Chapter 15 Cole
Cole
I couldn’t get the sound of the hounds out of my head as I let Sephtis lead us through the streets.
A part of me was probably in shock from someone trying to kill me.
I wasn’t sure when I was going to have time to process anything between dying twice and needing to accept that I was tethered to the man I’d hated for the last year, the man I’d craved while I slept because he was the only thing that made the nightmares go away.
Hate and guilt and desire were all wrapped up in a stoic form that kept stealing my choices… my sanity.
I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him for all the things he’d done, but I finally realized I couldn’t run from him if I didn’t want to be ripped apart by those hounds.
I’d never see Caiden again if that happened, would I?
I’d never see Caiden, and… even though I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit it aloud, there was something about the insistence in Sephtis’s voice that made me want to stay, even if it was just so I could tell him how much I despised him for doing this to me.
I knew it was easier to tell myself that was the only reason.
“Where are we going?” I asked for what felt like the hundredth time. He’d started in a direction I didn’t recognize after I’d finally stopped shaking from my close up with what would happen if I were caught. He hadn’t said a word, and I was starting to wonder if he was angry with me.
It wasn’t like I’d meant to nearly get killed. And I…
Shit…
“Are you upset that you had to kill someone because of me?” It sounded ridiculous, because he killed people all the time. That was what he did. That was his whole purpose, as weird as it seemed.
God, if I’d been asked a week ago whether I believed in shit like Reapers and demon dogs and assholes with wings, I would have called someone crazy.
Now…
Well, now… shit, I’d seen the red line trailing between us—I’d felt the pull of it when he used it to bring me back into my body. As much as I wanted to deny it, I couldn’t say it wasn’t real.
But I wasn’t going to admit he was my soulmate. That was something he’d done to me. One more decision he’d made without asking; one more choice he’d taken away from me.
I wondered if he realized I was never going to forgive him if he kept doing that, even if he thought he was doing me a favor.
And now… he wasn’t answering me. Again.
The irritation I was trying to hold back for the sake of getting as far away from that alley as possible surged to the surface, and I stalked a few steps forward to catch up with him, grabbing his hand and forcing him to slow down.
“Sephtis, if you’re angry about it, don’t take it out on me. I didn’t ask you to save me.”
Again.
I hadn’t asked him to save me again. Fuck, I’d never asked.
“I’m not angry.” He finally spoke, his voice soft, his eyes refusing to meet mine. He flipped his wrist and linked our hands together, and I quietly cursed the fact that the spaces between our fingers fit perfectly.
“Then why aren’t you talking?” I tried to tug my hand out of his and let out a little grunt at the strength of his grip, his reluctance to let me go.
I completely ignored the way a small piece of me liked how his touch felt enough that I wasn’t really fighting it.
It was either that weird-ass thread between us or the fact that I’d been traumatized.
I’d figure it out tomorrow. For now, at least he was talking.
If I had to be stuck with him, he didn’t get to act like I wasn’t here.
“You seem… happier when I’m quiet. I just killed someone in front of you and forced you to watch the hounds devour their soul. It seems fair that I give you time to process that.”
Another flicker of anger made me jerk his arm hard enough that we both stopped short on the sidewalk.
He was leading me further out of town, toward the residential areas I’d never been to.
I didn’t know where we were; I didn’t know what was going on.
I was so sick of his stoic I know best shit that I couldn’t take another step.
“You have a really bad habit of thinking you know what I need. Do you realize that?”
“I—”
“No, I’m talking now.” He finally turned to face me, his eyes slightly widened, his lips parted in a little oh of shock that would have been cute on anyone’s face other than his.
I refused to call him cute or anything cute adjacent.
He’d just killed someone. “You’ve spent the entire time I’ve known you making decisions for me.
You stopped me from dying more than once, you took my brother from me before I got to tell him goodbye.
You made that… that cupid shoot me with an arrow, so we’re tethered together.
You’ve taken everything in my life that ever mattered away from me twice. ”
Twice. Caiden and my freedom—the only person who ever mattered and my ability to be independent. He’d taken it all.
Sephtis stared at me, his eyes full of some fathomless depth of remorse and pain that tried to burrow past the fury I was feeling.
“I never meant to take anything from you. I couldn’t save your brother.
I tried to give him more time, but I couldn’t…
and I didn’t mean for this...” He gestured between us. “I never meant to trap you by my side.”
“Bullshit.”
He shook his head, stepping closer to me. “No, listen to me. I want you, Cole. I’m not going to deny it, or lie to you about it. Whatever soul Death used to create me was destined to be with yours, even though it shouldn’t have been able to feel you. I want you, but I would have waited.”
The sincerity in his voice just infuriated me even more.
“You would have been waiting a long time, asshole. I hate you.” Fuck, that sounded so stupid to say while our fingers were still linked together.
I moved closer, like I meant to do something, but that only forced me to tilt my head back to meet his golden gaze.
It left me swallowed up in the same cool presence that had surrounded me and kept me sane while I was listening to the hounds earlier.
“You can hate me. I’ll build a home in the flames of it and find joy in the warmth.
I’d let you burn me alive if it meant you’d run your fingers through my ashes to scatter me to the winds, if it meant you’d breathe me in so I was a part of you.
You can say it would have been a long time, Cole…
but I’m willing to wait forever. An eternity. ”
Fuck. Did he not realize a normal fucking person didn’t say shit like that?
He really was some kind of freak of nature, a creature instead of a man…
and right now, I was the one who felt like I’d turn to ash if I stayed close to him for a second longer.
The warmth in his eyes, the heat that was flooding through my body, spreading from my chest and making my face flush was too much.
It burned away the rest of my anger, leaving it as nothing more than smoldering embers in the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t say shit like that.” I finally pulled my hand from his and started walking in the direction he’d been leading us. It only took him a few steps to catch up to me, and though the back of his fingers touched mine, he didn’t reach for me again. “Now… where the fuck are we going?”
His silence nearly made me think he’d gone back to not answering me, but he finally gestured to our left. “To my apartment.”
Why the fuck did a Reaper need an apartment?
Even though he was talking to me now, apparently I couldn’t make things easy on him.
“Why?”
I wasn’t even sure what I was asking anymore. Did he have to eat? Sleep? Did he stay in my world when he wasn’t off killing people?
It was weird as fuck to be tied to someone and not really know all that much about them. I knew he was obsessed with me in an intensely freakish way that I thought only existed in books… and I knew that he’d killed Caiden.
I knew he’d kill to protect me…
“I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe there, but I had a witch nullify the area a long time ago. It won’t stop the hounds from chasing you if they find you, but they won’t be able to sniff you out.”
Everything he said sounded like a foreign language. “Nullify?”
Sephtis paused, glancing away for a moment like he wasn’t sure he wanted to confess this next part.
“I’m not supposed to be here, to stay in the mortal world.
I’m not supposed to watch a human the way I watch you, so I bargained with a witch to make the place invisible to the supernatural eye unless you know what you’re looking for.
If the hounds truly catch your scent, it won’t keep them at bay for long, but it will give us a day or two…
and hopefully, it will give me long enough to find someone else who can help me fix this. ”
There was that swirl of guilt again, trembling somewhere just behind his voice and making his handsome face twist into a tragically miserable expression.
I wanted to tell him that having depth and emotions—looking like he was ready to break at the same time he was declaring his undying devotion to me—wasn’t any way to win me over…
But I wasn’t going to be a liar, so I pressed my lips together and nodded.
I’d get around to asking him what he needed shit like an apartment for later—hell, when I got there, I’d take full advantage and snoop. It wasn’t like he didn’t owe me at least that much after everything he’d put me through.
Sephtis would just have to deal with my curiosity.