Page 17
S EVENTEEN X ANDER
Camille’s unsteady heartbeat fills the space between us. Her pupils are blown, her skin flushed, and her expression darkened with an enticing mix of anger and lust. There’s a spark of fear there too, though it doesn’t seem directed toward me—rather what my being here makes her feel. Which only makes me want to stay longer.
“You’re making this so much harder,” she says.
“I’ve tried staying away from you.” It’s not entirely true. That said, I could’ve stopped her from leaving Seattle—I wanted to despite it being a terrible, dangerous idea for both of us, which is ultimately why I let her go. And if I came to her, either in person or by dreamscape whenever I thought about her, she’d realize how often I’ve resisted the urge to do just that.
“Says the guy who traveled across the country because I have the flu. This coming after you used your freaky demon power and waltzed into my dream.”
Fair enough . My lips twitch, and a car horn blares in the distance outside the apartment window. “Yes, well, you’re stepping on the point I’m trying to make.”
“That your self control sucks?” she offers in a sarcastic voice, briefly allowing me to forget every wretched reason for us to be apart. There are no demons or trials or hunters standing between us. There’s just us .
“I seem to recall you kissing me back a moment ago,” I say with a lilt of challenge in my tone.
She doesn’t miss a beat. “Further proof of your bad influence on me.”
I shift closer, lowering my voice as I speak into her ear. “Then let me corrupt you.”
Her pulse jumps, and I devour the heat of her nearness as she leans toward me, making my nerve endings tingle.
I can’t deny that I crave her surrender.
“Xander,” she breathes, turning her face and brushing her lips against my cheek. “ No .”
I don’t move a muscle. “See?” I offer in a soft voice. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”
She pulls back to look at me. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here at all right now.”
The corner of my mouth kicks up. “Nothing in this world could keep me away from you.”
“And the underworld?” Her eyes flick between mine, glimmering with an emotion I could easily mistake as hope.
I’d make you its queen —my queen .
The words get stuck in my throat. As deeply as I desire that, the danger that lies down that path isn’t something I’m ready to face, let alone subject Camille to.
So all I say is, “That’s complicated.”
She sighs, wetting her lips. “Of course it is. We keep going in circles.” Her gaze falls away from mine, and her voice is quieter when she asks, “When does it end? Will it ever?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, frowning at the discomfort it unfurls in my chest. It shouldn’t. None of this should affect me. If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t. But even after losing my soul, Camille holds power over me she doesn’t realize—and that’s probably for the best.
Camille nods, slowly standing from the couch, and I keep a close eye on her to make sure she’s steady enough on her feet to not fall over. “I’m going back to bed and I need you to be gone when I get up.”
“I’ll go,” I tell her, standing. “But tell me one thing first.”
Her brows scrunch together, her voice tired when she says, “What?”
“Do you love him? The hunter?”
Her lips part as her heart skips a beat, then races. There’s a moment of heavy contemplation etched in her features and then she says, “I could.”
My eyes narrow a fraction. She likely doesn’t notice, but I feel the tension in my temples. The next words spring from my lips before I can snap my mouth shut. “Do you love me?”
A muscle feathers along her jaw, and she swallows hard. “Love shouldn’t feel like this, Xander. I…I can’t breathe around you. You’re all I think about, all I dream about—even when you’re not actually there. I still want you, still feel drawn to you. I don’t know if that will ever go away, but…when I think of what kind of relationship we could have—our future—I can’t see anything. It’s just darkness. And that terrifies me.” With that, she walks out of the room, leaving me staring after her.
Her words light a fire in my gut, and I ache to go after her. To take her in my arms and claim her in every way possible, damn the consequences.
But that’s not the reality we exist in.
Camille is training to hunt demons, and I’m going through trials to ascend the throne as their king.
We’ll never be the safe option for each other.
As I leave Camille’s apartment, I wonder if the celestials who created our soulmate bond saw this coming.
I’m not ready to return to Seattle, so I check into a tiny B&B on the Upper West Side, much to Blake’s dismay. I understand my second trial could come any day and the royal guard can find me wherever I go, which also makes staying with Camille any longer reckless. I’ve taken a big enough risk coming here as it is. I need to get my head in check and focus my energy on ascending the throne.
“I’m going out for drinks with Stephen and Will,” Blake says once we’re in our suite. “Do you want to come with me?”
I shake my head and drop my duffel bag onto the bench at the end of the bed. “Enjoy yourself. I’m going to shower and call it a night.”
“How exciting.” He digs through his own bag and pulls out a fresh collared shirt and quickly changes into it. “You should give room service a call. Maybe they’l send up a cute delivery person for you to snack on.”
I roll my eyes despite the intrigue that stirs in me. After spending time with Camille and healing her, I should feed. Making a mental note to take care of that before we leave New York, I tell Blake, “Try not to stumble in here at three in the morning and wake me up by tripping over your shit.”
He shoots me an unimpressed look on his way to the door. “Two times that’s happened, and you’ll never let me forget it.”
I chuckle as he leaves, the door clicking shut behind him.
After a shower, I turn on the TV and lie down to decompress. The relief I felt seeing Camille recovering from her illness has done nothing to stifle my nerves surrounding the trials. My time with her was a fleeting distraction, even as tainted as it became by Noah’s presence.
Exhaling a slow breath, I close my eyes and tune out the soft audio from the TV. I could give Harper a call and update her on her best friend—not that I doubt she’s keeping close tabs on it from Seattle herself—but I find myself wanting to test my abilities, especially after healing Camille. I was able to reach Camille in a dreamscape from Seattle, but maybe our unique connection made it possible.
Only one way to find out…
I visualize Harper’s apartment while letting my muscles relax, focusing on the beat of my heart as it pumps blood through my body. Blood I share with my half-sister, and how I was able to track her the other night in the park.
Without warning, the room spins behind my eyelids. I grab for the blankets on either side of me, but the sensation is gone as quickly as it came over me. And then I’m falling. Gritting my teeth, I prepare for an impact that never comes. The loss of gravity vanishes, leaving me standing upright in the middle of…Blake’s bar. The scene isn’t quite accurate—the shelves behind the bar are empty and the walls are bare and dark. Evidently I don’t have the strength to build this dreamscape with as much detail as the actual establishment.
“Harper?” I call out, frowning as I glance around at the tables with their chairs stacked on top. Crossing the quiet bar, my eyes narrow as I catch movement in my peripheral and turn to find Harper throwing a dart at the board near the back of the room.
She glances at me over her shoulder, scowling. Her disappointment in seeing me is plain as day on her face, but I walk over to her anyway.
“I wasn’t expecting to find you at Blake’s bar.” I lean against a wooden pillar, folding my arms over my chest as I regard her curiously. “Have you actually been here before?”
Harper turns away from me and throws another dart, hitting the second ring from the bullseye. “What are you doing here?” she asks without answering my question. Interesting .
“Testing a theory,” I offer.
She throws her last dart, sighing when it doesn’t land where she wants. Facing me, she says, “Drop the mysterious shit. Why are you in my dream?”
“I came to New York to make sure Camille was okay. Just so you know, she’s doing better.”
Harper steps closer, matching my crossed-arm stance and shooting me a bland look. “You’re an idiot.”
I chuckle. “I won’t argue with you there.”
She stares at me, suspicion darkening her gaze. Her eyes search my face as if she’s trying to figure something out. Finally, she says, “You need to let her go, Xander.”
A muscle feathers along my jaw, and I push away from the pillar to stand in front of her. “I tried.”
“Try harder .”
I frown as she fades in and out like a hologram, as if I’m losing my connection to her. Ignoring the subtle lightheaded feeling I’m getting, I step closer, our shoes nearly touching. “I can’t.”
Her eyes dart between mine, her heart beating faster. “Can’t or won’t ?”
I bite back a snarl. “She is mine .”
Harper’s hand comes flying toward my face in an instant.
I catch her wrist before her palm connects with my cheek, gripping it tightly. It’s fair to assume that my eyes are fully black based on the horror in Harper’s expression.
“Loving you is going to get her killed,” she snaps, tears swimming in her eyes. “Don’t you understand that? Or do you just not care anymore?”
I lean in until her fist is pressed between us and I can feel each ragged breath she exhales. My voice is low when I say, “You need to be careful right now. There are very few I care about—”
“Oh, give me a fucking break,” she interrupts coldly, pulling away, further proving I’m not as strong here. “You’re being reckless and pompous and selfish and—”
“I think that’s enough adjectives,” I cut in.
Her expression turns incredulous, and she reaches toward her thigh for a dagger that isn’t there. She glances down, then exhales a slow breath. “You wanted to build some kind of relationship between us, but let me be very clear. If you hurt my best friend one more time, I don’t care who or what you are.” She lifts her chin, meeting my gaze. “I will kill you.”
I don’t have a moment to respond before the dreamscape falls apart, plummeting me into darkness.
Table of Contents
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- Page 17 (Reading here)
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