tub last night, and stuff a few lingering odds and ends into my backpack.

When I tramp down to the lower floor, I find the guys gathered in the living room already, packs slung over their shoulders. I guess we’re heading out a little early.

Jacob motions us toward the front door wordlessly. As we follow him, Zian’s head snaps to the side as if he’s tracking a sudden sound. He halts in his tracks.

“Wait,” he mutters, and moves to the window.

He scans the street outside, holding perfectly still, his eyes narrowing. His broad shoulders tense.

He glances back at us, wide-eyed. “There are guardians out there, staked out around the building. They’ve found us.”