Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Wilder
Icouldn’t get away fast enough. Byron Blake had me all sorts of confused. I went from wanting to punch the asshole to… well, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that to myself.
My head was pounding as if there were a herd of elephants in there, and that was never a good sign.
I needed to find a quiet spot because this vision felt like it was going to be a bitch.
I darted through a couple of doors, not even paying attention to where I was going.
I just wanted to be far away from the crowds in case I screamed.
I’d been getting visions for as long as I could remember.
They were never overly clear, just flashes of images and emotions.
I wasn’t even sure they were visions. They didn’t show me the future, or at least I didn’t think they did.
They felt more like memories or things from the past. I hadn’t told anybody about them, not even my sister.
She’d just worry, and then I’d be held in a cage somewhere while she figured it all out.
Like I wasn’t capable of doing that myself.
I was. I just didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready to know what they really were, so I was ignoring them until I couldn’t ignore them any longer.
Not very sensible, I know, but that was me.
If I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t a problem.
White lights sparked behind my eyes, and my blood thundered behind my eardrums. Fuck, this one was going to suck.
Pain exploded in my head as I stumbled into another room. Maybe I should have told someone. Should have mentioned it. Then I wouldn’t be so alone.
I wasn’t sure if this one was going to knock me out. Would anyone even notice I was missing?
Knives scraped the inside of my skull, and I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes to try to stop it, but it was useless.
My knees buckled with another wave of pain, but somehow I didn’t hit the floor. Strong hands grabbed under my arms and held me up. Fuck, I could barely stand. They must be strong. But who had followed me?
I looked over my shoulder into two pools of ice-cold blue. “Byron?”
“Hi, baby,” he said in that deep voice of his, an unsettling grin on his face. “Didn’t think you’d fall for me so soon.”
“Wh-what are you—” My words morphed into a scream as the pain in my head worsened. It felt like my skull was splitting in two. I twisted my fist into Byron’s dark black shirt as I tried to stay conscious, but this vision was coming on fast. It wouldn’t be long before I was lost to the darkness.
A cool palm cupped my jaw. “What do you need?”
I whimpered, unable to form a sentence. My thoughts were so scrambled.
“Wilder,” Byron said firmly. “Open your eyes for me and tell me what you need.”
I hadn’t even realised I’d closed them, but they were scrunched up so tightly that it took me a second to relax enough to look up at Byron.
He was so terrifyingly beautiful. All sharp lines and strong angles.
A dark brow that descended in a steep slash and those goddam eyes.
Two pools of impossible blue. Cold and empty but so clear and bright.
They haunted me when I slept and captivated me every time that they held mine. I couldn’t look away.
“What do you need?” He repeated. Why did he look so serious? His thumb traced my bottom lip. “Wilder. Tell me. Please.”
“Sofa,” I managed to blurt out before my mind was consumed by shadows.
Billows of smoke swirl through the shadows.
A pair of pitch black eyes reflecting fire.
Laughter. So much laughter.
Ravens caw. Wings flutter.
A wasteland engulfed in towering flames.
Laughter, echoing, ringing, burning.
I’m lost. Caught in a space with no time. Just fire and ash.
A large raven sits in a tree, his human eyes watching me with patience.
I spin and turn. There’s no direction, no end. No nothing.
Just those black eyes in the sky, reflecting the fire.
It burns. God, it’s so hot. It sears my skin.
The world burns until there’s nothing left.
Nothing but darkness and space without time.
Consciousness came back to me in pieces. At first, I felt like I was floating. As weightless as a feather caught on a breeze but little by little, sensation returned to my limbs. It started at my fingertips and travelled along my arms until it settled in my chest like lead.
Everything suddenly felt heavy.
I blinked my eyes open and stared at the fancy moulded ceiling above me. Images of angels looked down at me whilst my mind dragged itself from the depths of the nightmare. My thoughts were sticky and slow, and my body felt like it had been through a blender.
“Wilder?”
I froze, my body tensing at the sound of his voice.
Byron Blake.
I looked to my left and found him sitting next to me on a chair that he’d pulled close to the side of the sofa.
He’d stayed?
Why would he stay?
He brushed a lock of hair away from my forehead and looked deep into my eyes. “They’re dull.”
“Huh?”
“Your eyes. They’re not as bright as they usually are.”
Oh. That wasn’t a good sign. That meant my magic was depleted. But how? Where did it go?
I rubbed my hands over my eyes and sat up. The world spun as I righted myself and hands gripped my shoulders to steady me.
“Stop,” I hissed. “I don’t need help, Byron.”
I just needed some space to fucking breathe.
He moved his hands away but didn’t lean back. I could see every fleck in his blue eyes. Shades of the sky and sea with flecks of sapphires and fuck, I must be more delusional than I thought if I was feeling poetical about a psychopath’s eyeballs.
The man was a killer. And I was alone with him. Shit. “Are you going to kill me?”
The corner of his mouth flicked up in the ghost of a smile. “No. I wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed off earlier.”
“Oh.” Thank fuck I wasn’t about to die.
“Want to talk about whatever that magical explosion was?”
“Magical what?”
Byron cocked his head to one side like a murderous little puppy. “You don’t know what happened, do you?”
I frowned. All I knew was that I’d fainted and had a vision. Dread filled my stomach. Had I done something else?
Byron leant even closer, just a single inch, but it was enough for me to smell his cologne. Something expensive and dark, spicy and filled with danger. It made me want to close the distance and bury my nose in the crook of his neck.
“Do you like men?” Byron asked, startling me out of my tumbling thoughts.
“What?”
“Acheron thinks you’re straight but you’re looking at me like you want to eat me.”
“I… wait. What? Straight? No, I don’t want to eat you.” This was the weirdest conversation, and I was struggling to follow Byron. “Tell me about the magic.”
Byron’s smile was completely wolfish. “After you tell me if you like men.”
“I like men, I just don’t like you.” God, this man was impossible. “Magic, Byron.”
He finally sat back in his seat, his full bottom lip pulled down in a pout. “I’m sure you’ll like me soon enough. I won’t give you a choice.”
What? Had he actually said that? How can anyone think that’s appropriate or fucking normal?!
But he’d moved on to talking about what had happened when I’d blacked out. I’d have to circle back to this later.
Or just avoid the whole thing completely. I was good at that.
“—there was this purple bolt of lightning that arced from you and hit me—I hope that won’t kill me by the way, and then you started muttering something in a language I didn’t understand, but it sounded ancient.”
Good lord, this man was something else. “Hold on. I hit you with magic?”
He frowned at me like I was the crazy one. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t explode?”
“Should I have exploded?”
“I wish you had,” I muttered under my breath.
“That’s not very nice, baby.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said but the maniac just grinned wider. I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath. Why couldn’t it have been Vlad or even Acheron who’d followed me? Why did it have to be this asshole?
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice deep and soft and it made my soul purr.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“I’m fine,” I snapped. I needed to get away from him before I killed him, but I didn’t think my legs would be up to the task just yet. They still felt like jelly.
I’ve never been this bad after a vision before and it worried me that they were getting worse. What if the next one pulled me under and never let me go?
“Are you okay?” I asked Byron.
“Worried about me?”
I rolled my eyes at him and sighed. “No, just want to make sure my burst of magic isn’t actually going to kill you.”
Not sure how I’d explain to my sister why I’d been sent home in disgrace for accidentally murdering one of the greatest assassins ever to live. Not that I’d ever tell Byron that. His ego was big enough already.
Although now I was really looking at him, there was a faint mark on his black shirt. “Take your shirt off.”
Byron’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “We’ve not even had our first date yet.”
“Just do it. I need to see if my power left a mark, asshole.”
Byron chuckled as he unbuttoned his shirt and I pretended to not be a little excited about the prospect of seeing what he looked like beneath his clothes.
I tried to ignore the way my heart rate picked up speed as Byron slowly undid the top few buttons.
“You sure you don’t want to eat me?” Byron asked.
“No,” I replied quickly.
Maybe too quickly.
Especially if Byron was smiling like that. Like he knew something I didn’t.
He finally parted his shirt, and I gasped.
“I know,” he said smugly. “It’s a work of art and—”
“Not that, you asshole.” But he was right. He was toned and gorgeous but that’s not what I was looking at. In the centre of his chest, right between his well-defined pecs, was a sigil. My sigil. A mutation of the ancient Fear No Foe sigil which roughly translated to Protect Me and Mine.
Byron was holding my magic like a human shaped cookie jar.
He should be dead.
Byron looked down and flinched. “What the fuck is that?”