Thirty-Six
I charge into Dayne’s room, wearing only a pair of pants, the button and zipper not even done. He’s on his feet in an instant, fully dressed and ready to go. He’s been sleeping like I have, with one eye open and one foot out the door. This is the second night he’s been back from guarding the teleporter, and although he’s supposed to be resting before he returns to her, he’s on edge every second of every day, hoping this is the moment she’s cracked it.
“Has Elivici –”
he starts.
“No.”
I shut the door behind me, turn on the light, then sign for the silence rune. As soon as he wraps the room in privacy, I blurt, “Micha wants me to kill her.”
He freezes like a deer in headlights. I feel like the fucking truck. Out of control. Barreling down a hill with no brakes. Her agony is ripping through me, killing me, making it so fucking hard to breathe.
I stride over to the armchair, then collapse within it, my legs having used all their energy to get here. Dayne stays standing, his face beyond pale.
“No,”
he says, his voice both raspy and strong. In denial.
I want to agree with him. I want to save her so fucking badly, be her white knight, and bring her home. But Micha is begging me to listen to her. Just like she did when I had her tied to a chair. My breathing quickens as I see her tears all over again, hear her screams that are never far from my mind.
It was agony to block her out the first time and do what I thought needed to be done in order to save my brother. I barely managed it, pulling on my anger and jealousy and utter fear that I would fail Khalid. That I would arrive too late just because I let my feelings get in the way. Because I couldn’t do what needed to be done to get the information out of an enemy I barely knew, who I believed had helped kidnap him. An outsider I had just started to love versus a brother who had been there with me my whole damn life. I was able to suffer through her screams because I thought I was saving him.
But now there is no one to save but her.
Her death won’t change Rudy’s chances of survival.
Though even if it did… My heart tightens.
She is my wife.
I love Rudy like a son. I’d sacrifice everyone in this house to save him, myself included.
But…
She. Is. My. Wife.
I tremble as that truth slams into me. That utter terror at loving someone so deeply when you know you’re just about to lose them.
My power pulses beneath my skin, and I know if my curse wasn’t already broken, torn asunder by seeing Bambi for the first time, it would be shattered in this moment. In this horrible, terrible instance where I would be willing to give her up, to let her leave me for her own happiness.
Her own blissful release in death.
She might be an assassin, but she saves children. Surely, the gods will not punish her too severely…
And then she will be reborn. Given a new life. With no memory of me. No tie given the blood bond isn’t complete.
And yet… I would still set her free.
If she really wants this.
“You know her better than anyone,”
I rasp, keeping my eyes on a random spot on the floor, unable to meet Dayne’s, unable to find that strength. I hate how little I actually know her, regret all the times I treated her like a stranger when she first came to the house instead of milking every last opportunity I had to be with her. I hate myself for torturing her, for not believing in her, in us. I mourn for the future we will not have. The days I will live without seeing her face or hearing her voice
No.
No, I won’t survive that.
I’ll kill myself immediately after. Then I’ll at least have the chance of finding her in the afterlife. For once we are reborn, all of our memories are wiped clean. A new slate. A broken slate in my mind.
But despite that desperate hope, deep down, I know the ugly truth.
If I do this, if I honor her wish, I will lose her forever. I could search for a thousand lifetimes, refuse to be reborn when the gods say it’s my time. I will keep searching until I forget her name, what she looks like, pulled only by the hole in my heart, and still, I will never find her.
Because the gods do not take kindly to those of us who have rejected their gift of a lifemate and chosen to create our own blood bonded mates.
But for her… I will do it.
I will suffer for the rest of eternity.
“Would she really want this?”
I ask, my voice breaking, splintering into a million jagged pieces, my walls no longer up to keep the judgment out. “Can she survive this?”
Or will I be saving her, only to gift her with decades of pain? I can feel the agony she’s in. It jerked me out of my pitiful sleep, this soul-wrenching madness, this desperate need for it to stop. He is breaking her, killing her, leaving nothing but a husk behind.
What if I bring her home, and I just end up imprisoning her like Antonio has? Forcing her to endure something she doesn’t want to for my own selfish needs? I might be doing it out of love, but for her, will it be any different?
“When Lou was born,”
Dayne says slowly, his words no less impactful from that creeping hesitation, “Micha became a mother. In that same moment, she lost hers and her father. She suffered that grief alone for years. Stefaan was going to marry her off, wipe his hands of her, and she convinced him to let her stay and train as an assassin. She suffered the cruelty of that training for Lou. For herself too because Lou was all she had. She was just a child.”
He hesitates for a moment, letting his words carry. Like stones placed upon my chest, they crush my lungs, hinder my ability to breathe.
“Then she cared for me,”
he says softly. Another pause. “And the kids that no one wanted, their names plucked from boards they never should’ve been on.” From forums on the dark web, offering up money for their deaths.
Mother’s words of why she had chosen Micha in the first place come back to me: because she saves kids rather than kills them as her reputation says.
My chest tightens as I realize she has an entire part of herself, a secret so entwined with who she is, and I know nothing about it.
I never won her trust enough to know.
But fuck, do I want the time with her to win it, to have the chance to prove my loyalty and devotion to her so that she wants to share these things with me, so that she trusts me to fight to protect the things she loves. The people she loves.
But I won’t be selfish with my decision.
She is begging me to do this thing for her, to listen to her cries and show her mercy.
A tear slips down my cheek as I feel her scream, feel her tearing apart at the seams. She’s fracturing into too many pieces to save.
But I don’t know her like Dayne does.
So the choice will be his.
Whether or not my wife lives or dies.
My throat closes as I desperately wait for his next words.
He takes his time, giving weight to his thoughts, and my heart beats faster with every passing second.
“As long as she has someone to fight for,”
he finally says, “she will survive this.”
I shudder, breathing out hard. I feel as if all my blood has poured out of my limbs, leaving me hollow and exhausted. “She has you,”
I rasp, thankful as all fuck that she has him. “And Lou.”
Dayne stares at me, cautious now, wary. Like fingers reaching for a gun. Hairs rising to tell him something is wrong. Off. Not quite right. “And you,”
he says slowly. A question hidden in those two words.
I lift my head now, look him right in the eyes.
Micha told me never to tell him, knowing he’d try to kill me, then die by the reaper’s hand, but he needs to know. He needs all the facts to make his decision, needs to understand all the pain Micha is going through. It isn’t just Antonio that has broken her; it is me.
And she might not be able to heal from her trauma when she’s living with the cause.
The silence rune hums around us. He can kill me before Khalid ever realizes we’re fighting, but if he thinks that is the best decision for Micha, then I will let him do it.
I would die for her a thousand times over if it would help her heal.
My voice raw and honest, I say, “Perhaps not. I’m the one who tortured her, not –”
With a roar, he lunges for me.
I have time to bolt out of the chair, roll across the floor, and pull a knife, but I don’t. Even knowing the pain that’s coming, recalling Jona’s screams as he ripped off his own dick, I stay seated until both of Dayne’s hands wrap around my bare shoulders and yank me to my feet.
Burning pain explodes down my arms and arcs through the rest of my body. Each tiny bolt is precisely controlled to do the most damage, to fry my nerves without removing their ability to feel pain. I seize up, my muscles locking as thousands of needles stab me in a thousand locations, each one heated like molten metal. The pain is excruciating, but my jaw is locked so tight, I can’t scream.
I hit the ground, convulsing hard, the damage to my nerves so intense, I can’t remember how to breathe. Dayne squats down beside me as my heart races, and I gasp for air, his fingers resting lightly on my arm.
“The only reason I have spared your life,”
he says, “is because I know she loves you. So I will not kill you until she asks me to. But know that I know exactly how many times I can do this –”
My body jerks, spasming on the floor as sheer agony rips through me once more. Every nerve. Every thought. Every bit of my existence has been reduced to a burning agony.
“Without killing you.”
Pain flares. My nerves all scream. He keeps electrocuting me over and over again, but I know I deserve an entire hour of this. An entire day. A week. A fucking lifetime for what I did to her – an act that will stay with her for life. A betrayal by someone she loves.
Eventually, he stops though, and I suck in air through gritted teeth, my jaw feeling like it’s been welded shut, my two rows of teeth seemingly melted into one.
His fingers leave my arm, but his handprint stays burned into my skin. A silent, permanent threat.
“Now,”
he says as he stares down at me. “You get the hel up and find another way to save Micha because if we don’t get her back –” His voice cracks over that, the fear that she isn’t coming home. “I’ll rewire your brain so that everything you feel, every bit of heat or cold, every smell and sound, every brush of fabric on your skin will translate into pain. I will make it so you’ll live in hel long after Khalid kills me.”
I sit up, sweat beading across my body. Every muscle feels tight and strained, every nerve dipped in acid and broken glass. I work my throat, but the chords feel fried, over-used, as if I have been screaming non-stop for hours. The words drag along my throat, kicking and screaming and doing their damnedest not to touch the air, to stay down so they don’t scrape against the raw flesh inside, but I push them out.
“Being away from her is hel...”
I take a breath, my lungs burning in protest. “So save your threats for Antonio.” His eyes narrow as I lean against the chair, the lingering pain taking the air out of me but not the fire. Never the fire when it comes to her, and now that I know Micha will survive this, that fire roars into an inferno.
She still screams down the bond, begging me to set her free into death’s embrace, that pain more crippling than the attack from Dayne. I don’t ignore it, can’t when I can hear her cries, but I do endure it.
I push to my feet…
Stare him in the eyes.
“Promise me you’ve not made this decision for yourself.”
His jaw tics. “She’ll survive even without you.”
I flinch, recoiling from the pain.
I couldn’t survive without her.
But if that is what she needs to heal from all this, then I’ll set her free. Watch over her only from the shadows.
Turning for the door, I lock down the husband side of me and step back into the role of Boss. Elivici has a wife and three children. It’s time to motivate her to work faster, and if she can’t, I’ll kill them all and get another teleporter in. After all, Eduardo’s only a genius on Earth.
He isn’t shit on the rest of the Seven Planes.
And I don’t care how many people I have to kill.
How many families.
I am bringing my wife home.