Chapter 36
Wyatt
“What do you mean, Sweetheart?” I ask gently cupping Milo’s face. Tacita, on the other side of him, freezes.
The nightmare Milo was having was the worst I’ve seen.
I know he has them, can twitch a little in his sleep whenever they plague him.
Sometimes his breathing gets uneven. But this…
this was something else. He’d woke both of us up with screaming.
It sounded like he was being tortured as his hands gripped his hair so tightly I feared he was going to rip it straight out.
“I’m sorry.” It comes out on a choked sob, but I’m surprised he’s talking at all.
“Milo.” Tacita moves in a flash, straddling Milo, pushing me out the way with her thigh. Her hands grip his pecs as she glowers down at him, pinning him with an icy glare I haven’t seen her ever use towards him. “I need you to tell me right now what you meant by that.”
Milo tries to talk but it comes out as garbled, so he pulls his hands up between them and starts signing. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop them.”
“Yes, okay,” Tacita snaps. “Skip to the how and when.”
“Hey, don’t speak to him like that.” I knock her shoulder with my palm. She bats me away without taking her eyes off Milo as he starts signing again.
“They’re in my head. They force me to show them things.”
“What things?” Tacita demands. I’m growing more confused by the second, what does he mean? Does he hear voices? Voices like the Angels? Milo can’t be working for the Angels, not like Cameron was. It was just a nightmare, right?
“The facility, the games.” Milo pauses as he struggles to take an inhale, his breathing ragged and like his lungs are ceasing to function. “You.”
Tacita sits up, looking to the ceiling like she’s looking for answers. She runs a hand across her forehead and her jaw grinds as she thinks.
“What the fuck is going on?” I ask, wanting one of them to fill me in.
“What’s going on is that our boyfriend is a spy for the fucking Angels of the Heaven plane,” Tacita says, hurt clear in her voice. She launches off the bed and paces towards the exit. Turning before she reaches it, both her fists hit the wardrobe door hard enough to have the wood splitting.
Milo shoots away from her, curling his legs up and moving into the corner of the bed.
“But Milo hasn’t been killing anyone. That was Cameron.
Cameron tried to kill Milo, surely if they’re both working for the Angels, he wouldn’t have done that,” I say, far more calmly than I feel.
With both of them clearly losing their composure, I feel the need to be the anchor to pull them back together.
Tacita puts her back to the door and leans against it, her flash of anger deflating as she looks to Milo on the bed. “Cameron didn’t know who the second spy was. I think he assumed it was me, or maybe you. He tried to accuse us both when Garrick questioned him.”
“But Milo isn’t killing anyone.”
“No, I think Cameron did that on his own. The Angels simply need a way in, enough information to be able to create a portal to the right location. Then they can come here themselves and destroy everything.”
“So, they’re using Milo?” I say, refusing to believe he would willingly betray our girl. “This is against your will, right?” I swing round to aim the question at him. He’s watching us intently from his hiding place wrapped in the bedding.
“I didn’t want to,” he manages to whisper.
Looking back at Tacita, her jaw clenches once more. My heart thumps in my chest, but I don’t feel like my blood is being pushed round my body, it feels like it’s being pumped out into my chest cavity instead.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.
“I thought I’d shoved them out. I haven’t felt them for weeks. Then Cameron happened.” He means how we watched him being tortured and sentenced. Milo’s fear that day was over him receiving the same fate. We’d assumed it was from being in the same vicinity again as that prick.
“We need to go to Garrick,” Tacita says. Milo shrinks back again, fresh fear in his eyes.
“No, he’ll hand him over to Hades,” I say sternly, feeling scared as my mind plays out how this could go down.
“I work for Hades too, in case you’ve forgotten,” Tacita snaps.
“Are you going to hand him over?” I say, my heart stopping as it takes her an eternity to answer.
“No.” I exhale in relief. “Not yet.”
My dragon roars beneath my skin. In a second, my world explodes and I can’t stop it, can’t halt the level of betrayal I feel towards the woman I thought was my everything.
I’d kept myself between them, not choosing sides, but now I’m flying back to the bed, and tucking Milo against my side.
“You can’t take him.” I give her a warning growl.
She’s not looking at my reaction though. No. Her gaze is locked with Milo and he’s staring straight back into her liquid amber eyes.
“Do you trust me?” she asks.
To my horror, he nods.
Tacita moves back to the bed, folding her legs up, she kneels in front of us both. “Do you trust me, Wyatt?”
Up until about five seconds ago, I thought I did.
I thought I loved her. I’d dealt with the secrets she’d kept and the lies by omission.
I understood those. I didn’t understand how this was anything other than her picking the side that isn’t us.
Maybe this is what demons are truly like.
“Not if you’re going to get his soul landed in Tartarus. ”
“I’m not going to do that!” she replies.
“But you just said you’d hand him over to Hades.”
“And you quickly jumped to assuming I was doing so to get him punished?”
“Cameron–”
“Cameron was a fucking bastard. He was murdering others for his own entertainment. Spy or not, he disobeyed the rules. Hades puts the no killing command in place to see which of you can control the urge to take a life. It ensures none of the contestants are out of control with that urge.”
“But Milo is–”
“Milo is a pawn in the Angels games. We don’t understand the telepathy they’re using but if Milo says it’s something he is not willingly partaking in, then I believe him. And so will Hades. I will need to handle it carefully, but I can handle it. As long as you trust me.”
Staring at her, I feel Milo’s heat against my side, his naked chest against mine. I don’t want to lose either of them. But despite the fear vibrating in my veins, my heart thumps harder, reminding me that I love this woman in front of me.
I never thought I’d have this, want this.
Partners that I am willing to fight for with every atom of my being.
I guess we’ve been living in some sort of bubble of bliss–as much as you can in a recruitment process that tries to kill you–and now we are being tested to see if our new love can survive.
It’s time to put my words into action, and fight for them, fight for us.
“I trust you.” Voicing the words already feels like winning against my own internal fear. My dragon purrs in agreement. “I love you,” I add on with conviction
“Good.” Tacita rolls her eyes, but lays a quick kiss to my lips, Milo’s as well. “Now, we’ve wasted enough time, we need to get to Garrick because if the Angels arrive, we need his Officers to be ready.”