Chapter 14
“So you’re the reason she’s run off?” Noir’s voice drips with disdain as she perches atop Mackenzie’s desk, meticulously filing her nails.
“Off,” I growl, shoving her out of the way. Her stiletto heels click-clack across the wooden floor as she stumbles, but I don’t care.
My heart slams against my ribs as I yank open her desk drawers, scattering pens, notebooks, and crumpled receipts across the floor like bleeding entrails. My fingers claw at wood, metal, anything that might hide a clue.
I can’t feel her.
I can’t feel her.
Why can’t I fucking feel her? How could she have left without me knowing?
Her scent clings to the air, a mix of mint and dewy sage, but the thread of her soul—my soul—is gone.
The familiar hum of her presence, at the back of my mind, has just…
vanished. I tear the sheets off her bed, shredding them into ribbons, mattress foam bursting free like a dying beast as my fingers dig deep, desperate for any remnant of her.
Her jacket still hangs on the back of her chair. Her phone charger snakes along the floor. But her? Her—it’s as if she doesn’t exist, and I do not know why the thought of that frightens me more than anything I’ve ever known. The thought burns into me so ice cold, my chest constricts.
The campus thrums around me. Every heartbeat, every inhalation, every whispered prayer pulses through the walls. But she is blind to me. A frigid dread seeps into my marrow.
Noir’s laughter slithers in from the doorway. She leans against the frame, lips twisting. “Look at you—tearing this place apart like some jealous lover.”
But I don’t answer. My ribs press onto my lungs as claws unfurl beneath my skin, itching to gouge the walls down to their bones.
I feel every soul on this floor—every murmur, every sigh reverberating through plaster and brick—yet the one thread that matters to me is severed, nothing but an abyss where the constant flicker of her warmth should be.
“Why can’t you feel her, Thanatos?” Noir’s tone grinds my gears. “I know you can feel everyone else. Maybe it’s not distance. Maybe she just doesn’t want you.”
The words dig under my skin.
Doesn’t want me? She doesn’t…want…me…
No.
I wrench my attention outward, casting my senses across the campus, across Terra itself, straining for even a glint of her essence. Nothing but a horizon of emptiness—until, far beyond, my body recoils.
A blast of pure, blinding…repulsion.
It slams into me, a tidal wave of icy denial ripping through my chest, locking my black heart in a vise.
She’s doing this.
I know she is.
She’s exiling me from her mind. Never before has any soul wielded such power against me.
And this fact doesn’t repel me—it consumes me. If she can hide from me, if she can blind me, then she can—no, she will—escape me.
My body coils, muscles taut as steel cables. A predator, beneath flesh and bone, snarls to be unleashed. The very air around me quivers. The veil beneath my feet shimmers, a barrier begging to be ripped apart.
I let out a roar—half anguish, half fury—and tear the veil open like a wounded animal diving through a wall. The world fractures in a burst of raw energy as I plunge into the darkness, relentless, unstoppable, hunting my prey.
When I charge through the veil, I can’t lie—I’M. FUCKING. HEATED!
But I find myself on a quaint block, the full moon shining so brightly it puts the stars to shame. Terra has its beauties, but none so beautiful as she—
Oh, shut up. I can feel the judgment pouring out of you, mortal. And I don’t know what’s worse, your judgment or the fact that she ran away from me.
Does she really believe she could escape me?
Mackenzie’s revulsion curls thick in the air, almost, almost as if it can sense me, warding me off, trying desperately to force me away.
But my hot, blinding rage and constant ringing in my ears force me to stay.
And, every atom of my body fades away. Gently, I lie at the end of her bed, and I wait.
A stream of water abruptly shuts off before she steps back into her room, wiping her dewy, flushed face.
How could someone so beautiful be so vindictive?
She knows what I feel for her, and yet, she runs from me, pushes away everything she knows we are, as if it doesn’t matter—all mortals are the same.
It’s the same thing Monroe did. Although I don’t know why, my whole body is on edge as if I didn’t expect this.
“Miss me?”
Her head lifts, her eyes meeting mine—I can feel the shiver that runs down her spine. I can taste her thoughts as if they’d never left. Her defense melts, and immediately she lets me in. Curious, how the little soul that fought so hard to shield herself from me would give in so easily.
“Wha—” Her throat bobs as she swallows. The towel slips from her finger, bunching into a pile at her feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t think that’s the right question, belle ame.
The question is, why did you think you could escape me?
” Standing so fast I’m not sure she comprehends my movement, I draw closer to her, my thumb brushing her cheek, those pink, pouty lips beckoning to me, begging for me to kiss them.
“Why did you think you could hide yourself from me?”
Her delicate lips part. “I don’t know what you're talking about,” she whispers. I search her eyes for deception, scouring her mind for lies. But all I find is confusion and yearning that matches mine.
What is he doing here? And why the fuck did I miss his face this much?
She doesn’t…know. She doesn’t know that she shielded herself from me.
My fingers trail down her neck, and her eyes flutter shut. This is most definitely not the response of a woman repulsed by me. All my anger melts away as though I hadn’t been out for blood mere moments ago. Letting my hand fall to my side, I watch as her eyes snap open to meet mine again.
“Is it just my face that you missed?”
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“Why did you leave?” My scowl softens, and I can feel every grievance render into one thought—she doesn't want me.
“I—I didn’t…” she breathes with bloodshot eyes rimmed in red as if she’d been crying, and I stand here as she struggles to find her words. “I just needed some time away.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” I chuckle. I can feel a wave of anger bubbling anew. “So, you just disregard me, like what we had means nothing? You know you feel it too.”
“What do you expect from me, Daxton? You killed my friends!” Her voice pitches in the way it does when she is readying herself for a heated debate.
“Yeah, well with friends like those… You don’t need any enemies,” I grit between clenched teeth.
“You were fucking one and best friends with the other, and yet, they both betrayed you for each other. I wouldn’t even go into great detail about what the other two thought of you, which, did they ever think of you?
Luke barely even checked on his own sister, and Stormie…
” I tsk. “Come to think of it, I actually pity her. She just wanted to be loved, but she was so focused on trying to get that love, she barely thought of you at all.”
She scoffs and steps around me. At the dresser, she plucks a hair ornament from a cluttered tower and scrapes her damp hair into a sad excuse for a ponytail, tying it up.
“Did you just come here to read me for filth?” She huffs, turning to give me an exasperated look. “Or did you actually want something… Why are you here?”
“Oh, I see. You already knew that, didn’t you?” I ask, amused. “Which begs the question, why would you mourn for people who didn’t even value you?”
“Because, unlike you, I actually have a fucking heart. I’m not a monster,” she says. “Now, answer my question… Why are you here?”
I’m not going to lie, that cut something deep.
But I pin her with a pointed look, and try to push Noir’s voice out of my head, the one that screams, she doesn’t want you.
“I meant it when I said I would scour every corner of every realm to find you,” I remind her, crossing my arms over my chest. “And I will find you no matter how far you run—you cannot hide from me, Mackenzie.”
“I didn’t run.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why are you here, Kenz?!” My voice creeps higher, my words turning to something more of a growl.
“You mean my home?” She narrows her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “The place that I come to every weekend?”
“You could have at least told me where you were going,” I say in defense.
“Daxton, please.” Her lip curls in something close to disgust. “Not here…just…please, can we do this when I get back?”
Her body pleads for my resignation as I observe her.
The large white shirt she has on smells of him—her now satisfyingly dead boyfriend—clinging to her damp skin as if laying an immortal claim from beyond the grave, and it makes me all the more ready to lose it.
“Fine,” I huff, although my rage is almost blinding.
I crack under her whim, I always will—I don’t know when it became impossible to say ‘no’ to her, but here we are—I would do anything she asked me to.
What the fuck is happening to me?
I am Thanatos, the God of Death—the one that mortals fear—and yet this little soul has me wrapped around her pinky finger like a godsdamn lost puppy.
“I’ll go,” I say, turning away, my tail crammed between my legs, ready to destroy anything that gets in my way on the other side of the veil.
“Wait.” It’s barely a whisper, but I hear it, as if her finger brushes down my spine, and I halt instantly. “What did you mean when you asked if I thought I could”—I hear her gulp—“hide myself from you?”
“Shall I stay then?” I turn to face her bloodshot eyes again, tears that I want to kiss away brimming in them.
“Y-yes,” she whispers, dipping her chin, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “Please.”