Chapter 28

Iwait with bated breath for her to sleep.

Watching. Always watching.

Protecting.

Loving.

And when she finally gives into unconsciousness, when her face turns serene and peaceful in slumber, I push my will into her mind as I have done countless times before. If I had a tangible body, I imagine my heart would be beating erratically, owned by this girl who has yet to see me in the flesh.

But alas, I have a heart constructed of nothing but shadows and memories, and though it beats in this strange darkness I have found myself in, it is not real.

Though it certainly feels real when I am around Nina.

Like before, I move forward through the darkness as her soft voice reaches my ears. At first, I cannot understand the words she is saying, but as I get closer, my name leaves her lips on a breathless exhale.

Nick.

That is not actually my name, though I suppose that does not matter. Nick is who I am now.

“Nina,” I whisper as I approach her. I cannot see her in this inky, cloying darkness, but I can sense her as keenly as if she were an extension of my body.

Some might see the darkness as an absence of light, an absence of everything good and pure in the world, but I see it as everything. After all, before the world was made, the universe was shrouded in nothing but darkness. How can it not be everything? It is the one place suspended between life and death, the one place where time stops. It is where light cannot penetrate, but when has light been the deciding factor on the validity of something?

The darkness is not nothing.

It is the footsteps rapidly approaching you, the warm embrace from a lover and friend, the tears stuck on your eyelashes but refusing to fall.

It is not nothing.

My heart races even faster when I move to Nina, envisioning the way she looked the last time I saw her—sleeping between Rion and Bronson. Her long, silky hair cascading across her pillow and somehow making her features look even more stunning and softer. Those long, ebony lashes fluttering against her cheekbones. The delicate swoop of her neck as she twisted into her shifter lover’s embrace, pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear, before turning towards the shadow wolf and falling back to sleep.

“Nick,” she repeats, and I imagine her cute little nose is scrunched adorably. “What am I doing here?”

“I wanted to see you,” I confess, resisting the urge to brush my fingers across her cheek. Only here, can I touch her. Only here, can I be with her.

For now.

I will spend the rest of my life finding a way to get to her.

But if she discovers what you are…

I allow that thought to trail off as I focus once more on the stunning female. And she is not just stunning because of her physical appearance, though there is no denying she is the most beautiful woman I have ever set eyes upon in all of my years of existence. It is because of her soul. Her pure and gentle soul that laps at my rough edges like the calming, gentle waves of the ocean. Someone as pure as her…

She should not exist.

“You wanted to see me,” she parrots, confusion lacing her tone. “Why?”

“Because you are everything,” I state plainly. There are no other words capable of encapsulating my thoughts. I am nothing, but with her, I am someone. She freed me, and I doubt she is even aware she has done so.

“You don’t know me,” she protests immediately.

I bite down on my lip to stop myself from saying everything I want to. I imagine she would not take kindly to the truth—that I have been watching her long before I made her aware of my existence.

But that is all there is to do in my world. Watch. Listen.

Wait.

And I do wait. I wait every single day until I can finally gain enough power to reveal myself to her. For now, I have to find solace in these few stolen moments.

If she would like me to get to know her the traditional way, then I will do so.

“What is your favorite sound?” I ask abruptly, cocking my head to the side, though I know she cannot see me.

She releases a strangled noise in the back of her throat.

“What?”

“Favorite sound,” I repeat. “What is it?”

“I-I…” She pauses, and I hear her suck in a breath. “I guess I never really thought about it before. No one has ever asked me that.” She sounds far away and distant, an unfamiliar lilt to her voice as if she is holding back tears. The thought makes me want to tear this world apart, but I settle on distracting her instead.

“There is a pipe in the Labyrinth that has broken apart,” I begin, keeping my voice soft and soothing as to not scare her away. “It is deep inside the tunnels, almost a mile or so away from here.” I scratch absently at my chin as she takes a step closer. I cannot see her, but I can sense the heat her body emits as if it is palpable. “A tiny trickle of water always cascades from the broken pipe and rushes against some of the rocks there. The noise…” I pause again, thinking through my words. “I imagine it is how a waterfall would sound.”

“You’ve never seen a waterfall?” Nina asks.

“No,” I confess, swallowing roughly. “I have never. But I have heard others talk of them before. Have you seen one?”

“No.” She takes another step closer, and something explodes across my flesh. I am unused to such a sensation, and I cannot help but stare at my arms in wonder. Are those goosebumps, perhaps? I have never experienced them myself before, though I know others have. “So you are an inmate of the prison!” It is not a question, though I choose to take it as one.

An inmate…

Maybe.

A prisoner?

Most definitely.

“I will answer you if you answer me,” I say at last. I want her to know everything there is to know about me. I want to bare my soul to her, all of the black and twisted edges of it, and know that she will accept and love me unconditionally, as I will her. Is it too much for me to hope for?

“Answer you…?” she begins in confusion before she seems to remember what I had asked of her. “I suppose my favorite sound is—” Cutting herself off abruptly, she steps away from me, mumbling something under her breath too low for me to hear.

“What was that?” I cock my head to the side curiously as she continues to back farther and farther away.

“My favorite sound… It isn’t appropriate.” The last word is spoken as a whisper, and I feel my smile broaden. Is she embarrassed? Flustered? I try to think through all of the adjectives that could describe her suddenly chagrin attitude.

Anxious? Distressed? Upset?

“Are you…embarrassed?” I decide to ask her.

“No!” she protests automatically, though her panicky voice is a direct contrast to her dogmatic statement.

“No?”

“No,” she repeats more firmly. “It’s just…”

“What is just?”

“Next question!” she blurts out.

“But you have not answered this one.”

“Oh my god, Nick!” Her voice is muffled, as if she is covering her face with her hands. “Fine. My favorite sound is mygushorgnaize.”

“My gush organized?” I have never heard of that sound before. How peculiar. Perhaps I will need to find away to?—

“Myguysorgasming,” she repeats, her words jumbled together.

My brows knit. “Huh?”

“My guys coming!” she practically shouts. “Okay? That’s my favorite sound.”

I pause as I consider her words, my heart pounding unevenly before returning to a steady rhythm.

Her words…

They make no sense to me.

“Your guys coming?” I repeat, and she releases an agonized moan. “Where are they coming from?”

“What?” Her voice is no longer muffled, almost as if she snapped her head up to drill a glare in my general direction.

I try to keep my tone patient. It is apparent she does not understand my question, so I will have to explain myself to her carefully. “They have to come from somewhere, little one. So where do they come from? And where do they go?” They are simple questions, so I do not understand why she sounds like a dying fish.

“That’s not what I meant…” She trails off once more, and I make a mental note to discover what other synonyms there are for the word “coming.” Nina groans before whispering, “Why am I even telling you all of this?”

“Maybe because a part of you knows that I would never do anything to harm you. That I will never use your words against you.” Unable to stop myself, I place my palm on her cheek, relishing the smoothness of her skin, and she lets me. “Maybe a part of you recognizes that your soul belongs to me, just as mine belongs to you.”

“But—”

I cut off her mounting protest. “But just because it belongs to me does not mean it cannot belong to others as well.” The last thing I want is for her to think I am trying to steal her from her other men. They need her just as much as I do, if not more so.

I become distantly aware of her shifter mate, Rion, peppering kisses along her neck, hoping to wake her up and apologize to her with his body once more. I sigh heavily, knowing that my time with her is coming to an end. The knowledge makes me feel oddly bereft and empty, as if I had something in my hands and then lost it.

“Nick…” She says on a breath, oblivious to the world outside of this bubble. This perfect, diminutive bubble I constructed for her and her alone. A place where the darkness is everything and she does not have to hide.

“Wake up, little one.” I press my lips to her forehead, the gesture too chaste and fleeting to be considered a kiss. I can feel my fake heart racing in my chest, and I know that any second now, it will gain arms and legs and crawl out from beneath my rib cage, burrowing itself inside of Nina Doe. “Wake. I will see you soon.”

Sooner than you think.