Chapter One
EZEKIEL
Present day…
I can’t breathe.
Rolling over in the snow, I feel Thorin’s presence more than see him as I inhale as much of the frigid air as I can.
It’s a soothing balm to the burn in my lungs.
My ears are ringing, my fingers and toes are numb, and the rest of my body trembles violently.
But the worst feeling of all is not remembering how I got this way.
Thorin doesn’t crowd me, giving me a moment to sort out my shit. It always takes a while, especially when I almost end up buried alive.
Seth.
Fucking Seth.
This has him written all over it.
He’d bring the entire mountain down on our heads if it meant taking out Thorin and Khalil. I’d just be convenient collateral damage.
It’s not his fault. Pain is the one thing I’ve never been able to hide from Seth, and it’s not just the physical hurts that he feels he has to save me from. It’s the ones that drive me to the edge of a cliff and make me want to leap.
The loose snow shifts and crunches, and I tense as someone moves behind me, inching closer. I assume it’s Khalil until I hear him speak.
“Aurelia…wait.”
Aurelia…
Who the hell is Aurelia?
I feel an insistent hand on my shoulder a moment later, too small to belong to Khalil, turning me around, and I don’t fight it.
I barely get a glimpse of her.
No more than a glance at her brown eyes, long lashes, tear-tracked cheeks, and golden curls before she presses her full lips against mine. A charge voltaic enough to power a small city jolts through me and instinct has me reaching for her.
Suddenly ivory skin replaces brown, those golden curls lengthen and straighten to a curtain of raven black, and though her eyes are closed, I’m suddenly dreading seeing blue surrounding black pupils that I once mistook for warm and inviting like the waters in a tropical paradise.
Except this is hell, and Tatum isn’t either of those things.
My heart rate spikes, and I feel Bane pressing against my skin the moment my mind speaks her name. The edges of my vision darken, and I know that I’m seconds from blacking out when I only just returned.
Confident that shit is about to go all the way left, I curl my fingers around the girl’s arms and shove her away and into the snow. I watch her shock at my violent rejection and then her eyes raking over me, taking in every detail as if she’s seeing me for the first time.
“Seth…” My gaze narrows at the name. The voice isn’t the sharp whip of Tatum’s either but rather soft and cajoling. “Baby, it’s me. What’s wrong?”
Suddenly, the image of Tatum fades away like it was never there, and I’m met with the face of the girl I’d mistaken for an angel. Get a grip, Zeke. Thanatos isn’t real, and she isn’t one of his.
“Goldilocks, don’t. That’s not—”
She’s impatient and doesn’t listen to Khalil, reaching out for me with lips chapped and blue from the cold. Or is it worry?
For me?
No.
For Seth.
I scramble away even as I ask through clenched teeth, “Who the fuck are you?”
The girl snatches back her hand with a blink of confusion. Her brown eyes once again scan my face and demeanor, but this time she doesn’t dismiss the changes she sees, and understanding dawns.
The girl Thorin called Aurelia sighs. Her shoulders and the hand reaching out for me drop as if she’s defeated, but my chest is still pinched tight as if she’ll strike at any minute.
Does she have to be so close?
“You’re not Seth,” she surmises with no emotion. The gentle tone is gone, and I feel a spark of something green like envy.
What the fuck? “No. I’m not.”
“Oh.” Aurelia nods curtly and then avoids my gaze as she dusts off her hands and stands. “My mistake.”
Her…mistake? Is that all finding out that I’m suddenly someone else is to her? If so, I say again… What the fuck? Exactly how much does she know?
I stand as well, but I still don’t feel like I have the upper hand once I’m towering over her. Not with the way she’s watching me closely like she’s assessing and seeing if I measure up. What the hell did the others tell her about me?
“I’m Aurelia,” she finally says. “You must be Ezekiel.”
She starts to offer me her hand—a perfectly normal reaction between strangers meeting for the first time—but then Khalil intercepts, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her safely out of my reach.
Aurelia looks up and over her shoulder at him, but he’s watching me like…
Like I’m the threat. To her.
My chest tightens again, and Thorin clears his throat. It doesn’t break any of the tension like he probably intended it to. “Obviously, we have a lot to talk about, but it’ll have to wait until we get back to the cabin. It can’t be here.”
I look around one last time before Thorin helps me to my feet and we start looking for a way back to the cabin.
It’s not easy since there’s snow everywhere and we’re not geared up to traverse it at all.
It’s also spring now. I can tell by how warm the air feels rather than the bracing cold.
The last time I remember being awake, it was still winter, if only for a few more weeks.
None of us speak as we walk back, and I keep waiting for the girl to go her own way but she follows us all the way back to the cabin. Thorin and Khalil also seem to be overly familiar with her, but all it does is send my anxiety through the fucking roof.
And I don’t remember a thing.
Honestly, that surprises me. Seth is always a pissy bitch whenever I take my body back. Usually, I don’t mind it, but this is the first time I’ve ever wanted to remember.
I have to.
I need to figure out what this girl is doing here and how to get her gone for good.