Chapter 17

“What do you think?” I ask Damien a short while later. We sit opposite each other in the throne room on soft, fluffy pillows while he walks me through meditation techniques. Because apparently, I need to better understand my powers. And what better way to understand them than reaching my center or whatever? Honestly, I think he’s pulling my leg, but since most of these sessions lead to sexy times, I can’t complain too much. So for now, I’ll sit across from him, close my eyes—even though I already can’t see—and focus on my inner self.

“You’re not focusing,” he reprimands in a soft voice, a voice that slides through my system like tepid, melted ice.

“I am!” I protest immediately, fidgeting on the pillow. My legs are beginning to ache from sitting cross-legged for so long. “I mean, I’m trying…”

Damien releases a heavy sigh, and a moment later, I feel his slender fingers beneath my chin as he tilts my head up.

“What’s on your mind, Angel?”

At his nickname for me, my heart flutters and begins to soar like the organ actually possess fluffy white wings.

“Nina,” Damien prods, continuing to grip my chin between his fingers.

“Logan,” I blurt, twisting my head to the side to kiss the inside of his wrist. His pulse skitters beneath my lips, and I can’t help but smile. How did I get so damn lucky with him? With all of them?

“What about him?” Damien’s voice has taken on a dark undercurrent, and I know he’s not pleased with the direction of my thoughts. My guys don’t like it when I talk to other men. Heck, they don’t even like it when I think about them. Their possessiveness is both sexy and annoying, because hello?I can’t really get through life avoiding any and all men, no matter how much my guys would like me to.

“What do you think of…everything he said? Like, do you believe him?” After the “meeting,” Kai led Logan in one direction, while Damien took me in the other. Abel assured me that they didn’t plan to kill or even hurt Logan—they just wanted to talk to him. I don’t know if I believe that, and I made it very clear that if they kill him, I’ll never forgive them. We don’t just kill people because of something they might do in the future. What type of people would we be then? No better than Alyssa and the other men and women at the Compound who tortured me relentlessly.

I can hear the wheels in Damien’s head grinding as he thinks of his answer. “I think,” he begins carefully, “that there’s still a lot we don’t know. I do believe that he’s telling the truth about the origins of the list. That’s exactly what I would expect from the Council and…” His breathing hitches. The sound is barely noticeable, and if it were anyone else with him, anyone besides me, they wouldn’t have heard it. “And Narian.”

“Narian…” I gently wrap my hands around his wrists and pull them away. Only then do I climb into his lap, curling myself against his lithe, muscular body, my head under his chin. “I still hate him.” Tears burn my eyes as loathing sears my flesh, branding itself in my very soul. “For what he did to you.”

“Don’t hate on my behalf, Angel,” Damien pleads, peppering kisses along my hairline. “Don’t turn bitter and cold. Not for me.”

Indignation rears its head. “How can I not, Damien? This man hurt you.” I twist to kiss his chest, directly over his rapidly beating heart. “He hurt the man I love.” His entire body freezes under me, before he exhales noisily.

“Fuck, I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that.”

“What?” I blindly reach for his fingers and begin to fiddle with them. I play with the band of his silver ring, our engagement ring, before dropping his hand back into his lap.

“That you love me,” Damien murmurs in wonderment. He sounds almost…shocked, as if the mere possibility that I could be in love with him is as surreal as snow falling in the tropics. Of a unicorn prancing through the prison right here and now and spearing everyone with its magical rainbow horn. I tell him every day, but he still sounds stunned. Awed.

“Of course I do.” I plant a single kiss to the underside of his jaw. “How could I not?”

He snorts bitterly. “There are probably a billion reasons why you shouldn’t, but I’m happy you’re too damn stubborn to listen to any of them.”

His lips claim mine, and for a brief moment, we exchange the softest, sweetest kisses imaginable. All too soon, he pulls away, leaving me feeling oddly bereft, like my soul isn’t complete without his lips on mine.

“I’m sorry you were hurt.” I drag my hand down his face, reveling in the way his silky skin feels beneath my palm. “That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.”

He pulls away slightly, still keeping his arms locked around me, and I drop my hand back to my lap.

“About me being hurt?”

“No.” I shake my head, struggling to articulate the idea I came up with a few days earlier. “I can go inside your mind, right? Hear your thoughts. See what you see. Hear what you hear. And we’ve been practicing seeing memories…”

His arms have tensed around me, every muscle in his body coiled and ready to flee.

All I can do is pray that it’s not me he wants to flee from.

“Nina, where are you going with this?”

Nina. Not Angel.

Pain slashes at my heart, sharper than any whip they used at the Compound, but I force myself to continue.

“What if there’s a way for me to remove bad memories?” I rush to get out. “For you and Cain and Abel and Kai… What if there’s a way for me to rip the bad memories from your head? Or heck, maybe I could leave the memories but get rid of all the hurt and pain associated with them. Is that possible? I mean, I don’t know if it’s even possible. It’s just a random idea…”

I trail off when I realize that Damien has become very, very still. I’m not even sure he’s breathing. His body seems to be hewn from ice.

“That’s…” He seems to be struggling to formulate his own thoughts. “That’s what you want to do with your power? Remove our bad memories?” He sounds stunned, almost breathless, and I can tell that I took him by surprise.

“Well, yeah.” I shrug sheepishly, suddenly feeling shy and na?ve and stupid. “I love you guys. I can’t stand all of the pain you had to endure before I found you.” I place a closed fist over my own chest, directly above my pounding heart. I understand pain just as much as anyone. I’ve endured it for years. I can handle my own pain, my own past torment, but what I can’t handle is the pain of my mates. My loves. I wish I could scrub the hurt away like a marker on a whiteboard, but I know it’s not that easy. Pain never is.

Suddenly, Damien’s kissing me again, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip as he tugs on it. He releases me just as quickly and pulls me tight against his chest, resting his cheek on my hair.

“Fuck, Nina. Fuck.”

I tense instinctively. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, Angel. Not at all. You’re just… You’re just so damn perfect, you know that? Fuck, I love you so damn much. I’d kill the world for you, Nina. You know that, right?”

Heat inflames my cheeks at his dogmatic statement. At the sheer intensity radiating from him in palpable, stomach-churning waves.

“I just want to help,” I confess breathily. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

“I know, Angel. I know.” He kisses my forehead, then my cheek, and then my lips. All the while, his arms continue to constrict around me, his grip both loving and punishing. “But my pain…it made me the man you see today. The man who loves you with every ounce of darkness in his entire being. What I endured…it didn’t break me. I could never truly be broken, even though I thought I was. You healed me. You took all of my shattered pieces and reconnected them with gold and glitter and everything beautiful in the world. So I thank you for offering to remove my bad memories. And fuck, I love you even more for thinking of it. But I don’t want to take away the pain. I don’t want to forget. I’ll let my pain, hatred, and anger fuel me in the war to come. I’ll let it fuel my love for you and desire to protect you. And when Narian comes again—and mark my words, he will—I’ll be ready.” His arms tighten around me almost imperceptibly as a surge of love flows through my body like the currents of a grand river, constantly swirling and frothing and battering the rocky shore. “I can’t speak for the others, but I suspect Cain and Abel feel the same way. You can always ask them, though, but I’m going to have to refuse your offer.”

“Dam, are you sure?” I ask gently, my voice choked with barely suppressed emotion.

“I’m only more sure about one other thing,” Damien responds. “That I love you.”

I sniffle, attempting to smother the noise by pressing my face into his chest once more. Desperate to say something, I try for a teasing tone. “See? You can totally be romantic. You’re actually a big softie, aren’t you?”

He grunts before reluctantly releasing me. “Don’t get used to it. Now, come. If you refuse to focus and practice your powers, then I want to work on unraveling the spell Alyssa put on you.”

The spell…

The one that prohibits me from having kids.

And just like that, the elation I was feeling from Damien’s confession turns dark and gloomy, like a sun being speckled with black and brown dots, before the darkness consumes the light entirely.

Alyssa and Raphael once tried to destroy me, and they very nearly succeeded. I refuse to allow them to take this away from me. The possibility of having kids. Of having a family with the men I love.

To Damien, I whisper, “Let’s do it.”

There has to be a way to break the spell.

There has to.