CHAPTER ONE
REAVER
“Hey, are you even listening to me?” Asher’s voice pulls me out of my daydream or perhaps day-nightmare. Is there even such a thing? I don’t fucking know. All I do know is that every time I let my mind wander, it goes back to that one day… the day that Pestilence helped free me.
It’s been hundreds of years since the day I won my freedom in the fighting pits of The Firehouse. And every day since, I’ve been waiting for her to call in the debt I owe her. No favor from Pestilence ever goes unpaid, so my life is nothing more than a waiting game.
I’ve been back here for a few months, trying my best to fit in.
But the reality of it is, I never will. I don’t understand the need to hide and skulk in the darkness.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I know that Asher and the rest of the fallen Blood Angels need to dwell in the shadows or die in the sunlight.
But after spending the last year in a world where non-humans can walk free, here seems underwhelming, even in the relative security of The Black Door.
“Earth to Reaver!” Ash yells from behind the bar. “Where the fuck are you? Have you heard anything I’ve said for the last ten minutes?” Asher criticizes like only a brother could.
I still can’t get used to calling him Asher, or worse, Acheron, the name he chose after his fall from grace for killing me, which clearly was a failure.
“Yeah, of course,” I lie, because I haven’t heard anything he’s said since I got here.
“You need me to grab a few cases from downstairs. I heard you,” I mumble as I turn to make my way down to the basement and retrieve alcohol for the human patrons who will crowd the bar from sunup till sundown since that’s the only task I seem to be suitable for here.
“Fucking hell, Reav,” Ash scoffs as he yanks at my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “You weren’t even listening. I said I want you to be a partner in The Black Door Clubs. Cain has his hands full with Kat and their brood, and Sloane wants me to spend more time with her and the baby.”
I let out a low chuckle at his audacity.
“And what, I have nothing tying me down? Is that it?” I retort, more anger boiling up inside me than the situation probably warrants.
But I can’t seem to push it down as I had for so long.
I yank my arm from his grip. “I’ll go grab the beer. We’re probably low anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!” he yells after me. “This conversation isn’t over,” he continues as I round the corner and head to the stairs.
I feel as if my life here has little to no meaning.
At least where I was, I could be my own man and not live in the shadow of the great Asher and his band of Blood Angels.
He says he’s forgiven me for trying to kill him and almost killing Sloane, something I regret more than anything.
But I still feel like I’m sitting on a ticking time bomb, waiting for it to explode and kill me.
The strange portal that allows me to walk between two realities is still open, although I haven’t been back since I brought everyone in Timber Cove the news of Cain and Kat’s litter of half wolf, half demon babies. You wouldn’t think they would be as cute as they are, but man, they are adorable.
I have wanted so much to make this place my home, and Ash has made it clear that I am more than welcome.
Yet no matter how much I try to forget the life I was leading, there is always something pulling me back.
There, I wasn’t just Reaver the damaged or Asher’s crazy brother.
I was me. For the first time in centuries, nothing but who I am defined me.
Or, at the very least, I was beginning to figure out who I am.
It’s impossible to know where I fit anymore.
I’m not a fallen Archangel—Themis made damn sure of that. Yet I can’t go back to what I was a thousand years ago. That Reaver no longer exists either. The decorated warrior Reaver died on the battlefield that day.
“What are you doing?” Ash’s voice brings me once again out of my self-induced trance. “You’ve been down here for a fucking hour. It’s nearly dawn.”
“What?” I say, looking around. I’m still standing in the same spot as I was when I came down here a few minutes ago, or at least what I thought was a few minutes ago. “That’s not possible,” I reply, because it’s not. There is no way I was standing in front of a stack of beer for an hour, lamenting.
I watch as a look of concern mars Ash’s face. “You feeling okay?” he asks, his voice laden with something akin to sympathy. I scoff at the absurdity of him pitying me after all that I’ve done to not only him, but also his family.
Without looking, I grab a case of beer and shove it into his arms. “I’m fine.
Never fucking better,” I mutter before snatching another case and heading back upstairs.
With each step I take, I try to figure out how I lost a fucking hour just standing in the basement.
“I must be losing what’s left of my fucking mind,” I hiss under my breath.
I’ve had lapses in time before, and none of them ever turned out to be something good.
On those occasions I woke up chained to a wall, or worse, tortured to within an inch of my life.
Neither was particularly enjoyable. But at this moment, I’d take either option over having to explain myself to my brother, who is currently standing on the opposite side of the bar, giving me a death stare-down.
“What the fuck happened?” Ash asks, or rather demands an answer, one I have no idea how even to begin to explain.
“I just lost track of time,” I inform him without so much as a glance his way. “Can we just drop it?”
All I can do is busy myself behind the bar because I know he will not let this drop. Even when we were kids, he would stare me down until I told him what was wrong, exactly as he’s doing now.
“I can wait all day,” he says as he pulls out a stool from the bar and sits. “You really want to call my bluff? Because I have no place to be,” he adds as he crosses his arms over his chest and kicks his booted feet up onto the bar.
“Fuck,” I grumble after a few minutes, because he will wait all fucking day. “I think I’m going to go back to…” I pause, unsure of the terminology I want to use. “To the other reality,” I finally blurt out.
Ash doesn’t say anything, he just stares at me as if he’s waiting for more to come. Archangels are a warrior race. We don’t sit around the table, talking about our feelings, so I’m not about to start gushing about how I don’t fit in anywhere. That is a level of therapy I don’t want or need.
We stare at each other in a standoff that only brothers can tolerate. I’m not really sure how long the silence stretches between us, but it is becoming… uncomfortable.
“Why do you want me to stay?” I finally acquiesce. “I don’t belong here and I don’t want to sit and watch you and your perfect family while I run your bar.” The words are out of my mouth before I can even think better of them. I visibly cringe as the verbal blow hits my brother full force.
There is no denying that my little outburst is like a slap across the face to Ash, but I can’t take it back.
“I should have stayed away,” I continue without giving him a chance to speak. “Do you even know how I got my freedom?” I ask, knowing fully that he knows only what I’ve led people to believe.
“Of course. You fought and won in the fighting pits. What does that have to do with you not thinking you belong here? You’re my brother, for fucks sake. Of course you belong here. You belong more than anyone.”
Inhaling deeply, I contemplate my answer.
There is only one, and it’s the truth. But it requires me to utter a vile name that should be forbidden to be spoken.
“Pestilence.” I utter the one name that no one wants to hear.
“She was the one who ultimately got me into the pits. Themis herself had contracted my stay in Treachery. I never would have seen the light of day again if it hadn’t been for her. ”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, brother,”
I let out a low growl of frustration. How can he not understand what I’m trying to say? “With me here, it puts you and your family in danger. It’s only a matter of time before she decides to come and find me. You know as well as I do she doesn’t do favors out of the goodness of her heart.”
“And what? You don’t think I’d have your back for that? It’s not like you to run away from a problem.”
I’m not sure if he understands the implication of what he’s saying—running away is what I did when I asked him to take my life. I have been running since the day I earned my freedom. Running seems to be the only thing I’m good at.
“What about Kennedy?” he finally says after a long silence—or maybe I just stopped paying attention. Either way, the mention of her name has me clenching my jaw so tightly, I’m surprised I don’t hear my teeth crack.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been gone for more than a year.
That’s a lifetime for a human woman. Besides, the last time I checked, she was dating some doctor in Boston.
” I add the last part more as a reminder to myself that she’s moved on.
The words are like acid as I say them, and I must hold back a sneer.
I made the nearly fatal mistake of heading up to Boston a few months after I returned here with Kat.
I stood outside Kennedy’s Back Bay apartment for nearly an hour, watching as she laughed and talked with some gangly man that I later learned was a doctor.
He would have been no match for me, and I could have easily snapped him in half like a dead tree branch.
But in the end, I walked away without ever letting her know I was there.
The last thing I wanted to do was stand around while she invited him in.
If that was the case, I would have murdered him… slowly.