12. Vix

Chapter 12

Vix

H as frost filled his lungs?

The sudden, overwhelming scent of his relief made her knees weak and her legs nearly gave out. Vix didn't dare look up into those devastating eyes, not when he was feeling vulnerable.

Even the shock that followed was too dangerous to meet his gaze no matter how badly she wanted to.

His shock faded into disbelief then and she could tell he didn't know how she could possibly understand.

Vix decided the safest thing to do was pretend she hadn't noticed such an overwhelming reaction.

"He took my memories from before," she said quietly, continuing her earlier explanation. "Then he took them all again."

The alpha finally shook off his disbelief and turned her around so her back was facing him.

She closed her eyes when those massive hands of his ran over her hair to see just how bad it was.

"I spent a long time with him, but how long exactly is impossible to know." Vix tensed when he started working something into her hair that had almost no scent at all. "Time doesn't work the same there, and sometimes it feels like I was gone for centuries."

Her body started to relax when those deadly paws stayed gentle.

Vix let her eyes lose focus, nothing but black rock before her and the sound of water as she felt the memories try to erupt from her skin. The dull pain behind her eyes increased but she ignored it like she always did.

Michael was right. You're nothing but poison.

The warm scent of alpha magic kept her from flinching. Even in this dead place, it seemed like those whispers could still find her.

Torment her.

"I don't know why he left me here," Vix murmured, trailing her claws through the water that was now above her waist. "I don't know if I did something wrong or if I escaped. When he took my memories a second time, he left me with nothing but a name, but I don't know why…"

A toxic mold that infects everything it touches.

Her hands stilled at the sound of that unfamiliar whisper. It wasn't Gabriel's voice, but she still felt like she should know who it was.

"The runes and glyphs help my body remember the things I can't," Vix whispered, as the scent of frozen hibiscus slid into her mind like a key into a lock. "But I'll always be what he made me."

His perfect warrior.

The alpha's hands disappeared, and it suddenly felt like she was drowning. Vix whipped around, trying to find something—anything to hold on to, but all she could see was silver and she shied away.

Stumbling back put her head under water and the whispers faded away.

Warm hands wrapped around her arms and pulled her up. She took a deep breath and blinked the water out of her eyes to see the alpha studying her face for answers. He smelled worried, but his expression gave nothing away.

"Sorry." Vix pushed the hair back and out of her face. "It's hard for me to remember things if I can't see them or they're…not around."

Then she saw the alpha was in the bath with her and the water was off.

She glanced down to see he was still wearing his pants, but this was a lot closer than before.

Taking a step toward him, she bared her throat as she reached out. Vix held her breath when his grip on her arms eased and he let her slide into their hold. It felt as natural as breathing, and she rested her head on his chest to calm her stupid heart.

"Memory magic is dangerous," she whispered against his chest. "It fucks with time, and sometimes it becomes squiggly lines or one large square all mixed together. I forget what's real, but I'm not allowed to possess those memories, so they get sucked out into the ocean of evergreen to wash up on shore later without warning…"

The alpha sighed and placed his hand on the back of her head, holding her against his chest, and it felt oddly familiar even if she didn't know why.

"My witchling is like that sometimes too," he told her. "She can see the past, present, and future all at the same time."

His?

She pulled back and studied those calculating jade-green eyes. "Yours?"

"Yes." There was a challenge to his tone, as if daring her to argue with him.

It was best not to worry about that right now. She'd be able to get all the answers she wanted eventually, but it was impossible to ignore just how badly she needed to know more.

Vix let him pull her back over to the bottles, trying to let go of the irritation she felt at such a blatant claim when he was the one who'd come to find her . "Do you love her?"

He smiled slightly and started working more of that stuff into her hair. "Of course I love her."

A low growl escaped her before she could stop it and Vix wanted to die of embarrassment.

"Even if she wasn't the abandoned cub I found and helped raise, she's not interested in men," the alpha explained.

Vix couldn't scent or hear a lie, and he sounded too fucking amused to be tricking her about this.

There was really no way to explain her possessive outburst without making things worse, so she decided to stay silent as he worked.

Vix kept her body pliable, even when he brought her over to a different part of the bath so he could sit on the edge and she could sit below him on a makeshift seat underwater.

Her lip curled when the tugging started, but she'd asked for this. At least his comb seemed to be imbued with magic, which would keep the process from being too awful.

"You haven't asked me for my name," the alpha said, his voice suddenly deeper, and there was a hint of his tiger in it that surprised her considering the topic. "Don't you want to know what it is? Or do you not care?"

"Names have value," she murmured, moving her head when he gently pushed it in a certain direction. "They give us power. If you have someone's name, you own them."

His hands froze and there was a strange edge to his scent now that she couldn't interpret. There was no hint of anything like fear or anger, but…reverence maybe? Strange. Most people thought she was crazy when she talked like this.

"I don't take names that aren't given to me," Vix explained, swishing her hands through the water to distract her from the heady way his scent was darkening—calling to her. "They're a gift when given freely. I only take the ones that deserve to be stolen."

"You talk like the fae." She went still at the dangerous tone in his voice, wondering why this would bother him so much.

"I don't know any fae," she admitted, flicking the water when his scent started to thaw just a little. "I only know what you can read in a book. Gabriel wasn't fae."

The tugging paused. "Gabriel?"

"Mhm. That's who took me. He's an angel, not fae."

The water didn't feel too hot anymore, and the rising steam lifted the swirling scents of that pretty oil he'd put in. It smelled exotic to her – the opposite of everything she knew.

"He told me names have value and if you have someone's true name, you own them. It's why he took my name and gave me his. It means ‘Gabriel's warrior.'"

"That's not your true name though, is it?" The alpha started combing through her tangles again and he seemed a bit more relaxed. "Which means he doesn't really own you."

"He's the only one who knows my true name, so I guess it doesn't matter which one he uses. My body and soul belong to him as well as my memories. Then he left me here in purgatory to atone. I assume anyway. I don't actually know why he didn't want me anymore."

The tugging suddenly became a thousand times more painful and Vix gritted her teeth when it felt like he was trying to rip her hair out by the roots, taking skin along with it.

I know this is painful , Gabriel whispered as the alpha yanked that comb through her stupid hair. I know it hurts, but it's only going to get worse .

Vix didn't know whether she should be comforted by those words or horrified.

"My name is Samuel," the alpha told her, his deep voice erasing Gabriel's. "It's not my full name, so you don't have to worry."

"Samuel…" For some reason it didn't seem to really fit with the alpha's hidden darkness, but she thought it made sense in other ways. "The divine name, the divine voice…the wise leader and judge."

She considered everything she knew about that name, finding it odd that a winter tiger would possess an angel's name.

"‘Samuel possesses extreme success or none at all,'" she remembered. Had someone told her that or had she read it somewhere? "It's an angel's name, but you're no angel."

"No," Samuel agreed. "The farthest thing from it actually."

"Good." Vix flicked water at the window and watched the drops slide down the glass, proving they weren't outside or in a cave. "Angels don't deserve their names anyways. Built to protect humanity…funny how they forget that."

She would take all their names if she had to. They weren't going to keep getting away with so much cruelty, not if she had anything to say about it. No, they could stay the fuck out of everyone's business, or she could turn all their souls to ash.

An angel's name… Samuel .

It was old and made her wonder. Vix couldn't help but want to pry a little more information out of the alpha, not when his mysteries were so dark and shiny.

"Are you Jewish?" she asked, the muscles in her shoulders relaxing when the tugging softened once more. "Jewish angels are a bit nicer."

"I don't believe in a single god," Samuel told her. "I'm not religious."

"I didn't ask if you were." She smiled slightly as his irritation spiked when she flicked water at the window again. "Gods exist whether we want them to or not, but your humanity belongs somewhere."

"It's my English name." The confession was gentle, quiet. "My father gave me a Samoan name, but I don't use it."

A secret name, just like her.

Vix liked that he had a secret name. It felt…cozy somehow. Like he kept it close to his heart where no one could touch it or ever try to take it.

"Don't tell me what it is," she whispered, feeling nervous about this, but the curiosity was killing her. "But…could you tell me what it means? I won't take it, I just…want to know."

Would it tell her anything? Would it give her an answer to the kind of person she might find under all this human nonsense he liked to pretend he cared about?

"It means god of war ." His breath skimmed over her shoulder, settling his words into her skin and Vix felt a jolt of lightning go through her as the rightness of it settled into her soul.

A god of war and winter…

Perfection .

"What should I call you?" her god of war asked.

For some reason Vix didn't want him calling her by the name Kenji had given her, but she had no idea why.

"You're not pack," she muttered, hoping he'd understand. "I don't know…"

His hands remained steady despite her sudden nerves, and Vix swallowed as she tried to decide what name to give him.

If she told him her secret name, would it feel wrong to hear him say it, or would it feel right? What if she gave him the name Kenji had given as a gift? But she wasn't Samuel's cub, and he wasn't family.

"Maybe it would be easier if you gave me a name."

"Absolutely not." The alpha pushed her underwater before she could say anything to that.

Strange. Her chest ached as the weight of his rejection settled into her soul just because the winter tiger didn't want to make a claim on her.

When he lifted her out of the water, she decided he didn't get any nicknames or familiarity. He could call her what she was. Nothing more.

"I need you to move forward so I can get behind you." She tipped her head back so she could look into his face and those jade-green eyes told her nothing. "Then I need to wash out the detangler and do it all over again."

Nodding, she swam forward and went back to floating on her back so he could do whatever needed to be done.

Vix closed her eyes so as not to get distracted by the curve of his chest muscles or the nipples that kept teasing her to try biting them. His boobs were bigger than hers and that kind of pissed her off.

It didn't matter that Samuel didn't want to give her a name, because the ravens already had.

Collecting names…

She was good at that, wasn't she?