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Chapter Forty-Two

Pax

I awoke to her in a frenzy, jumping to her feet and charging to her duffel bag, which was packed and zipped where I’d left it at the door in case we had to flee in the middle of the night.

She knelt, and the sound of the zipper ripping open bolted through my body and shot me upright to her frantically digging through her things.

“Aria,” I called, voice hoarse with the aftermath of everything that’d gone down tonight.

It didn’t even come close to breaking into her alarm. Wasn’t even close to touching the chaos that swirled like a tornado around her body, a force of its own that hammered against the thin walls.

Shaking out of control, she tossed a shirt over her head.

I was on my feet and across the space in a second, flat. Leaning over her from behind, I curled my arms around her shoulders, trying to drag her back from the tumult. “What are you doing?”

Without looking at me, Aria gave a turbulent shake of her head, the words cracking on her tongue. “I have to go back. Don’t try to stop me.”

I could feel her turmoil race through me, my blood poisoned by her grief and my spirit bound by her sorrow.

I experienced it as if it were my own, and I knew after what we’d done earlier, I’d be tied to her in an entirely different way, because this girl now beat through me like she’d become the blood in my veins.

Every thud of my heart was a resonance from her chest.

Every breath of my lungs fed from the oxygen she emitted.

My bleeding spirit sank to the pit of my stomach, and I fell to my knees behind her. I tightened my arms around her as I brought her back to my chest.

Holding her so fucking close there would never be any prying us apart.

I put my mouth to her ear. “Then we go together, and we end this thing.”