Chapter Eighteen Aria

Chapter Eighteen

Aria

I jostled awake when the car shook over a new terrain, to the wisping shadows that came with the earliest hour of the day. The horizon hinting the barest gray.

I blinked to try to orient myself. To catch up to where I was and what had happened, although the events of last night would be impossible to forget.

The tires ground over the dirt lot of an old motel, and Pax quickly pulled his car around in front of a single glass door stamped with the words Motel Registration . He came to a stop, the engine still purring while the jagged beats of his heart filled the cab.

A silent thunder that reverberated the space and pounded through my bloodstream.

“Where are we?” I mumbled as I sat forward, fighting for full coherency.

“We just passed the Pennsylvania state line. We’re in some blip of a town. Hoping no one will recognize us here.”

I looked out the window at the motel. It was as if it hailed from another time. It was a single-story building, painted blue, with a sign out front flashing Vacancy in a jaundiced light.

His hard gaze scanned, searching the area before he put the car into park but left it idling. “Stay here and lock the doors. Don’t open them until I come back.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He hopped out, attention roving again, searching the shadows before he dipped through the entrance.

Unbuckling, I sat on the edge of the seat so I could better watch my surroundings.

Vigilance was the only thing that was going to save us, if that was even possible at all.

Five minutes passed before Pax came back out. He strode toward the car. There was no tearing my eyes from him as he wound around the front.

My heart panged with the forbidden love I’d always had for him, and my stomach twisted in the tiniest quiver of fear.

He was different here.

Of course he was. No doubt, I was different to him, too.

There was an unease that pulled between us, strangers drifting in that familiarity that would bind us for all our lives. A familiarity we were never meant to experience here.

He opened the door and slid back into the driver’s seat.

His movements were stealthy and smooth.

The man was tall, his body lean, though I could almost feel the sinewy muscle bristle with strength beneath his clothes. Could sense the darkness that edged him in sharp severity.

Another shiver rolled down my spine.

There was something about him that was almost menacing.

Predatory.

Again, I was struck by how I felt like I recognized him all the way down to his soul but knew so little about him here. The glimpses into our everyday lives were shallow. Scraps we’d thrown together to form a patchwork picture of who we were while awake. Which I knew was how he’d found me, likely from when we were young, when we’d spent time in the safety of Tearsith. Playing and talking before everything had changed the night Pax had first descended into Faydor.

He put the car in Drive and wound around the side of the building. There was a long row of doors, the entire length fronted by angled parking spots. He slipped into the one in front of Room 12.

He shut off the engine.

“Wait right there.”

He was out and around to my side in a blink, and he helped me out into the freezing cold. Dampness still saturated my clothes, my feet bare, and I felt him wince as he quickly ushered me to the door.

Metal scraped as he slid the old-style key into the lock, and once it gave, he reached in to flip on the light. He slunk inside, and I realized he had the gun drawn as he wove through the room, hugging the walls, checking every corner and niche.

I gulped.

Terrified it might be possible that the fiends had already found us here.

“It’s clear,” he rumbled.

I eased in.

The room was dank and stale. Two full beds covered in brown bedspreads sat against the left wall, and a television that should have been obsolete sat on a dresser across from them. A round table with two chairs was situated under the window, and the door to the bathroom was on the far back wall.

“I’ll be right back,” he told me as he slipped back out into a morning that broke at the cracks.

I nodded through the thickness, hating that I felt ill at ease, hating the tension that strained between us.

But I guess that was what happened when worlds collided.

There were fractures.

Pieces that didn’t fit.

I wandered deeper into the room, trying not to cringe at the sharp sting elicited by the cuts I’d sustained on my feet. I was sure they were torn to shreds.

Pax returned with a duffel bag, which he tossed onto the bed closest to the window. He locked and bolted the door before he turned around and stared at me from across the space.

Energy pulsed.

Whipping through the small room as he watched me with those pale, pale eyes.

Awareness rippled across my flesh and lifted goose bumps on the nape of my neck.

Pax scrubbed a palm over his face. “You need to get out of those wet clothes and into a hot shower. You’re shaking.”

I was, but I didn’t know if the cold had anything to do with it.

“A shower would be good,” I agreed.

I finally tore myself from the grip of his gaze and waded through the discomfort and into the bathroom.

I stripped myself of the still-damp clothes and turned on the shower. It took a minute before steam filled the room, and the heated spray felt like tiny pinpricks of fire against my frozen skin when I stepped into it.

It took only a moment to get acclimated, and my entire body shuddered as I gave myself over to the warmth.

I let the water pound into my knotted shoulders, let it seep and soothe and wash away the terror of what I’d felt during the night.

Because I might not know the future or where we would go from here.

But for now?

For now, we were safe.

Turning off the shower, I stepped out, grabbed a thin white towel, and wrapped it around my body. I used another to dry my thick mass of hair the best I could.

I glanced at the pile of wet pajamas on the floor. The idea of putting them back on was less than appealing.

Blowing out a sigh, I dug my underwear out of the pile, found an old blow-dryer under the sink, and dried them enough that I could put them on.

Then I rewrapped myself in the towel and unlocked the bathroom door, inhaling a shaky breath as I thought of what was waiting for me on the other side.

But I couldn’t tiptoe. Couldn’t give in to the human side of me that swarmed with the flutter of butterflies in my belly. Couldn’t give consideration to the millions of times I’d thought of us like this.

We had enough to worry about without me treading through awkwardness.

Enough trouble without my heart clutching in anticipation at seeing him again.

Only I froze when those pale eyes snapped up as I stepped out. I clutched the thin towel to my chest, feeling more exposed than I ever had in my entire life as his gaze raked over me from where he sat on the bed, digging through the duffel bag he’d brought in.

It was like it was the first time he’d given himself permission to look at me.

Like he was cataloging.

Categorizing.

Locking it away to memory.

The scars that were exposed and the tangle of my wet hair and the droplets of water that snaked over my shoulder and rolled down my arm.

He’d done it all in the flash of a second before he dropped his attention back to the bag, though he gestured with that sharp chin to the bed opposite him. “Sit.”

I shuffled forward, trying not to wince with every painful step, still clinging to the towel as if it could shield me from the questions that whirled. As I fought with the urge to go to him, to touch the harsh angles of his face, to know him here the way I knew him in Tearsith.

But there was a barrier between us here.

An invisible chasm that gaped.

Still, I couldn’t look at this man and ever believe that he could be a threat to me. That he could ever turn on me the way we’d been warned. That he could betray me the way Valeen had been scorned.

I came to the end of the bed, wavering where I stood.

His teeth gritted as he glanced up at me where I was a foot away. “How are you feeling?”

Uncertainty pinched my face. “I honestly don’t know. This feels impossible. Like it isn’t real. I keep thinking I’ve fallen into some strange dream.”

He scoffed. “As if what we fall into each night isn’t strange?”

My teeth gnawed at my bottom lip. “I know. The number of times I wondered if I really was crazy. If I’d made it all up. If you were real.”

Tension bound his shoulders, and he didn’t look at me as he continued pulling things from the bag.

“Do you regret coming for me?” I whispered. Trying to break through. God, how was I supposed to handle this? I’d ached to see him for so long, but I never could have imagined that it would feel like this.

“Why would you say that?” The question grated into the dense air.

“You seem angry.”

He shocked me by whirling to face me. “Of course I’m angry, Aria. They locked you away in that place. Left you vulnerable. Some monster almost got to you. And now—”

His teeth snapped as he stopped himself from saying whatever had been on his tongue, and he turned back to the supplies he had laid out on the bed.

A tremor rolled beneath the surface of my skin.

As if he’d felt it, he sighed in regret. “Please sit, Aria.”

My nod was slow as I sank onto the edge of the bed. “I’m going to be running for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

As short as that was likely to be.

Because we both knew my time would run out.

Pax roughed his right hand, which was tattooed with the gruesome face of a Kruen, over his head. The action was something I’d seen him do in Tearsith when he was upset, and it clearly carried over to here. “We don’t know that.”

“Don’t we, though? I knew the second I bound that Kruen while awake that it set me apart. That the Kruen would take note and come after me. I’d never fathomed it could be a Ghorl. That they even really existed.” I looked at him, unashamed to offer him the truth. “I’m scared, Pax.”

I didn’t want to be.

I wanted to be brave. I wanted to find the courage that I had in Faydor.

To fight.

But what had already happened had been terrifying, and I wasn’t foolish enough not to know it was just the beginning.

Pax angled toward me, his raspy voice a murmur. “I know, Aria. It fucking scares me, too. But I’m here, and I’m not leaving you until I know you’re completely safe.”

“Ellis is going to—”

“You can’t worry about what Ellis says or thinks right now.” His words were shards of aggression, cutting me off. “Right now, the only thing that matters is getting you away from the dangers in Albany. We’ll figure the rest out later.”

Warily, I nodded, and he stood from the bed.

Towering.

Obliterating.

Stealing oxygen and reason.

My nerves scattered at his proximity, a frisson whipping through the room as he took the one step required to stand over me. White flames licked in the depths of his gray eyes as he looked down at me. I didn’t realize he was holding a T-shirt until he muttered, “Here. Put this on.”

Rather than handing it to me, he unfolded it and carefully worked it over my head.

I wound my arms into the armholes before he pulled it the rest of the way down.

The material swallowed me, and in an instant, I was surrounded by his scent.

Leather and soap and something deeper that whispered of masculinity.

As if his magic had been woven into the threads.

Or maybe it was just him .

His aura and his potency.

The one I’d found only in my dreams, who now was right there.

Alive and vibrating with an energy that was more powerful than anything I’d ever known.

I pulled the towel out from under the shirt and tossed it to the floor; then I tipped my face up to him, barely able to get the words off my thickened tongue. “Thank you.”

Reaching out, Pax swiped the calloused pad of his thumb over the small scar at the edge of my mouth. “I was created to take care of you, Aria, and I would never turn on you.”

A shiver rocked down my spine.

Before I could say anything, he’d torn himself away, turning his back as he pulled something from the duffel bag.

A second later, he was kneeling in front of me with a first aid kit. A flash of heat rolled through me when his hand curled around my ankle. He lifted my leg enough that he could inspect the bottom of my foot.

“You’re hurt.” It was close to a growl.

My laugh was ironic. “I’ve suffered much worse.”

Gray eyes jumped to my face. Fury blazed in the roiling pools. “You shouldn’t have to.”

The air grew thick, so dense it was close to suffocating, and I struggled to breathe. “There have been so many times that I prayed for it to go away. That I’d be saved from the misery. And when I bound the Kruen awake ...?”

A tremble rolled.

Pax’s or mine, I didn’t know.

Softly, I continued to speak. “I’d thought ... I’d thought it wasn’t fair. That it was too much. That I couldn’t bear it, and I begged Ellis for an answer. For a way to take it away.” My tongue stroked across my dried lips. “But I know it’s my purpose, Pax. I could never change that. And in the end, I wouldn’t want to.”

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to argue. Refute my claim.

Instead, he sat higher on his knees, his beautiful, furious face an inch from mine. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

It was an oath. Shards of broken glass.

I didn’t know if I was brave or foolish for reaching out. But I trembled my fingertips over the scar that ran along the right side of his face.

His eyes squeezed closed, and his jaw clenched as if my touch caused him physical pain.

He remained there for a moment.

As if he were allowing himself to relish the connection before his powerful gaze opened to me. “My purpose is to take care of you, Aria. To protect you until we figure out how to keep you safe.”

There was a warning behind it.

A rejection I understood, but one that still slayed.

We couldn’t be together. Not the way I wanted us to be. This was temporary. And I had no idea about his life here.

Who he loved and who he held.

Here? He was all but a stranger to me.

Pain clutched my chest, this love I’d kept secreted away, throbbing from within and seeking a way out.

He began to tend to my feet, swiping an alcohol pad over the cuts before he applied an ointment.

“That should help,” he murmured as he pushed to standing, though he remained right there, an inch away, his presence rippling over me in waves.

“Thank you.” I could barely force it out.

His nod was slow. “You need to sleep. Rest so you can heal.”

“And what about you?”

“I’m going to keep watch. Once you wake up, I’ll sleep for a couple hours.”

“Are you—”

“Don’t worry about me, Aria,” he said as he turned away.

Did he think that was possible? That he didn’t count? That he didn’t matter to me?

But I couldn’t argue with him or make him see right then.

Exhaustion was setting in.

The lack of sleep and the weight of the fear catching up.

The adrenaline from earlier had drained, and it’d left my limbs heavy, my mind muddled with too many things.

Four days ago, I’d been a senior in high school, contemplating how I was going to leave my family once I graduated.

Heartbroken over leaving them behind but knowing it was the only way I might be able to live in any semblance of peace.

Now everything had changed.

The shaky facade of my normalcy rocked.

My foundation cracked.

Now on the run with a man I was never supposed to meet.

I shifted to pull the scratchy covers down and slid under them, facing away as I pressed my eyes closed.

I hovered there in the nothingness.

In that shimmery space between awake and asleep.

And the moment before my spirit detached, I heard Pax’s whisper somewhere in the distance. “Happy birthday, Aria.”