Chapter 39 Nico
NICO
My den hadn’t changed.
For over three years I had been gone, and my room had been left untouched. Like some kind of fucked up shrine.
I should have known they wouldn’t touch it. That they’d leave it in hopes I’d come back and slip right back into their lives like nothing had ever fucking happened.
But a lot of fucking shit had happened.
“Are you okay?” Luce asked tentatively from behind me.
“No.” I huffed a laugh, picking up a dusty trinket from the dresser. “I’m not fucking okay. Every demon I’ve been trying to outrun is going to soon come to a head.” I ran my thumb across the knotted wood carving of a wolf on my hand.
Seeing my grandmother was one thing, but seeing my parents—thinking about them sent a shudder through my body. Anger and sadness colliding along with a shit ton of other emotions I still wasn’t ready to confront.
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “I want to go to bed.”
“Okay.”
I looked toward the singular large bed in the center. It wouldn’t be the first time Luce and I had shared a bed, and I typically loved company. I loved being surrounded by others, it was in my nature for fucks sake. But right now, I ached to be alone with my suffering.
I slipped under the covers and rolled onto my side, staring at the portrait of my family hanging above the dresser.
All seven of us had squished together for the portrait.
Our parents kept scolding us throughout as we squirmed and teased one another while we were meant to stay quiet.
The twins couldn’t have been older than seven when we sat for it.
Their matching chestnut curls were tamed for once, their light blue eyes shining with mischief. I wondered where they were now—
No. Every so often, thoughts of my family made their way into my mind. I made sure to banish them quickly. I closed my eyes, but I still saw the portrait.
The image of the happy family we once had been.
I opened my eyes and stared at the portrait, my gaze lingering on my parents. Zienna looked so much like my mother now, with the same light brown hair and matching chocolate eyes. Only Zienna and Bodhi had inherited my mother’s eyes. The rest shared my father’s light blue shade.
The glass frame had been shattered from when I threw it across the room the day before I left.
Someone had been in here since I left. Glass no longer littered the floor, and the portrait was back where it belonged, as were the rest of my belongings. No longer left in disarray in my fit of anger.
“Do you want me to—” The bed dipped next to me as Luce kneeled on the mattress.
“I don’t know how to comfort someone…” She trailed off.
“Do you want me to—hold you?” Her voice lilted at her question.
I could picture the look on her face, her face pinched, her dark brows lowered, and those luscious lips posed in a pout as she tried to puzzle out what to do.
Luce wasn’t the comforting type and I didn’t expect her to be.
“I won’t say no.” Still, I didn’t face her. What I wanted right now was a distraction. If I asked her in this moment, she might let me use her as such.
That kind of comforting, I knew she could handle.
But I was certain Luciana Ambrose didn’t think about fucking me as often as I thought about fucking her.
She saw me as a friend—an annoying friend at that. But I might have been one of her closest friends. Especially after the events of the past few months.
But she was my only friend I thought about fucking on a daily basis.
Shit—an hourly basis.
But this wasn’t the circumstance I wanted her in. Not when I was trying to distract myself from my demons.
If I ever got to fuck Luce, I wanted to be fully myself—I’d wring pleasure out of her so thoroughly she’d be begging me to do it again.
The bed dipped again as Luce lay down. Tentatively, she wrapped an arm around me, pressing her body against my back ever so lightly.
“Is this okay?”
I resisted laying my hand on hers, keeping my hands underneath my head instead.
“It’s perfect, Lucy.”
Screams tore me from my restless sleep.
I would have been grateful for the distraction if it hadn’t been for the sinking feeling in my gut as screams continued to ring out in the distance.
Luce had awoken too, her wide eyes met mine as she leapt from the bed and strapped her weapons to her body.
“What do you think it is?”
“Could be anything in the woods,” I told her as we rushed to the door, my sword thumping against my thigh as the screams continued. My stomach lurched. Even if I had left this pack behind, they were still my pack.
My people.
A fire burned in the center of the village as chaos erupted around it.
Bodies lay on the ground, blood oozing from the gashes covering their bodies.
Wolves emerged from their dens, moving to attend to the fallen.
I doubted any of them would live judging from their puncture wounds and scratches gouging their mutilated forms.
“Astria’s fucking tits,” I swore as the all too familiar snarl of a Dhampir pierced the air.
“They’ve made it all the way out here?” Panic laced Luce’s tone as we took off toward the sounds.
Up until this point, Lennox had only received reports of Dhampirs in the Star and Blood Courts, giving us all some sense of safety.
That sense of safety quickly vanished.
We rounded the corner, coming face to face with the horde of Dhampirs. There had to be close to twenty of them. Bodies littered the ground, their blood staining the grass crimson as others continued to fight back.
“Decapitating them is the best way to kill them!” I shouted out over the fray.
My grandmother’s braid swung as she turned to look at me as my ax cut across a Dhampir’s neck, its head falling to the ground with a thud.
“There’s too many of them.” Luce called out as her blade found home in a Dhampir’s side. “Where are the rest of the wolves?”
“Dead,” my grandmother said, not shifting her attention from her opponent. “We’re short adults in the first place, the majority of our pack is children for the time, and the other adults have traveled with your parents.”
We’d protect the younglings. We had to.
These were my fucking people. The Panateia and the Vanir—their reach wasn’t supposed to be here.
I turned as a Dhampir slashed for me, it’s claws gleaming in the moonlight.
A flash of white light blinded me as my grandmother shifted, emerging as a black wolf, her coat streaked with gray.
A deadly snarl fell from her lips before she ripped into a Dhampir.
Its black blood blending with her own fur as she spat out flesh.
I readied my body to shift, pulling at my magic—it rose to the surface, tingling against my skin.
Luce’s scream pierced the air, causing me to freeze—my transition coming to a halt as my body went cold. I looked over my shoulder as her sword clattered to the ground. She held her bleeding arm to her chest as she glared at the creature.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” I ground out. It had attacked her from behind—the Dhampir she had slain lay at her feet as she stared down the next. There must have been more of those fuckers.
I pierced my sword through the Dhampir in front of me, my sword slicing through its flesh easily. I left it to die as I surged toward Luce.
The Dhampir attacking Lucy swept out again, she ducked, avoiding its deadly claws as I ran toward her.
She kicked out with her leg, sweeping the Dhampir’s legs out from under it.
I paused as I realized what Luce was doing. Magic crept up her arms, like black vines. It grew thicker, like a web coating her skin as she rose to stand.
For fucks sake.
The Dhampir snarled at her, slobber flinging from its fangs before it leaped toward her on all four of its limbs.
“No!” I took off toward her again, stopping as the ground rumbled beneath my feet.
Luce took several measured steps backward, crumbling the ground where she once stood.
The Dhampir shrieked as it fell into the hole, only for them to be hushed as she filled the hole back in with dirt.
“Good one, Lucy.”
“Thanks,” she huffed, turning her attention to the next Dhampir. “Can you douse the remaining Dhampirs in water?” Her eyes glimmered dangerously. “And then I can freeze them.”
“You think you can freeze all of them?”
“Haven’t you learned not to underestimate me by now, wolf boy?”
I threw her a wide smile. “Goddess, I love it when you call me nicknames.”
She rolled her eyes. “Now or never, Nico!” she shouted as two Dhampirs came barreling toward us.
I threw out my magic, my wave of water washed over the forest, momentarily confusing the Dhampirs.
Luce’s magic crackled over the ground, her chest rising as it flowed over the land toward the Dhampirs like vines snaking up a terrace.
I watched Luce as she lost herself to the magic—I knew many of her tells by now. What to look for if she was expelling too much magic.
“Any time now, Lucy,” I told her as the now-soaked Dhampirs regained their focus, charging toward where we stood.
Luce smiled as she closed her fists. I could smell the damp stench of the Ichor magic as it permeated the air, like rotting leaves.
Luce’s body trembled, her chest rising and falling deeply. A bead of blood dripped from her nose.
She was pulling in more than what she had.
Her veins pulsed with the magic running through them, shimmering in the darkness.
“Luce—” Webs of frost sparked out around her feet, coating the ground around her in a thin layer of ice. Air came from her mouth in puffs. I reached for her, she was using too much, pushing herself too far.
She closed her fists, her eyes flying open. The Dhampirs froze in place. Their actions stopping mid-movement as they were captured in perfect stillness.
“Wow.” My grandmother breathed. “I’ve never seen magic so precise.” She ran her fingers over the Dhampir closest to us. Even its eyelashes were frozen in individual strands.
“Are you okay?” I rushed to Luce’s side as she opened her eyes, her body swaying gently. I placed my hand on her back to help steady her.