Chapter 33
Carter
My bed was empty and cold when I woke up. I forced my eyes to open long enough to search for my phone on my bedside table.
Almost noon.
How the fuck did I sleep that long?
I dragged my tired ass to the bathroom and stepped under the warm shower stream. No way was I going to sleep all day and let Dimitri get Lola all to himself. They already snuck out of bed together yesterday morning, and I’d woken up hours after them.
Weren’t we supposed to all share the same amount of time and attention? Why was I always feeling left out? Maybe Kai could answer my question. Well, if the asshole actually felt like it.
I barely took the time to dry myself before I jumped in the first jeans and white T-shirt I could find and barreled down the stairs.
Lola and I needed to have some alone time. And talk. Calmly, and without sex to distract us from the issues at hand.
Issues being that, she kept hiding things, and I struggled to trust her. But I was ready to work on myself…Maybe. If she was ready to talk to me more.
Which I also needed to do.
Dimitri was back and Arc wasn’t. I had to know if Dimitri talked to her about what happened. If what I’ve seen—If it had really happened or if I was somehow becoming insane.
But when I strode into the kitchen, I froze, confused. I spinned on my heels toward the living room; empty. Went back to the Kitchen; Dimitri. Alone. Stirring his coffee while staring at me with amused eyes.
“Can I help you?” he asked, arching a brow, a small smile tugging at his lips.
We’d barely talked the previous day and we’ve never been alone together. Was it weird that I was only slightly weirded out by the fact that, not even two days ago, he was fucking my mate while she had my cock down her throat? It felt both…natural and strange at the same time.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
“What?” I was suddenly pulled back from my internal struggle.
“Sharing.”
“Oh.” Oh.
“It’ll take time since we’re not properly binded to her. The link connecting us all isn’t fully formed like it should. So you might feel awkward the first few times.”
“How do you know I was—”
“You’ve gone redder than Texas during any presidential elections,” he interrupted, shaking his head with a breathy chuckle. “I’m more used to causing your annoyance than embarrassment, so please don’t.”
He paused, looking at me all frozen in the doorway of my kitchen.
“You’re making it weird. Just fucking come in and do what you came here to do.”
My throat bobbed and I stepped inside, walking robotically to a cupboard that hid nothing I wanted.
I opened it anyway.
“Where’s Lola?” I asked, rummaging through canned food and packets of raw pasta. Why hadn’t I gone for the cupboards on the other side? At least it had all the cereal boxes…
“No idea,” he answered, pulling his coffee cup to his lips. “I woke up less than an hour ago and she was already gone. Probably still brooding about being denied more sex and hiding at work.”
“Is she really mad about that?” I asked, deciding it was better to stop embarrassing myself and go to the other side of the room, in search of more time-appropriate food. “She was so exhausted her whole body kept shaking.”
Dimitri shrugged. “It’s a core thing, I think.”
“A…core thing?”
He nodded. “Plus the fact that you guys are still kind of in the frenzy, if you add another of her mates to the mix…you know?”
I stared, confused. “I don’t.”
He blinked slowly a couple times, waiting for me to come to whatever conclusion he was going for.
I didn’t. “She has a huge sex drive. Always has, actually. Even though it doesn’t seem like it since she’s terrified and hostile toward most other Immortal men, she feels comfortable with us—her mates.
” He waited, studying my reaction. Must have noticed my puzzled look because he said, “For fuck’s sakes…
She constantly represses her sexual needs out of fear so she gets needy when she’s surrounded by her mates. It’s an automatic response for her.”
My eyes widened.
“What happened…Will it happen again?”
His eyes took a strange shade as his lips pulled into a smirk. “If you’re lucky. Maybe more if we get more of her mates around her.”
My face fell, thinking about Arc. About what I’ve seen him do to Dimitri. I doubted those two would ever be willing to share…
“What happened, Dimitri?” I asked finally, stopping my useless cupboard searches, facing him on the other side of the island counter.
His shoulders tensed, grip tightening around his small cup.
“We were having such a nice talk, did you really have to ruin it?”
I frowned. “I’ve seen things.” It caught his attention, but his face remained unreadable.
“And I can’t explain it. I can’t explain what happened—why I’ve seen my oldest friend change from a mindful, benevolent person to a ruthless monster.
And I’ve seen what he did. Like I usually do when I end up in Arc’s mind, but this time he had no idea I was there.
He couldn’t hear me or even feel my presence. ”
“How are you even getting into his mind?” Dimitri asked.
“I—” I stopped myself from brushing his question off. Honesty. No more lies in the tie group. “I’m kind of his guardian angel. When I fell, I ended up sharing a connection with him, and I’ve been by his side ever since.”
Dimitri’s bright red eyes were scrutinizing. “What did you see?” he asked, tone clipped.
So I told him. Everything from the moment Nomin and a whole army found them in the desert, to the vague memories I have of him escaping, and the weird mind attack that happened right before he came back.
“It seems like you had a front row seat. I don’t get why you’re asking me what happened,” he drawled, turning his back to me and heading to the sink to wash his cup. “But you did get things right. Nomin is also Lola’s mate. And the Warlock who basically raised Arc, from what I understood.”
“Raised Arc?” It made no sense. Warlock and Witches didn’t live more than a few centuries at most, certainly not millennia.
Dimitri shrugged. “Look, I don’t remember most of the things you saw,” he said, his voice turning darker. “I was in and out of it. And I don’t feel like talking about it for now. Not until Lola gets too impatient and forces me to go back there to get Arc back—which I’m not too eager to do.”
That made me pause. “You didn’t tell her?”
He let out a heavy sigh, dropping the cup in the sink and turning to me with a hard look.
“Of course I didn’t. How do you think she’ll react if she learns one of her mates is actively hurting the other?
She has no soul, Carter. No anchor for us to tie ourselves to.
We might never be the happy binded group you’ve pictured in your wildest angel dreams. Arc and I won’t ever get along, and Nomin is barely more than an empty shell—”
“That’s not true,” I interrupted, shaking my head softly.
His eyes narrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“About Nomin. I don’t think he’s an empty shell. He reached out to me. Not in the most pleasant way, sure, but he did try to contact me.”
Dimitri exhaled a shaky breath and turned back to the sink, hands gripping tightly at the lip before he picked the cup back. “What did he say to you?”
“I—I don’t remember. Not much anyway. He asked me to save you, I think. And by you, I mean you two or maybe other people. He said ‘us’. Then it all became a bit blurry and I heard you.”
He scoffed. “You heard me?”
“Yes. Something about a cage before it started to sound like a violent fight. You arrived back here the next day.” I wish I was able to read and understand the emotions in his eyes.
He was impossible to figure out. “So I don’t think he’s an empty shell.
I think he’s fighting to get free. I think he might be an asset when we go back there. ”
Dimitri stared at me. Was it some sort of surprise?
Confusion? Anger? All of those would make sense.
After all, he’s been held and tortured there.
By both Arc and Nomin. The last thing I expected him to do was to go back and try to get his jailers out, even if his mate begged him to go and “save them.”
But maybe Lola, if she was insistent enough, would convince him.
No matter what had happened, we couldn’t just leave them there. Arc needed to come back and owed us answers.
It was almost 8:00 p.m, and still no signs of Lola. What if she was so upset that she went back to the state she was in when Dimitri and Arc first disappeared?
I doubted Maggie—or whatever their names were—was happy with the idea of Lola crashing in her space again. With Vladimir now living in her old apartment, there were little chances I’d find her over there.
So, I prepared a coffee and took off, bringing my peace offering with me to the Archives.
I kept repeating what I wanted to tell her in my head. We had to clear the air. Get rid of every dumb secret that threatened to make the angry stage longer than it should be. Haven’t we spent enough time angry at each other? Fighting for dumb things? For repressed feelings and untold things?
It was time we both placed all our cards on the table.
I opened the Archives door with a determined smile. We’d get through all this. She—
Wasn’t here.
But Vladimir was, sitting in one of the armchairs while looking at his phone with an annoyed face. He turned his head toward me and his frown deepened.
“Where the Hell is my sister?” he gritted out. “I’ve been waiting here for her all day yesterday and today. Are you keeping her locked up somewhere?”
My confusion increased as I walked toward the small empty desk, looking around the quiet space.
“She was off yesterday,” I said. “But I thought she’d be here today.”
Vladimir lifted both his hands in annoyance, casting glances around himself. “Do you see her anywhere? Have you even told her that I needed to speak with her?”
Right…That.