Chapter 16 Aurora #2
“What in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you lot?” he mutters, brushing them off his arms with a rough flick of his fingers.
Okay, sure. That’s … normal. Totally fine. Definitely not alarming at all.
Ezra and Louie exchange a look. It’s quick, but not quick enough.
What the hell are they not saying?
Thankfully, the pain from my bruised neck snaps me back to reality.
Louie is a fucking dog. She can’t hide anything from me. And shadows aren’t sentient.
Christ, can the trauma just give me a few minutes of normalcy before it gnaws away at what’s left of my sanity?
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, dragging my eyes to Ezra.
The man and the dog almost sigh in unison while the hairline cracks in my reality cut their way through my psyche.
“Aurora, we don’t have much time; otherwise, we would have been more careful about revealing the truth to you.”
“Wait, we?”
Ezra’s the only one here, as far as I can tell. Maybe he’s talking about the woman?
Ezra runs a hand through his dark hair, looking frustrated. His eyes shift to Louie, who is alert and staring at me, frozen in place.
“Yes,” Ezra says. “We. Me … and Louie.”
His grey eyes never leave mine as he waits for my response.
“Okay, so … I’ve completely lost my mind, right? Or maybe I’m still unconscious and this is a dream. Wait! Did I die?”
But then the woman’s voice from earlier leaves the lips of my 110-pound mutt.
“Aurora, I’m so sorry, but Ezra is right. We don’t have time to ease you into some very difficult truths,” Louie fucking says to me.
“Deep breaths, Aurora. There’s no way the hottest man you’ve ever seen is sitting in your living room after saving you from a murderer. No way your dog just spoke. You’ve finally snapped. Trauma response bullshit!”
My hands won’t stop shaking, the tremors reverberating through my chest like something’s trying to crack it open from the inside.
I lock my gaze on my trembling fingers. Anything to stay tethered. Anything to stop myself from floating away.
“I remember adopting her,” I whisper. “I picked her out. She was so tiny. I’m with her every day. She sleeps in my bed. Dogs don’t
just … talk.”
“Actually, Aurora, I’ve been with you since you were born. Because of what … who … you are, you require protection. So, they assigned me to keep you safe, to be your companion. Your mother—”
Ezra cuts Louie off with a sharp glance and a soft growl.
“What about my mother?” I try to raise my voice, but it scrapes out weak and broken.
I can’t believe I’m talking to a fucking dog. Louie looks at Ezra, who nods. I’m not surprised the domineering control freak is in charge here.
“Well, your mother, she didn’t want you to have anything to do with magic or creatures or anyone that might put you in harm’s way.
She hid who you really are from everyone, including you.
Ellie couldn’t get rid of me. The being who assigned me to you is …
well … extremely powerful. So, your mum hired a wrakh, er, ‘witch’ is what you humans call them, I guess, to put a tiny memory reset spell on you.
I think, anyway …” Louie finishes with her head hanging low in shame.
I’m not sure what to believe. But at this point, it can’t hurt to lean into the insanity—whether this is reality, trauma-induced psychosis, or a dream.
I slide off the couch with a soft grunt, sinking onto the floor in front of her.
If Louie has spent the last twenty-seven years protecting me, then I can trust her.
“It’s okay, Louie.” I pause, then say it again, softer this time. “Lou.”
The name still feels like her. Still sounds right.
Even if the rest of the world feels like a lie.
“You must feel terrible right now, but I don’t blame you. If what you’re saying is true, you’ve kept me safe all this time. I love you so much. I heard you and Ezra talking about your hellfire and your memory. I’m sorry if my mother put a spell on you, too.”
With a fair amount of hesitation, I reach out to pet her, then pull my hand back.
“Heh. I don’t know if it’s okay to pet you anymore because, ya know, we can talk now.”
Louie leans into my shoulder and curls up by my side.
“It’s okay, Aurora. You can still pet me and treat me just like you always have. I’m technically still a dog.”
Louie’s voice is quiet, while her eyes stay glued to the god sitting in my shabby, overstuffed chair.
Idly stroking Louie’s fur, I glance at Ezra.
He’s different. I know that now; the shadows alone told me as much.
But do I want to know just how different?
“Ezra, what are you? Are you from the same place as Lou?” I swallow hard, my gaze flicking to the twitching shadows still clinging to my ankles.
“I saw your … shadows the other night. And, uh, kinda hard to miss the ones trying to fuse themselves to my hip.” My voice cracks.
“I know you’re not human. Is the pull I feel toward you part of that? ”
A tremor moves through his shadows, shifting like a restless tide at my words, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
Where the hell do I fit between the hellhound and this dark, shadowed man?
I’m still pissed about what he did, but he also saved my life, so I can grant him a small amount of grace until he inevitably fucks it up again.
“I don’t know what I am, Aurora. No name exists for me—or for what came before.
I predate every god, every monster, every thing that crawled out of the dark.
I’m not made of flesh. I’m made of shadow.
Of stardust. Of something older than time.
I can move through walls. Vanish into places light can’t reach.
I made the form you’re looking at myself.
Something that could pass as human. I can become animals—creatures that don’t mind being borrowed.
But I can’t wear other people. Souls weren’t built to be shared.
They scream when you try. Like you’re pulling the skin off the universe. ”
He pauses here. It’s not dramatic. Just … tired. “But that doesn’t make me knowable. It just makes me dangerous.”
As if proving his point, a shadow slinks toward me, barely brushing my ankle before snapping back. Ezra watches it retreat. Something unreadable flickers in his expression before turning those stormy grey eyes toward me.
“The pull you feel, I feel it too. I can’t … ignore it, Aurora. After we … Well, after you toured the shop, I could feel you calling to me from miles away. I could find you anywhere, little lupine. No distance could keep me from you. I would do anything to satisfy that pull.”
Ezra’s gaze turns ravenous, and despite everything, heat unfurls deep and hot in my stomach. The shadows stir, reacting to the slow, stupid thrum under my skin.
Louie huffs with annoyance. “Oi, I’m not gonna sit here and watch you two eye-fuck each other. Ezra! Fucking focus on what we need to do first. Jesus Christ.”
Ezra’s eyes darken, something dangerous flickering beneath.
A tendril of darkness slithers toward Louie’s paws, just a whisper of a threat. When she growls, it recoils with a steady, smug slither, like an inky little predator biding its time.
“Easy, little pup. Wouldn’t want you sent back to Hell so soon, would we?” Although Ezra’s voice is gentle, the threat is still there, lurking behind those soft words.
“Whatever, you old twat,” Louie mutters, curling up at my side as if she didn’t just call an ancient shadow-god an asshole.
My head swivels painfully back and forth while Ezra and Louie trade jabs.
Why does it feel like they already know each other?
“Yes, well, thank you, Louie. Elegant as always,” Ezra says with a snarl.
When his focus returns to me, his eyes soften, and his body relaxes. His intense stare is oddly comforting, like nothing can touch me while he’s watching over me.
Huh. At least Ezra’s behavior makes more sense now. Living that long would certainly inflate anyone’s ego.
Ezra slides out of my reading chair and settles on the floor beside me. He carefully grasps my free hand while I keep the other buried in Louie’s fur.
I flinch at the contact, and when his face falls, my chest tightens.
But being this close to him again, it drags me back to the bookshop. The way his lips claimed mine, how his fingers curled into my hair, how his thumb …
Heat curls low in my stomach, and I hate how much I don’t hate it.
It feels fucked up to want that kind of touch after Jameson … after everything.
But Ezra made me feel wanted. He made me feel powerful. Like I could be something more.
I’d rather hold onto that than drown in what Jameson left behind.
“Darling, you are everything.” Ezra’s gaze pierces through me as his lips skim the back of my hand. A shadow lingers at my wrist, flicking against my pulse, refusing to let go. “You are myth made flesh. Hellfire come to Earth. A force beyond comprehension.”
His fingers tighten, just slightly. “You are a Daughter of the Morning Star.”
Um, what? Just gonna go ahead and add that to the “what the actual fuck” list.
“Daughter of the Morning Star? I don’t—”
Ezra gently interrupts me, predicting my next question.
“As in Lucifer Morningstar, Aurora.”
My eyes go so wide I’m afraid they’ll fall out of the sockets just before I burst into laughter.
“Christ, Jameson must have really fucked me up if I’m dreaming that I’m Lucifer’s daughter. I wonder if I can wake myself up.”
I pinch my arm to see if I can get the hell out of this fucked up dream, but Ezra’s hands frame my face, tilting it up. Not rough, not forceful, just … unshakable.
“Aurora,” he says, his voice deep and commanding, pulling me back from the edge, “listen to me.”
It’s not that I go numb. It’s that I feel fucking everything—every breath, every heartbeat, every nerve screaming like I’m being skinned alive from the inside out.
Apparently, there’s only so much biblical fuckery a girl can take before her nervous system starts acting like an animal that’s just realized it’s trapped in a human suit.