Chapter 16 #2
“What’s your problem?” I was nearly shouting by the time I finished that short three-word question.
My chair cut back hard, slamming into the wall behind me. Soren’s hand lost its grip as I stood.
“Why do you have to be such an asshole when you barely even know me?” I asked, fuming and hot all over. “I haven’t done anything to you!”
“Hah!” Adriel snapped. “You freaked out in the Upper Room at the mere sight of the truth, but what if you’re the one who causes all that? Don’t I have a right to be pissed about that, huh?”
“What…?”
My breathing turned ragged. My fists curled tighter. I wouldn’t stand a chance after punching someone built the way Adriel was, wiry muscles toned to swing punches and dodge any rebuttals with ease. My body didn’t seem to register the statistics working against me, though. I almost lunged.
But the movement beside me made me pause.
Soren stood now as well, slow and deliberate. He didn’t raise his voice, but it somehow carried more weight than any of the rest of us had in this conversation.
“Last warning, Adriel.”
Every molecule of air in that room grew to twice its size and stuck to another. Two beats of silence passed.
My anger simmered under something colder now.
Soren was going to kill.
His muscles flexed with malice and murder.
If I knew that, there was no way Adriel was unaware, considering they were supposedly friends.
“She asked,” Adriel said with a shrug and a smug scoff. “Or are we all going to pretend—”
With every word from Adriel’s mouth, Soren stole a step forward until his hand clamped around Adriel’s throat and slammed him against the bay window.
I froze.
Took a step forward.
Then two steps back.
Panic spread through my veins like wildfire.
Adriel wasn’t short, but his legs dangled over the edge of the cushioned bench seat with the height Soren held him at.
“Soren!” Winifred stood again. Her tone was sharp but not frantic, like this wasn’t the first time she’d seen Soren try to murder a friend at the lunch table.
Salah, Zuri, and Veda leapt up, chairs fighting the friction of the wood floors. Salah pulled Zuri behind her, while Veda rushed toward the boys. Her hand clamped onto Soren’s forearm, but he didn’t budge.
Adriel’s face turned a vicious shade of violet. His veins bulged and turned a strange, black hue. Kind of like the shades of black I’d caught stirring in Soren’s eyes when I dared to make eye contact with him.
Soren was going to end Adriel’s life and suck his soul right out of him.
Right here. Right in front of me.
This wasn’t just a grumpy, misunderstood brute. All the judgment I’d cast on him was proper. This guy was a killer. He was going to murder his friend, and I might be next.
I’d fallen into his orbit, and I wouldn’t get out alive.
A whimper escaped me.
My chest tightened. My mouth wouldn’t close. My fingers trembled.
Veda looked between Soren and me. Her voice was barely audible. “You’re scaring her.”
That worked.
It triggered something, pulling Soren back to the edge of sanity.
Soren didn’t look back at me, but I knew he was thinking of me and imagining exactly what I looked like in that moment. I didn't know how I knew it, but I did.
He loosened his grip—but not before one final squeeze strangled a gagging noise out of Adriel.
“Get out,” Soren growled in Adriel’s face.
Adriel coughed, gasped, and didn’t hesitate. He stumbled away into the foyer, with Veda following.
The front door opened. Then silence.
Soren turned back to me.
Shit. He didn’t get his murder fix, and now he’s going to take it out on me.
I managed two backward steps before he caught up.
He didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. He just glowered down at me with the kind of calm that comes from having actually ended a life, probably an innumerable number of times.
Cold. Detached.
He turned his head slightly toward Salah to speak with that same gray tone, “Do not share any more information with her until I say so. She’ll only know what I want her to know when I want her to know it.”
Salah nodded with wide eyes and a furious up-and-down motion of her head.
Then Soren looked to Winifred. “You all are forgetting your place.”
Excuse me?
She didn’t argue. Just. Nodded.
I raised my chin and started in on him with, “Who the hell do you think—”
“You,” his voice sliced through mine, low but commanding, effectively shutting me up. “Come with me.”
A tightness sprang up in my chest.
Soren didn’t wait for my compliance. He grabbed my arm and started walking.
Somehow, my feet obeyed. I trailed after him like a stringed puppet.
He led me through the house, up the stairs, twisting through the halls until we reached the room I’d woken up in that morning.
No one stopped us. No one spoke.
No one saved me.
Once inside, Soren let go of my arm. The release was rough enough to make me stumble backward until my thighs hit the bed. A strangled sound escaped, but I couldn’t open my mouth to yell at him because I was so angry that I couldn’t think straight.
I didn’t even have words, so my teeth wore against my tongue as I tried to come up with a solution to how I was supposed to put up with this monster any longer.
“Sit down,” he said.
If I was a flustered, livid mess, Soren was the exact opposite. He was a still pool of water to my volcanic eruption.
“No!” I shouted back. It was one of those ugly shouts that started the waterworks and gave men the excuse to antagonize you for being too emotional. “I will not sit down! Who the hell do you think you are?!”
The only sound for a long while was my stupid huffing and an embarrassing sniffle that proved I wasn’t getting out of this fight with any dignity.
“I already told you, Eliana. I’m your Guardian. It’s my job to protect y—”
“I don’t want your protection! I want answers.” I stomped my bare foot against the weathered wood, the timid thud mocking me. “Now. Or I’m leaving.”
The corner of Soren’s mouth tilted up in the slightest incline possible.
Was he…smiling? Laughing at me?
“All you need to know right now is that you’re staying here for a few days,” he said without an ounce of humor. “Then I’ll take you to Chapel.”
“You can’t just boss me around. You can’t keep me here. That’s false imprisonment. You can’t control me.”
“I can.”
My breath came out in short, sharp exhalations through my nose. “I want a different Guardian. Who do I go to about that because you’re fired!?”
He tilted his head to the side before shaking it. “Doesn’t work that way, Little Shadow.” Oh, he was definitely laughing at me now. “I choose you, not the other way around.”
I swallowed and licked my lips. “Why?”
“Next time I see you licking your damn lips, I’m biting that tongue.”
My brain had a full-on war with the muscle of my tongue, now twitching against the backs of my teeth as I tried to keep it from slipping out involuntarily. At least that part was going well.
It wasn’t as easy to will away the scraping of my hardened nipples against the T-shirt someone had slipped on me last night.
The relief that surged through me over how thick the cotton top was didn’t quite extinguish the uncomfortable act of pressing my things against each other, especially when Soren’s gaze dipped down as one of my knees slid against the other and forced my hips to cock in an awkwardly obvious tilt.
And if the heat scourging through my neck, cheeks, and ears was as visible as it was palpable, he knew exactly what image was playing in my head.
The thought of his mouth getting anywhere close to mine had almost blinded me to the fact that this monster had kidnapped me and now was effectively imprisoning me. I shook my head.
Biting my tongue off was not a promise of sexual gratification. It was a threat of bloody, painful violence.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I intentionally both softened my voice and hardened my glare.
“Why?” I asked again. At least the strangle of my voice sounded more angry than aroused, whether or not that was my current status. “Why did you choose me?”
Nothing about his expression changed as he took exactly four steps to stand right in front of me.
Everything about mine changed, though. My mouth hung open, but my tongue was so heavy that I didn’t have to worry about it escaping. Even though I knew my eyes were as wide as they could get, my vision was unfocused.
His massive freaking hand found my cheek, ear, and half the back of my head all at once. “Wrong question, Xiao Ying.”
I think I swallowed through my nose. Don’t ask how.
“You’re not ready for the other answers yet.” His hand pulled from my skin, and I nearly followed it. Then one of his cold fingers tapped at the side of my temple, not the side with the implant. “You’re human. You need rest and time to process all of this.”
I sucked in a breath when he stepped back again and gave me some room.
“I’m stronger than you think I am. And all I’m going to do is make up a bunch of stuff in my head to try to fill in the gaps.
Just tell me what Adriel was talking about.
Tell me what that tapestry is supposed to mean.
And the prophecy?” I was pretty proud of how much steadier my voice had grown as I floundered through that plea.
“You’ll learn more about it when you get to Chapel.” He took another step backward. “Stop trying to figure everything out and let someone else take care of you for once in your life.”
The words tumbled out like any other directive he had given up to that point. Still, they rearranged themselves in my head in a way that sent all the blood that had been pooling in the pit of my stomach to surge back toward my chest and the four-chambered organ housed within.
I knew about halfway through my next question that I shouldn’t have started it. I definitely shouldn’t have finished it, even if it was as polite as someone like me was capable of. “Can you please just let Zade know that I’m safe?”
“Say his name again, and I’ll erase his existence.”
I hadn’t seen Soren’s expression while he was choking the life out of Adriel earlier, but I imagined it to be something like how he looked at me then as I spoke about Zade.
My frustrated growl came with my nose scrunched as tight as it could be. “You said you’re supposed to help me, right? It’s your job.”
Soren turned to leave, so I took a step forward and raised my voice.
“You can’t just kidnap me and keep me as a prisoner. Zade is going to be looking for me, and when he finds me, he’s gonna kill you.”
I knew that was another thing I should have never started to say and definitely shouldn’t have finished because, as much as I adored Zade and looked up to him, he couldn’t hold a candle to Soren, regarding lethality.
Yeah, only that.
Soren knew it, too. His hand stopped with the knob of the door half-turned. He only tilted his head enough for me to see his jawline twitch.
“Your boyfriend will be dead the next time you see him.”
I lunged toward him, but he slipped through the door effortlessly. When I reached the knob, it only rattled in my grip.
What the hell? He locked me in!
That was the moment I decided that no matter how much my hormones rebelled, I would no longer be weak and helpless around Soren. He was the enemy just as much as Azazel.
Though he probably wouldn’t be as easy to kill, I would find a way.