7. Dexter

7

DEXTER

T he last slivers of moonlight peeked through the thin curtains in Pandora’s dorm, casting elongated shadows across the room—shadows that were one with me. Peace vibrated through the room in a way that was so fucking odd to me. I’d never felt anything like it before.

Pandora lay between Darkmore and Nyx. Her chest rose and fell as she slept, but she had her arms wrapped around both of them as they cuddled her.

A pang of jealousy stabbed through my chest, sharp and relentless.

Pandora Gravesend. My fated mate. The one who pulled the dark magic from my body that had been collecting over the years and stopped it from consuming my soul.

She saved me, and she didn’t even know it.

She was so content as she slept in their arms. It felt like my heart was being shredded, but she was breathing. That was all that fucking mattered.

All I wanted to do was to hold her like they were.

I didn’t just want to possess her or own her like I thought I did when I first met her, though. I wanted to love her the same way Nyx loved her—with a desperation that had him pushing me out of the way to bring her back to life. I remembered his frantic hands, his tears, and his utter fucking devotion.

The desire to love her gnawed at my soul.

She was mine. She might not have accepted it yet, but she was.

I would love her.

I did love her.

The realization overtook me the moment I thought it. When she saved me, her touch banished the dark and twisted shit that plagued me since before I could remember. That was when my feelings for her had changed from wanting to own her to wanting to care for her.

But then, I saw Nyx kiss her and Darkmore fawn over her.

My jealousy made me snap. The words that spilled from my mouth were vile, coated in bitterness and rage. I couldn't control myself—and I fucking regretted it the moment I stepped into the shadows after spewing them.

But I couldn’t take them back. The damage had been done.

My fucking impulse control was non-existent.

Being decapitated repeatedly did that to a shadow demon. Now, here I was, stalking her in the dead of night. I quite enjoyed it, though. Watching her sleep brought a strange sense of happiness to me. Almost like a safety that I’d been searching for my entire life. But that happiness was fragile, easily put in jeopardy by the sight of her nestled between them.

I couldn’t take the envy funneling through my veins anymore.

It was too fucking much—and it was my own damn fault.

I slipped out of the room, the shadows swallowing me whole.

My footsteps were silent in the darkness of the empty halls as I made my way back to my dorm. When I materialized, dread bottomed out in my gut.

Skel was long gone. His vanilla and smoke scent weren’t as pungent as usual.

My tablet buzzed incessantly on the desk, and I went over to check it and found several missed calls from my parents. My blood ran cold at the sight, but before I could even process it, shadows shifted in the room.

Rod and Poppy Shadowheart—my parents—stepped out.

Rod’s face was masked in cold fury; Poppy’s expression was as unbothered as usual.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Rod demanded, his black eyes narrowing on me.

Poppy’s shadowy tendril struck across my face with brutal force.

Blood trickled down my stinging cheek, warm and sticky.

Before I could answer, my father's fist connected with my nose. “Answer me!” he roared.

The pain exploded in a blinding flash. “I—just—” The words lodged in my throat, and fucking fear constricted my chest.

Pain hurt too much, and it messed with my head. Any lance of pain inflicted upon me unleashed images of Selene, my sister. It was almost like I could hear how her screams echoed in the darkest parts of my memories.

Pain was all she knew before she succumbed to it.

All because she tried to protect me.

“We're initiating you into Dark Veil,” my mother announced, her voice bored. Even her gray eyes were dull. “We have the perfect partner for you to go far in Dark Veil. Her name’s Charlotte Vane, and her parents are long time friends of ours.”

I recoiled at the announcement in more ways than one. “No,” I croaked, shaking my head. “I can’t?—”

“We aren’t asking you," Rod snapped. "We are telling you, or we could just leave your head detached next time."

Poppy’s shadow wrapped around my neck as a display of power.

A pathetic whimper escaped my lips. “I won’t partner with any other demon. I've found my mate,” I admitted, my voice trembling. “But I was awful to her. I don’t know if she’ll accept me, but even if she rejects me, I’m not pairing with anyone else.”

Rod barked a rough laugh, a sound devoid of sense. His eyes gleamed with eerie delight. “Oh, Dexter. That’s perfect,” he gleefully said. “Just perfect.”

Even Poppy’s sharp gaze held a lick of interest, and her shadows slipped from around my neck. “Perhaps you aren’t totally worthless.”

Rod shoved a piece of paper into my hand, the words blurring as I scanned my eyes over it. “You’re going to perform a dark ritual on campus and infect more students. Sunstone Revive is the site this time. This is your task to be initiated.”

The reform students. Expendable, in their eyes. At one point, I probably wouldn’t have given a shit about it. But without the dark magic whispering violent thoughts to me, I had what I believed were moral issues about it.

“Nah.” I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”

Pain seared through my entire fucking being as my mother used her shadows on me. Poppy stabbed my body relentlessly. The tendrils sank deep into my flesh before pulling out haphazardly.

Fuck. No. Pandora had to be feeling this?—

My screams filled the room as pain blinded me. “Stop! Please, stop! Okay, I’ll do it!”

I might have deserved the pain, but Pandora didn’t.

I wasn’t sure how matebonds worked when they hadn’t been sealed, but I wouldn’t let her feel the pain they inflicted on me.

“You will,” she said simply as one tendril wound around my neck again, this time, biting into the flesh of my scar.

This wasn’t the first time she’d used this display of force on me. Usually, it ended with my head off my shoulders, and I really didn’t want to risk that. I didn’t know how it would affect my mate. “Or this will be your end. We have no use for a son that doesn’t listen.”

Tears leaked down my face as the memories of my sister's cruel fucking death and torture flooded my mind. Yet, even in the depth of this pain, I knew it paled in comparison to what Pandora and Selene had endured.

The door creaked open, and Skel stepped in…with a calico kitten in his arms.

It hissed at the shadows around me.

Skel’s green eyes lacked the usual red-rimmed look as they widened in shock at the sight of me.

“Do it,” Rod growled as my parents vanished into the shadows, leaving me a bleeding mess on the floor.

I could still feel the ghostly touch of Mother’s shadows around my neck, and my shaking hands reached up to curl around my throat.

“Fates dammit,” Skel cursed, kicking the door shut and setting the kitten down before rushing to my side.

“What’s with the cat?” I chuckled weakly, watching it prance around the room like it owned the place. It wasn’t hissing anymore, but it kept shooting glares toward the dark corner my parents left through.

Smart cat.

Skel helped me to my feet, but he was trembling almost as badly as I was. “What did they do to you this time?”

I could barely form a fucking explanation. “They want me to do something for their organization, and they fucking tried to get me to agree to a pairing with some fucking demon named Vane.”

“A pairing?” The shock was palpable in his tone, and his eyes widened. “You can’t do that to Pandora.”

“I fucking know that! I refused it.” My voice came out a broken whisper.

“Good, good,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “Can I help with anything?”

“You know you can’t.” I looked away from him. He and Bram both had always wanted to help, but I had to refuse it. They couldn’t help me, and if they’d tried, my parents would kill them.

“All I want is my mate.” A whimper tore from me.

“I want her too,” he murmured, running a hand through his black and white streaked hair. “But we fucked up, and we have to make it right.”

Ghostly pain stabbed at me, much like Poppy had. The pain threatened to consume me, and fear made my heart pound. The warmth of my healing knitted my wounds back together, but the fear slowed it.

An illusion of Pandora floating at the bottom of that fucking lake materialized in the room before me, and the terror in my bones solidified.

Gritting my teeth, I glared at Skel. “Your fear magic.”

His expression dropped as he noticed the illusion. He let out a hissing sigh before reaching in his pocket and pulling out his fae pipe. He fucking hesitated before bringing it to his lips and taking a few deep hits before blowing out a plethora of magical smoke. “Fuck,” he groaned.

“Why’d you hesitate?” I quirked a brow at him as I got to my feet and grabbed a towel, throwing it over the bloody puddle my parents made in the middle of the room. My blood soaked into the towel immediately, turning the white a lovely fucking red. “Never seen you do that before.”

“It was nice to feel again, I guess.” He inhaled another hit before blowing a steady stream of smoke out. “You know, Pandora’s mouth was on my pipe not long ago, and I can’t believe that. I fucked up so royally, Dex.”

“You did,” I agreed, striding toward my bed and stripping down to my boxers to avoid getting too much blood on the sheets. “But so did I.”

“We didn’t fuck up as bad as Bram, though,” Skel muttered, crossing the room and lying down on his bed, placing his pipe on his chest as his eyes fluttered shut. “I’m worried about the asshole, honestly.”

“Yeah, I know. He used to talk about his grandpa always raving about fated mates to him. He just never thought he’d get one.” I pounced on my bed and tucked the pillow under my arm as I shut my eyes. “You have a point, though. We didn’t fuck up as bad as he did. He fucked with her the most so he has the most to answer for.”

“We’re not innocent either,” Skel grumbled as the kitten curled up next to him on his bed and started to purr. “Don’t forget that.”

“Trust me, dude, I fucking know that,” I seethed. “I’m just trying to think of how to make it up to her. I can’t stand seeing her tucked between fucking Darkmore and Nyx without me.”

“What do you mean?” His bed made a noise, and I could feel his stare on me. “Dex, man, you didn’t fucking stalk her, did you?”

“Is it stalking when she’s my mate?” I pursed my lips.

Surely not.

“Yes, Dex. It’s still stalking!” He groaned before the bed squeaked again. I assumed he laid back down, but I didn’t bother checking. “But…not that I’m condoning the stalking…she was in bed with them?”

White hot jealousy streaked through me. “Yeah, but not like that. They were sleeping.”

“She’s a virgin, you know,” he said quietly. “I mean, of course she is, but…”

I jolted up and gaped at him. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“First, if you pay fucking attention, you can smell it.” He took another hit off his pipe. “Also, I may have come onto her when I smoked with her, and she told me she was a virgin.”

“You came onto her?” I gaped at him.

“I trailed my fingers over her collarbone while she straddled me.” He groaned, reaching down and adjusting himself. “Then she told me. I backed off because I didn’t want to push her, obviously, but I never understood why she turned me on so much.”

“Because she’s our fated mate,” I murmured.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, it makes sense that she’s a virgin.” Agony blitzed my heart. She would probably never want me like that—even if she didn’t end up rejecting me. Not after I’d hurt her the way I had. “She’d been a captive the majority of her life. She hasn’t had the chance.”

“But she does now.” Skel’s face twisted as if he was in pain. “I’m pissed that we treated her so badly that we don’t get to experience the blissful magic of bonding and marking her. Fates, I don’t even care about anything but wanting to be around her.”

“Yeah, I know.” I ran a hand down my face. “I feel the same way.”

“My magic doesn’t leak as much around her.” He frowned. “After the bond snapped, my magic wasn’t leaking. But when we left her…it started leaking again.”

“Matebonds are fucking awesome, man. Too bad we’ve fucked up with our mate.” The pain in my chest spread, and I pressed my palm over my heart and rubbed.

“We’ll make it up to her—we have to,” he whispered. “I’m just glad she has Darkmore and Nyx to be there for her. She needs mates who weren’t an ass to her.”

“As jealous as I am of them, I’m thankful for them being there for her when we couldn’t be,” I admitted.

I knew that no matter what, I would find a way to make Pandora mine. But first, I had the biggest fucking apology in the history of the Demon Capital to make.