Chapter 53
“It’s not every day your boyfriend tells you he’s Death itself.” I gawked at Jax from underneath his black blankets.
“You’re right, this is the skin of a killer Bella,” he quipped, with his serious face on.
I grabbed the pillow, smacking him with it.
Jax began snorting in laughter. “I’m sorry, I had to.” Jax shrugged his shoulders in laughter.
“What happened in Norway, tell me,” I asked, laying on his broad inked chest.
“Nothing unusual for a Reaper. A lot of reaping, a lot of dark things I don’t wish to relive. Things I’d like to leave in Norway. I was a boy when I settled there, and I left something else.” Jax became silent, and I could see the dread spreading across his face.
“Hey,” I said, bringing our hands to my chest. “If you’re not ready to talk about it, I understand.” I touched his beard gently.
“I stayed longer because the pain that I felt never left. It just buried itself in me, taking up roots into depths no one’s ever reached,” he murmured.
I listened quietly as my heart sank at his confessions.
“Coming back home without you and my mother was too much to bear. I felt like I had nothing worth coming back to. You haunted me, little witch, alive in every crevice of my soul, hexing my doomed heart. You own me, my essence, my being. Not even Odin could take me from you. I am yours. If I ever met my demise, it would be because you could not love me. Loving you was the only thing that kept me going.”
I lifted my head to his, as his words wrapped me in an undying love I could no longer deny.
“Stupid cowboy,” I said, straddling his legs. I bent down to claim his deathly lips, biting his bottom one. “You are mine and I am yours, Reaper,” I teased. His woodsy scent was my home, I breathed him in and kissed his lips.
“The souls we reap… They’re some of the darkest and the most dangerous beings, and we are the Reapers who come to collect. Do you understand?” Jax exclaimed, making his stance clear.
“You thought I wouldn’t accept this?” I asked, baffled.
“I didn’t know what to think. You and I are two completely different people from five years ago. You left, and I was a boy, you, just a girl.”
I sat in silence, deep in my thoughts, listening to him bare his soul to me, as if he knew what I was thinking at that very moment.
Jax grabbed my face, “You have my word, that no harm will come to you or Birdie. I love Birdie, just as much as I love you. You two are my family now. The thought of losing you a second time, I don’t know if I could do it again. Not this time, I can’t,” Jax professed, bringing his forehead to mine.
“Shhh.” I silenced him with my finger to his mouth.
“Jax, I’ve loved you since we were kids.
You think telling me you sacrifice yourself for innocents would make me walk away from you?
I understand more than you know. You are a Reaper.
I understand it’s something I have to accept.
Just like you wanted all of me, I want all of you.
All of this.” I exclaimed, reassuring him that I was no longer afraid of the unknown.
I was ready to dive deep into these dark, murky waters.
As long as we had each other to stay afloat in this chaos, that’s all that mattered.
“My bloodline has been following a group of cultists that have been around for hundreds of years, making them our nemeses. They have killed many innocent women. The problem with these leeches is that they praise a god of sacrifice, for power and wealth.” Jax’s eyes were full of hatred.
“In this world, wealth unfortunately pays for protection against their vile sins.”
My eyes widened with tears at the thought of Jax putting his life on the line for innocent people.
“Who are they?” I asked, getting up to refill my coffee in the kitchen.
“The Petrov’s. They are close in connection with the Adrik family.
They are very dangerous and powerful. They’ve protected each other’s families for hundreds of years.
Both followers of sacrificial binding, one of the darkest crafts there is to practice and follow,” Jax replied from the room while getting dressed.
My glass shattered all over the floor as I stood in shock at the blow of his words. The air around me was stuck in my throat, constricting my airway. My soul felt like it had left my very body.
Jax ran to me in a panic. “Are you okay?” he asked, concerned.
I stood there in the middle of the kitchen, shaking, the tears staining my face.
“Baby, what is it?” Jax grabbed me carefully out of the glass maze on the floor.
“I know them,” I whispered, horrified.