Chapter Thirty-Five Aria
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aria
Jill came to check on me. She was shocked by the amount of healing I’d done, though she said she shouldn’t have been. She examined me before showering me with her love and belief, then reluctantly said she needed to return to her family.
I hugged her for the longest time, thanking her over and over again, before I got into the shower after she’d said her final goodbye.
I washed and stepped out, drying quickly before I changed into leggings and a fluffy black sweater.
The ribbon still adorned my finger. I lifted it as I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
There was a chance that I might not ever take it off.
It was the sweetest gift I’d ever received.
Though it wasn’t hard for me to piece together how this man who was so forbidding—a minister of violence—could still remain so gentle underneath.
His deeds had been defined by the purpose he’d been given. By this life that had forged us into the people we were.
And I realized then I would never want to change that. I wanted all facets of him. All his rough, steely intimidation and the soft caresses he worshipped me with at night. His gruff words and his undying devotion.
I wanted his everything. Every single thing he’d just offered to me.
Clearing my throat, I forced myself to finally move, and I tied my damp hair up into a messy twist, then slipped from the bathroom.
Pax was dressed, leaning over with his elbows resting on his thighs where he sat on the edge of the bed.
When he felt me there, he lifted his head. Worry had edged back into his features, as if the few moments without me had set him off-balance. “How do you feel?”
“I feel like I’m standing in front of my future.” It billowed from my mouth. My own promise that it was us.
That I wanted it.
Forever.
He pushed to standing, his feet bare, the man so beautiful he stole the breath from my lungs. I wondered if there’d ever be a day when that would change. When he would stop having this effect on me.
I doubted it, with the burn that slipped through my body when he reached out and took my chin between his fingers. Wonderment was etched into every stark line of his expression. “You astound me, Aria. The resilience inside you.”
“And you’re the one who’s still standing at my side when danger tracks me everywhere I go. That’s resilience.”
Dedication and loyalty.
His thumb brushed over the scar on the left side of my mouth. “Ah, Princess, don’t you know the only place I want to be is at your side?”
My teeth raked my bottom lip, my own playfulness sliding into the tease. “I thought I was your fiancée?”
Softness hooked at the side of his mouth. “That’s right. And I can’t wait until we make that wife.”
He grabbed my hand and threaded our fingers together. “Come on. We need to get you something to eat. Make sure we keep your strength up.”
“I’d rather stay here in this room with you all day.”
“One day, Aria. One day we won’t be dealing with all this bullshit; then it’ll just be you and me.”
I gave him a small nod, and he started to walk backward, taking me with him, still wearing that grin on his face as he led me toward the bedroom door.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“I don’t want to take my eyes off you.”
Affection crawled into my cheeks on a bout of redness. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Nah, baby—I’m enamored.”
That flush only deepened, a sheet of warmth that slipped around me like an embrace.
Then Pax clicked open the door, and he shifted around to face ahead as he led me down the hall, though he kept glancing back at me from over his shoulder as if he meant exactly what he’d said.
We slowed as we made it to the end of the hall, and we peeked out to find Dani and Timothy on the couch. Timothy sat on one end, while Dani lay across it, her head resting on his thigh and her cat curled into her belly.
She ran her finger through its fur as she and Timothy quietly chatted, the man’s arm draped over the top of her waist to keep her close.
There was a peace that radiated around them.
A glow that kept them contained.
Another affirmation that what I’d come to believe was true.
When Dani noticed me standing there, her head popped up from Timothy’s lap. “Oh my God, you’re awake.” She untangled herself from him and the cat, then hopped off the couch and came fumbling toward me.
Then she slowed, her actions pulling up short. “Wait. What are you doing out of bed? How are you even standing?”
A frown twisted her brow, and her tone slipped into disbelief. “And did you shower?”
Appalled, she looked at Pax, clearly asking for an explanation. Or maybe silently demanding that he sweep me into his arms to carry me back to her room.
“I’m fine,” I answered before Pax could say anything.
“You’re fine?” She basically screeched it as she flung a hand at me, her pink hair sticking up all over the place. “You were nearly ki—”
She stopped, as if she couldn’t bear to say it, before her voice turned to a whisper. A fluttering of the residual of her fear. “We nearly lost you last night.”
Stepping forward, I took both of her hands. “And I’m almost completely healed.”
Doubt raced through her expression, so I hurried to speak.
“It’s us, together, Dani. All of us. Pax and I had thought being together as Nols made us safer.
But it’s more than that. You all gave me the strength to end those men last night, and I think you gave me the strength to heal as well.
I think being together gives us all that power. ”
Her pale eyes widened behind her wire-rimmed glasses, and three long seconds passed as she seemed to work toward understanding. Then a stunned puff of air left her as she pressed her fingertips to her lips, awe bleeding out. “Last night, Jill said your heart beat stronger when Pax touched you.”
My nod was shaky. “It’s the key. The key to us. To who we are. And I think that Ambrose twisted it. Used it against us to keep us weak. To defeat us.”
Timothy stood. “So that means we can beat this motherfucker.”
My nod was frantic. “I think we can. We have to.”
But after what happened last night . . .
Horror weaved in with hope.
A violent clashing of doubt and relief.
There were only five men last night, and it had already been close. How many more of them could he send against us? An army? A legion?
And where was he? Why wasn’t he here, trying to take me down himself? He’d been tracking me for weeks. Showing up in random places.
“We have to find him,” I said.
Uncertainty pulled deep into Dani’s brow. “I thought he would come to you?”
Thoughts spun through my mind. “I thought so, too, but . . .”
“But you defeated him when he thought you couldn’t.” Pax’s voice was low, his words speeding darts.
He angled forward to come up to my side, and the four of us were drawn together to create a circle. Hovering close.
The energy shifted. Grew in the intensity that we possessed.
Pax looked between Dani and Timothy before he set his full attention on me.
“He thought he would end you when he dragged you to that other plane when you had been in Faydor. Then he thought he would again behind that grocery store. He was afraid, Aria. You saw that he was afraid—shocked—that your demise wouldn’t be simple. I saw it, too, that afternoon.”
“Is he running?” Dani asked.
“That, or he’s keeping us distracted with all the rest of this bullshit while he’s working toward something that will make him unstoppable.” Spite filled Pax’s voice.
“He is somehow allowing the Kruen to break through the barriers of the otherworld and into this reality . . .” A heave of air pressed out from my lungs as the weight of the consequences fell over me.
“Which means he’s about to take control of this world,” Timothy surmised. “Fully.”
“He told me he would rule it.” I hadn’t understood the fallout of what that’d really meant when he’d declared it. Had never deigned to imagine it might come to this.
I couldn’t even fathom what that would mean for humanity. If the skies were busted apart and Kruen crawled out to run rampant on Earth.
The two worlds colliding.
The one thing I knew for sure was this one wouldn’t last long.
It would be trampled.
Crushed.
Devastation strewn from one end to the other. Complete ruin left in its wake.
“We can’t allow that to happen.” Agitation curled through Pax’s voice as he roughed a hand through his hair, the man itching with the need to hunt. To slay the evil the way he’d always done.
“We won’t,” I asserted, and I reached out and took Dani’s hand, sharing a look with the woman who had been my mentor for so long. My sanity when I’d been so confused as a young adult. Support through all the trauma and fear.
My best friend.
My sister.
She took Timothy’s hand, and I reached out and grabbed Pax’s.
It linked us all like a chain.
And I could swear that, deep inside me, the light flared, and with the way everyone inhaled sharply at the contact, I was sure it did in them, too.
“Together,” I said.
“Together,” they reiterated.
Then surprise rocked out of Dani on a huff, and she cocked her head at me with those pale eyes wide. “Um, not to interrupt this whole pact to save the world that we’re making here, but what the hell is that?”
She cast a pointed look between Pax, me, and the ribbon tied around my left ring finger.
Pax shifted his attention to me, a cross of resolve and affection on his face before he shifted it back to Dani. “Aria and I are getting married.”
Then he squeezed my hand and murmured, “Tonight.”