Chapter 29
Mason
Dakota shouldn’t have been able to smell the scent coming off me, and the fact that she could…
it freaked me out a little bit. Kapnos. It was a pheromone for angels, and it was related to arousal level.
Though the scent was faintly there all the time, the more turned the angel got, the stronger it’d smell.
There was a biological reason for it, not that I ever cared about its actual purpose. In Heaven, the smell was more muted, and pretty much the same for everyone. It changed a bit when I fell to Earth, got stronger maybe.
It was all related to how difficult it was for angels to procreate.
Conceiving an angel child wasn’t easy. So, my kapnos signaled to female angels that I was ready to fuck, and put them in the mood too.
It felt so unnecessary and more of a hindrance than anything because I didn’t want kids, and thus didn’t care about female angels smelling when I was ready to try and make one.
I also didn’t interact with angels hardly ever now that I was out of Heaven. So there were no angels needing to smell my kapnos to get horny. And humans supposedly couldn’t smell it. I imagined it would make people more suspicious of us.
But here was Dakota, apparently not only able to smell it, but to also be affected by it?
Nothing about her felt like a coincidence.
She was made to crash into my life, just like I was made to crash into hers. An unavoidable collision.
Sometimes I wondered what would’ve happened if she hadn’t gone into the ocean after me on the first day, if she’d just stayed on the beach, watching the waves. Somehow, I felt like it wouldn’t have mattered. We were destined for this.
Even if she’d run the other way, the tide would’ve dragged her back to me. She could live a thousand lives and every single one of them would’ve ended up in my hands. Her soul was tied to mine.
I’d felt it in the back of my mind, before I ever met her.
I shifted my car into park, staring out the windshield at Blackpine’s gloomy campus through the pine trees lining the small parking lot.
It was mostly private because of the trees, and not a single other car was in the lot.
I turned off the car and climbed out, locking it as I walked away, cutting through the grass to get to the sidewalk.
I had shared Dakota’s location with me from her phone while she was sleeping, and she either hadn’t noticed yet, or she somehow didn’t care, because I still had access to it now. Based on the location of the blue dot on my screen, I could tell she was in some class building across campus.
She’d probably be pissed at me for essentially stalking her, but I could deal with anger more than I could deal with distance.
As I walked past a different building than the one Dakota was in right now, a tall man exited the doors. Dark blond hair, broad shoulders, strong jaw. The most attractive man I’d seen in my entire life. He noticed me the second I noticed him.
Everything slowed.
The muscle in my chest kicked harder.
I forgot how to breathe.
Fuck, I didn’t even know how many years it’d been since I’d seen him at this point. And it still didn’t matter.
There wasn’t a length of time that’d ever erase him from my mind.
Every single detail, every goddamn inch of him, lived in my brain.
Micah Killshaw was etched deep into my skull, a stain on my soul that I couldn’t scrub out, no matter how hard I tried.
I hated him just as much as I had on the day he’d left me.
His eyes pinned me to the spot, gray-blue with that dark ring around his iris, his jaw tightening.
My nostrils flared, blood rushing to my cock.
If I was farther from him, I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged him, but he was standing not three feet from me, looking at me like he wished I was anyone else.
I allowed my gaze to drift down his body, once, for just an instant, my eyes skimming his sculpted chest, his strong thighs. I felt that quick glance everywhere.
“Mason,” he greeted, toneless, his voice aching somewhere deep in my chest.
“Micah.” His name tasted like burning obsession in my mouth, like memories of heat and sweat and darkness, like years of pure fucking agony.
To think there used to be a time when everything didn’t hurt like this.
When I used to wake up naked next to him and like it.
When he couldn’t keep his hands off me, and I couldn’t keep my hands off him, and violence and sex were the same thing for us, an inextricable knot.
When he used to know me better than anyone.
Now, I couldn’t think of a person I hated more.
“You’ve changed,” I commented, a slight edge in my voice. He hadn’t changed physically, but I knew he had more degrees now, knew he was teaching classes here, knew he had his own lab.
“You haven’t.”
The words hit right where he’d intended them to, but I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t give him that satisfaction.
If he knew me even half as well as he used to, he was already of aware of how he’d just cut me. He knew every whispered, angry confession, every time I’d ripped out my own heart, trying to be something better for him.
I held his stare for another minute, unfaltering, then I walked around him, not sparing a backwards glance.
Evil. Pure fucking evil.
My chest was tight, a sick angry feeling twisting in my gut.
You haven’t. His words reverberated around my head, reminding me of all my worst fears, reminding me I was exactly the same person I’d been at the end.
I fucking know. I’m incapable of change.
I continued towards Dakota’s class building, a knot in my throat, a spiral tugging at my brain.
I shouldn’t have said anything to him. Shouldn’t have acknowledged him at all.
Shit.
Seeing Micah was throwing me severely off-balance—more than I even thought it would.
Though I’d honestly thought I would never see him again, not before I inevitably killed myself.
I tried feverishly to shove all my feelings about it to the back of my mind, knowing he could make me break again if I let him.
The last time I’d seen him was with my own bleeding heart in my hands and his back to me as he walked away.
I can’t think about this.
I can’t.
I wanted to believe Dakota didn’t have a class with him, that he didn’t know her name, that he’d never interacted with her, but I had a sinking feeling that what I wanted didn’t matter here.
My hands flexed and clenched into fists, the muscles in my back tightening around my scars. Wind drifted across the grass in cool bursts, and I tried to focus on inhaling as much of it as I could, trying to tamp down my anger.
He couldn’t understand her like I did.
Fuck.
Stop.
I shouldn’t be here now; it wasn’t safe.
Fractures threatened to split open in my mind, electricity I couldn’t control building in my veins.
It hurt, like razor blades fighting to break free of my skin.
But as long as I kept breathing, as long as I didn’t slip up and give in to my fury, I’d be okay.
I wouldn’t lose myself to the darkness constantly chasing me, always pulling me, threatening to shred me into a million pieces. Bitterness claimed my thoughts, pure fiery hatred of my aspect.
Nobody understood what it was like to live like this.
Nobody—except maybe Micah.
But he didn’t care anymore.
Neon deprivation was a drug, one I always craved.
My nature made it that way, made me want it this badly. I’d been born unstable and uncontrollable, and I’d die that way too. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Some angels theorized that Thrausians were never meant to be created, that they’d been born of a mistake, a shard of pure recklessness growing wings, threading itself with ichor-laced veins, taking flight like a fear-eating storm.
I believed those theories, because I wasn’t natural.
Nothing on Earth was meant to be formed out of the instability I’d been formed out of.
It was why I’d needed him so badly. Micah was the embodiment of control. He was built for it. Built to handle a force like me.
But I’d taken it too far, gone beyond anything he was capable of controlling, pushed him too hard, dragged him down with me. It wasn’t like I didn’t try to be better—I did. I just couldn’t be better.
I’d always be like this. Explosive, electric, violent, unstable, reckless.
Drowning everyone and everything I could get my hands on.
Pulling them down into the absolute darkness I couldn’t even navigate myself, despite it being a part of me. Nobody could survive that.
Looking down at my phone, I could see that I’d arrived at the building Dakota was still inside.
I didn’t know exactly what door she’d come out of, but I took my chances at the one that appeared to be the front door.
Not wanting to be consumed by jealousy and anger when she exited, I shut my eyes, leaning back against the stone exterior wall, and breathed.
She didn’t know him.
She was still mine.
She wouldn’t leave me.
In my mind, I let myself use her face as my anchoring point, something to focus on when the instability became too much.
It felt different than letting Micah use his Sigeian powers on me, but I liked it.
Maybe I couldn’t pull as hard on her as I used to pull on him, but she was always there, in my thoughts.
And it was nice to have anything to pull on again; I’d been without him for so many years at this point, alone and clawing desperately to free myself from the chains of my own mind whenever they tried to kill me again.
The memory of his face a few minutes ago flashed bright in my head, a muscle in my jaw tightening with the sharpness of it.
I almost couldn’t believe that he was still real, that I’d just heard his voice again.
My hands shook.
I rolled my neck to either side, working out some tension.
But the pit of need and anger and obsession in my stomach remained. Eating at me.
Think about Dakota, not him.
I knew I should go home now, shouldn’t be here waiting for her. It was dangerous. I was dangerous. My thoughts were a chaotic wreck, ready to stab and slice and cut, disjointed and splintered. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, hating how poorly I was dealing with this.
Forcing my attention back to thoughts of the gorgeous, brave, broken girl in the building I stood outside, some level of control managed to return to me.
She’s mine.
I won’t let her go.