Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ARABELLA
“What?” he demanded softly, his tone filled with caution.
“Let me go,” I whispered, feeling power surge over my skin in patterns of electrical shocks. The nightmare only tightened his hold, making me realize he was holding me up off the ground with such ease that I hadn’t even noticed the shift.
My gaze darted down to find that I was far higher up than I thought. I turned my head to really look at Ashur, trying to not look down at his muscular frame or stare too long at certain parts of his body…specifically very hard parts of his body. I couldn’t afford to get distracted.
A long, hard distraction…
“He wants you to go over there,” Ashur rumbled out, his voice rough from what I had to assume was lack of use. “He wants to take you, my moon. He wants to take you because of what you are.”
“Get her out of here. Now.”
Saint’s voice was a hard command, more serious than I’d heard in some time. He looked far better than when he’d gotten hit by that power surge—he was pissed, though. I understood that completely, and the idea of Hate hurting Saint only fueled the violence under my skin.
I pressed a hand to Ashur’s chest in another attempt to move away from him.
I didn’t want to. I could very much be comfortable in his arms, but I knew Hate would just pull more and more nightmares from the forest until my men slaughtered all of them. That wasn’t okay—I wasn’t going to allow that blood on their hands.
“I am not going anywhere,” I growled. “I am not abandoning my team.”
“Arabella—”
“Ashur.”
He examined my serious expression before grunting and letting me slide down his body. My face flamed as I got an up close and personal feel of that distraction I was talking about earlier—the thing was pressed right against me! I had to force myself to turn sharply towards the clearing.
I narrowed my gaze on Hate’s goading smile.
“Don’t approach him.” Ashur’s voice was softer this time, almost pleading.
“Come with me. I’m not approaching him,” I promised, trusting my instincts on how to handle this situation. They had never steered me wrong before.
Instead of trying to make my way across the clearing, I looked around at the wild, manic nightmares fighting my men.
I knew I couldn’t take a god terror on by myself—I wasn’t dumb, and I didn’t plan on trying to be a hero.
Going to Hate wouldn’t do anything except put myself in danger of him taking me.
Instead, I walked out of the forest line Ashur had kept us sheltered in. Immediately, a nightmare turned its gaze on me. It was a creature terror—a cat of sorts.
Well, its face was feline in nature and part of its torso, but the eight legs…
not so much. It also didn’t have adorable paws with little toe beans.
No, this particular nightmare had razor-sharp ends to its appendages that dug into the earth and could very easily sever several body parts.
It reminded me of a cat-spider hybrid, and I had absolutely no idea how I felt about that.
It let out a low growl and ran towards me, Ashur gripping my hip from behind me and nearly pulling me back.
I put a hand on his and squeezed it, trying to comfort him while waiting for the nightmare to reach me.
When it did, realizing I wasn’t going to run, it hissed and went back on six legs, pointing two of them right at me as if signaling its attack.
When it didn’t charge, I met its gaze, holding it as I kept my energy as calm and relaxed as possible.
Almost instantly the creature froze up, and I moved from Ashur’s hold, growing closer to the nightmare.
There was a vibration in the center of my chest that told me this was the right move, that this was the path forward.
I had never considered my soothing abilities a true power, so I hadn’t treated them as such.
Which is why this situation was so difficult for me.
I objectively had no idea what I was doing, but I had learned a few things during my years in the institute.
I’d learned that despite their urge to fight for dominance, holding eye contact with a nightmare usually helped calm them down. At least when it came to me.
I’d also learned that touch really helped, and while it was extremely dangerous, I didn’t hesitate to reach out and touch the terror.
A hiss broke from its throat, and I could feel Ashur hovering behind me as if ready to pull me away from all of this at a moment’s notice.
I loved that he didn’t try to stop me. I knew it was his instinct to, but it also made me feel…
Well, I wasn’t positive what it made me feel—what he made me feel—but I liked it anyway.
When my hand made contact with the terror, I felt the power Hate had over it break, like a thread being cut.
My gaze moved towards him, finding his smile had transformed into a sneer.
He reached down and pulled Peace up by her hair, and my heart squeezed painfully for her, her lips moving in what appeared to be incoherent mumbling.
I hated him. I hated Hate. I wanted nothing more than to run across the clearing to stop this, to stop him, but I knew it would end in either getting myself killed or taken.
I wouldn’t give him that. Peace would be saved, though—you could guarantee it.
I just had to get these other nightmares out of the way.
The second I released my hand from the nightmare, she ran into the forest, disappearing with a whimper.
I slipped towards another nightmare, a tall lanky one feeding off the blood at its feet—the blood of its own kind.
It had tentacles that kept reaching for Zain, who easily avoided them while fighting two more nightmares.
I didn’t avoid it though, and when the tentacled creature turned its face to me, my brows went up because it literally had the face of a boy.
I held its gaze and approached, its mouth foaming with blood.
I felt my chest squeeze uncomfortably at the childlike glint to its gaze, hidden beneath the malice.
It lunged at me, and I slammed my hand against his forehead as he screamed out.
Ashur’s hand tightened on my waist, and I could feel him fighting his own magic.
An unspoken moment between the two of us passed without even looking at one another, and I knew the man could end these small nightmares. I didn’t know about god terrors, but these others for sure.
But they weren’t the true enemy, and we didn’t want them dead.
We wanted them safe and away from Hate.
There was a reason Peace had been here. It was a naturally happy and serene place—as peaceful as a nightmare forest could be—but Hate was ruining it.
I took pleasure in his anger as I worked my way through several nightmares, until the mass began retreating towards the edge of the forest. Like a domino effect, they began to break out of Hate’s control with their companions.
I stood in the center of it, ignoring the blood and keeping my gaze on the true threat.
I could feel my other men surrounding me, but I couldn’t listen to anything they said as Hate tossed Peace down to his feet once more and offered a slow clap.
“Very good, Arabella.” His mocking tone caused several of my men to let out vicious defensive sounds.
I could see how Hate really felt, though—I could see the fear.
He had thought this would be an easy battle, something to provide enough of a distraction to get what he wanted, which was apparently me.
“You must have been practicing very hard, pretty little human. Your soothing abilities are like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said, offering me a slimy smile. “Which is exactly why you are coming with me.”
“She’s not going anywhere.”
Ashur’s voice was hard and commanding. Saint appeared next to me, and I felt everyone’s magic amp up tenfold. I had no doubt my men would never let that happen.
“Then I will kill her,” Hate said, picking Peace up by her hair and holding a blade to her throat. “Of course she will come back eventually, but far too late to help with your little cause.”
It was right at that moment that Peace’s gaze met mine, the clear mint green shade shining with life underneath the pain, warming even in her broken state.
Sadness surged through me because I knew at that moment that Hate had been hurting her for some time.
There was a brokenness to her expression that I’d never seen in anyone before.
I’d be damned if he was the one that killed her, even if it was fucking temporary.
Something broke loose in my chest, fueled by the space around us and my men’s magic. I could see a colorful energy running across my skin, and my voice produced an effect that seemed to almost go in and out, obviously influenced by the space around us.
“Let go of her, Hate. You will not hurt her.”
I wouldn’t let it fucking happen. Over my dead body.
At first I could tell he wanted to smile, maybe even offer a mocking laugh, but the smile disappeared as his hand, not of his own accord, relaxed its grip on Peace.
A knife clattered to the stone as Peace fell forward, and Hate looked down at her with fury, his foot shifting but ultimately staying in place.
I knew if he could have, he would have kicked her… but he couldn’t.
I couldn’t explain it, but the energy I was using created a bubble of influence around us that seemed to be controlling him.
Fear slammed into his gaze as he let out a vicious growl.
I thought for a moment he would lunge for us—after all, I hadn’t said anything about hurting us.
Instead, his furious voice echoed through the space in warning.
“You will never be safe again, sis meta.”
Then he disappeared into thin air.
A flash of Saint’s dark magic collided with the absent space milliseconds after he disappeared.
I breathed out a small sigh of relief, not because I doubted Saint, but because I could feel that this was so much bigger than Hate.
His words from before were a lie—I didn’t believe any of this was his plan.
He was far too reactionary to coordinate this type of effort.
I hadn’t realized my men were talking loudly, maybe even yelling, until I turned to face them, feeling dizzy and lightheaded.
The power I’d siphoned rebounded back into me like a rubber band, and I gasped, gripping my chest in pain.
Sharp. Excruciating. My knees broke, and I dug my fingers into the ground, feeling something shatter inside of my chest. My vision went fuzzy as I began to see… everything.
The world seemed to drop out from underneath me, and a galaxy of lights appeared beneath my touch, like I was soaring far above the planet.
Something in the center of my being had connected to a fundamental part of the earth, and I knew in the real world, the earth was clawing up my skin and surrounding me, trying to pull me under.
I could feel Ashur’s magic exploding out and trying to counter it.
I could feel my men trying to fight it back.
They didn’t understand, though. The earth wasn’t trying to hurt me, it was trying to show me who I was connected to.
As if I was zooming in on a point in time along a long, linear path, the image of a woman in silk garments appeared, standing in front of an altar.
Around her were nightmares, and in front of her were three young women, all with their own group of nightmares.
They were chanting, their words both familiar and foreign as they coasted across my ears.
The image disappeared, changing to a vision of a young man carrying timber over his shoulder as he walked towards a cabin. A gorgeous green-haired woman with a baby on her hip stood on the porch, offering him a sweet smile.
The image disappeared.
Sis metas.
That’s what these individuals were, and as I looked over the world, a strangled sound came from my throat as I saw a broken beam of silver light radiating from the west coast. The beam was strong, but it was flickering.
My entire body lurched as I was suddenly thrown out of the connection with my people. My kind.
The power that I could pull from, not my own but ours, slammed into all of my mates at once, a connection forming between us as my eyes snapped open and my head fell back. The last thing I saw before I fell unconscious was the night sky.