Chapter 4 Jaxon
It’s everywhere.
My chest heaves, but it’s as if I’m drowning in something thick and suffocating.
A thick metallic scent dances in the air, taunting me. It’s brought me to my knees.
Blood. So much blood.
It seeps into the cream carpet beneath me—the one my mother chose to brighten father’s sorrowful study—cooling against my knees.
It’s everywhere.
I can feel it creeping into every pore, every piece of my soul as if it’s trying to claim me, trying to blacken my already damned soul. I can’t get away from it. I can’t escape it.
“Jaxon.” Nyx’s voice is distant, barely a distorted whisper through the roar in my head. My heartbeat pounds too loudly, crashing in my ear like a thunderstorm.
Strands of hair stick to my forehead, slick with sweat and blood. My mind shattered, hijacked by the brutal truth—I did this. I did this.
“Jaxon, look at me.” He slaps me hard enough that my vision blurs. Pain explodes through me, shock ricocheting down my spine, but it tethers me to reality. Grounds me.
I blink once, then again, and my eyes focus on him—Nyx is there, kneeling in front of me, his face taut with panic as he struggles to pry the cool, slick handle of a blade from my fist. My grip is so tight it hurts, my fingernails cutting crescent moons into my palms. I finally let go.
And the dagger clatters to the wooden floor between us, metal ringing in the silence.
“There’s so much blood.” The words tumble from my lips before I have time to stop them, barely audible. An unchecked chuckle breaks free—cracked, and deranged. “I wonder if our God will take his blood, too.”
“Jaxon!” Nyx snaps, his voice cutting through my insanity, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the puddle spreading across the floor. It’s all over him now, too. “How the hell did this happen? What the fuck did you do?”
Our hands… covered in red.
It reminds me of when we used to finger-paint as kids, smearing colors across the walls. And my father’s ire, though he only ever took it out on Nyx.
The ringing in my ears fades just enough to hear the old wooden doors behind me creak open. "Long live the King.”
The words crawl out from the shadows, slithering around me. They’re heavy. Deliberate. I know exactly what they mean.
Nyx and I turn at the same time to catch a glimpse of Kaios in the doorway, his expression unreadable. He’s…calm. Too calm for the scene in front of him. It makes me wonder what his eyes have seen.
His face is pale, gaze unblinking as he surveys the scene, as if it’s nothing, as if Nyx and I are huddled here playing Clue.
It isn't nothing. It’s everything. I may have changed the course of our lives.
Nyx grabs my face, trying to jerk my attention back to him. His fingers dig into my skin, his voice wild with desperation. "Jaxon, get up! I can fix this, but you need to get the fuck up. Now!”
But I can’t move. I’m stuck, frozen by the weight of what I’ve done, the choking sounds he made as he died echoing in my mind.
The blood drying on my chest, sticking to my skin—it’s mine. It’s Kaios’. It’s His.
I killed him.
My eyes never leave Kaios, searching for something in his expression. Does he see the monster I’ve become? Does he accept this like Nyx? Or will he run?
“There’s so much blood,” I whisper again, my voice hollow, haunted.
Tears burn as they carve a hot path through the blood caked on my cheek.
“There’s so much fucking blood.”
Drenched in cold sweat, heart slamming against my ribs as if it’s trying to escape, I jolt awake. For a second, I can still smell the vivid nightmare, even as my vision focuses on the ceiling.
My chest is tight, and the metallic taste of blood still lingers where I bit down on my tongue.
Fuck.
The room is dark, except for an alarm clock, Diane—my colleague, and sometimes more...more than I ever bargained for—swears by. The damn thing constantly burns ambient light. It sits on my nightstand—glowing like the fucking surface of the sun—blazing right into my eyes.
I squint against the sharp, white light, pulse still racing from the vivid scenes in my mind.
My phone buzzes loudly beside me, vibrating across the nightstand, demanding my attention. I fumble for it, my body still half-tangled in the nightmare I just clawed my way out of.
I drag my gaze to the alarm clock. 3:33. The thing is sworn to “improve my sleep cycle,” but feels more like a flashlight to the face. At 3 a.m., it’s nothing more than another annoyance.
“Is it the team?” Diane asks groggily. She brushes her hand over my chest as she tosses her leg over me. “Is something wrong?”
We only just got back from Germany, where an event for tech tycoon Friedrich Zimmerman proved more difficult than we had planned.
Black tie event and all, his online banking system was still hacked as a distraction to assassinate him and kidnap his twelve-year-old daughter.
We had almost lost her. Only my team will ever know, but when we found the girl, battered and bruised, it was a fluke.
Sheer instinct made Cade—one of our specialists—re-check the delivery vans.
He had noticed something off about a license plate on one of them, a company logo that was too faded.
He noted that the event was only registered to have nine vans from that particular company, even though ten had checked in at the gate.
If nothing else, my team is thorough, running every detail down to the last champagne bottle.
But this we could easily have missed. Caught up in the commotion of guns going off and droves of people screaming and trying to take off, it was a minor thing.
But he found her, pressed under a uniformed man fighting like hell to get away.
She was covered in his blood when Cade brought her back, and I didn’t have to ask what went down. I would have done the same thing.
“No, go back to sleep,” I tell Diane, not bothering to look at her as I pull myself up from under her. We both know why we’re here—this isn’t about intimacy. It’s about burning off the pressure after missions that gets under your skin, the kind that leaves you raw.
Maximilien Blaine’s name flashes across the display of my phone screen. With Max, I know the conversation will be at least an hour deep, and even though I don’t feel up to talking, I don’t think twice before answering.
Any time. Any place. Anywhere.
It’s the vow we made our freshman year, two eighteen-year-olds from the same nightmare. Our friendship was inevitable, but we’d forged our bond through pain.
“Yeah?” My voice is rough, still hoarse, the mental images clinging to me like unshakeable plague.
“Jaxon.” Max sounds troubled, no small talk, straight to the point. “I need you.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, scrubbing my hand down my face, trying to shove the remnants of my nightmare to the back of my mind.
Max only calls like this when shit’s hit the fan. And right now? I don’t need another mess. But he’s like my brother, so when he calls, I’m always there. No questions asked.
“What’s going on?” I try to sound alert, but it’s a half-hearted attempt at best.
Diane shifts beside me, her ass brushing against my hip as she repositions herself in her sleep. My mind flickers back to last night, to her body tangled with mine, but the thought fades as Max’s words pull me back to reality.
“You remember—”
“Hold up, give me a second,” I cut him off, slipping out of bed. I yank on my boxers, shoving wireless earphones into my ear to keep from waking Diane. She stirs again, but she still doesn’t wake. I grab my glasses off the nightstand and shove them onto the bridge of my nose.
Silently, I slip out, phone in hand, and close the door behind me with a soft click.
“I’m listening. Go ahead,” I say, padding down the hallway. The penthouse is quiet, the open layout making everything seem even more empty in the early morning stillness.
“I was saying… You remember my sister, Naomi?”
We hadn’t talked about her in years, other than in passing conversation, but it instantly stirs something in me. A memory flickers, uninvited.
Max’s kid sister. Back when we were younger, she had this way about her—playful, sweet, the type to pull ridiculous pranks, like dyeing Max’s wardrobe pink. He’d lose his shit but could never stay mad at her for long.
By the time we graduated, the little girl with the paint-splattered backpack had transformed into something ethereal. She’s something else entirely—an heiress, polished and poised. The kind of woman who had guys doing double takes the second she walked by.
I remember the last time I saw her. Graduation day. She showed up to see Max, wearing this tight pink dress, barely hidden by a cream trench coat. I’d caught just a glimpse of her through the crowd, but it was enough to leave a permanent mark.
And that night, lying in bed, I’d thought about her. About those bright eyes that set fire to my soul, about those curves, the way the color of the dress accentuated her beautiful, deep skin. The way her thick raven curls bounced as she laughed and hugged Max.
She was a sight to behold, a force; she had the kind of beauty that was timeless, strikingly so.
And I’ve been fucked since, haunted by thoughts of what she smelled like, tasted like…
I shake my head, forcing those thoughts down, packing them away in that part of my brain where they belong—buried. Unseen.
Clearing my throat, I grip the phone tighter. “Yeah, I remember her. She doing alright?”
But even as I say the words, the images of her linger, teasing the edges of my mind with memories I should’ve forgotten.