Chapter Twenty-Six Aria

Chapter Twenty-Six

Aria

Eyes wide, I gunned it in reverse. The tires spun on the loose gravel as we flew backward.

My hands and spirit were shaking so badly that I could hardly hang on to the steering wheel.

Consumed by the fear and a sickness that had sunk so deep into the middle of me I wasn’t sure how I continued to see—though I couldn’t tear my attention from the creep who lay in a broken pile in the middle of the pavement, either.

Lit up like the remnants of a massacre in the headlights.

I would have chalked it up to a nightmare if I didn’t know the true brutality that waited for us in sleep. If I didn’t understand what had sent this disgusting man after me.

When I was out far enough, I rammed on the brakes, shoved the transmission into Drive, then floored the accelerator. The engine roared as we careened across the deserted lot lit in the dingy blur of lights that glowed from the building.

Both horror and relief thundered through my being, all mixed with a solid dose of shock. My breaths were jagged, harsh, and discordant as they wheezed into the air, and my heart refused to slow as adrenaline barreled through my bloodstream.

I’d seen so many terrible things in my short life, witnessing them through the vantage of a Kruen’s mind. Atrocities that scarred and flayed, weaving their way into my consciousness to become part of my psyche.

Twisting my hopes and beliefs into chaos and uncertainty.

Into grief and despondency.

But I’d never, ever seen it this way.

Up close.

Playing out in real time.

I’d never had to witness the true consequence of a Kruen’s most wicked thoughts.

The tires squealed as the car skidded onto the street. My insides were trembling so hard that I wasn’t sure I could stay on the road.

I was rattled to the bone.

To my core.

Palms sweaty, I squeezed the steering wheel tightly, my knuckles blanching as I struggled to focus.

To squelch the panic that lifted in my throat and the tears that burned at the backs of my eyes.

I just had to drive.

We just have to get away.

It is going to be fine.

It is going to be fine.

It has to be.

I jumped when fingers barely brushed over my upper arm.

Fire and heat.

“Are you okay?” Pax’s words were shards. Sharp enough to cut.

Gulping, I could barely nod. “Yes. Are you?”

I finally allowed myself to glance at him. The horror I’d been feeling left me on a rasp. “Oh my God, Pax.”

I hadn’t been able to look at him once he’d come downstairs. My attention had been chained to the man who’d fallen to the ground six feet from the car. Unable to believe that it had happened.

He was dead.

Maybe most of all was knowing one misstep and it could have turned out completely differently. He could have gotten to me, or he could have gotten to Pax.

My sight blurred with the truth that it could have been my Nol who’d fallen over the railing.

It could have been him.

And maybe that was why I hadn’t been able to look—because I was terrified for Pax. The fight he was embroiled in to protect me. What he was sacrificing. The disaster he was getting himself into. The danger he was facing.

For me.

For me.

He was doing it for me.

And the reality of that came crashing down as I finally took him in.

Blood ran in a web of rivulets down his face, and there was a giant smear on his forehead.

It streaked from somewhere near his temple, and there was a gash that continued to pour blood from his right upper cheek. Another was busted open at the edge of his lip.

Through it, gray eyes stared back, wild and untamed. An inferno of white flames. “It’s not me I’m concerned about, Aria.”

“You’re hurt,” I choked out.

“I’m fine.” His teeth ground, and he glanced over his shoulder to peer into the night that gathered behind us. Trees enclosed the road on both sides, standing tall like patrols as the small town where we’d stopped disappeared into the nothingness, the murky moonlight above us a cold winter glow.

He heaved a sigh when he flipped back around to face forward in his seat, and he lifted the hem of his shirt and rubbed it over his face like it might stand the chance of wiping away the evidence of what had happened.

“Fuck,” he breathed once he let his shirt go.

“He’s dead.” I didn’t even phrase it as a question. I was already sure. Still, it poured out of me like the toppling of a vat filled with disbelief.

Pax ran the back of his hand over his mouth as if he could wipe away the bad taste. “Yeah, Aria. He’s dead.”

A tremor rocked me. An earthquake that shattered through the shaky foundation I’d been standing on. Bile clogged my throat.

A single tear got free and slipped down my cheek.

“He deserved it,” Pax growled as if he’d felt the ground shift. The piece of me that cracked away and couldn’t be reclaimed.

“Because of me,” I whispered.

“No. He’s dead because he’s evil. Because he welcomed it. He wasn’t innocent in this, and you hold none of the blame.”

I knew it. I knew it the second I’d thought to reach out to touch him.

To try to bind the wickedness through his mind.

Only, rather than the overpowering urge to place my hands on him the way I’d experienced in the facility—with Jenny, with the others—I’d been repulsed. My soul had persuaded me there had been no way to reach him. No way to pull him from the vile depths where his spirit had descended.

It didn’t make any of this any easier, though. It didn’t erase the vision of him falling over the railing and smashing into the ground.

And it did absolutely nothing to eradicate the mess we were in.

Fear trembled through me. Stark and devastating.

“You’re worth any sacrifice.” Pax said it as if he’d read my thoughts. As if he had direct access to them. As if he could feel every beat of my heart.

I squeezed my eyes closed for a flash of a second. “I just want us to be free, Pax.”

“The only thing that matters is that you’re safe.”

“And what if I want you safe?”

“I’ve already accepted my fate in this.” His voice rang with finality.

That was a fate I refused to entertain. “Well, I don’t accept it.”

“There’s no price I wouldn’t pay for you, Aria.” His voice was a blade, cutting through the energy that screamed between us.

His penetrating gaze burned into the side of my face.

The words carved directly on my soul.

“This life never made any sense to me,” he said slowly, his words a low rasp. “I couldn’t understand why . How we could be given such a burden. If it was even real. If I even existed. I didn’t get any of it. Not until two nights ago when I first saw you.”

Longing wound through the pain, and I glanced his way to find those glacial eyes staring back. I returned my attention to the road as I whispered, “A piece of me came alive that moment, too.”

“But it’s a piece of us we can’t keep.”

“Does it have to be?” The question slipped free without me giving it permission.

Sighing, Pax scrubbed a palm over his brutalized face. “You know that it does.”

I knew that he was right. Or at least that he was speaking the truth of what we had been taught. But there was nothing that could allow me to believe that this man would ever turn on me.

Hurt me.

Not when he was so willing to sacrifice anything.

We fell into a knowing silence that whispered and moaned as I drove through the night.

An uproar still beating in our spirits, the terror still stark, like hounds chasing us down the road. Demons we could never escape.

Neither of us spoke until I saw a sign for a rest stop about an hour and a half outside the town we’d fled.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” I murmured into the tacky stillness.

Pax hesitated for only a second before he gave a tight nod of agreement.

I took the exit, the car passing beneath the double rows of streetlamps that ran on either side of the road. Blips of light pressed in through the windows and flashed over Pax’s wounds like a strobe.

He scanned the area as we pulled into the rest stop’s clearing. It was close to four in the morning, and there were three semitrucks parked side by side in the long spaces reserved for them. Their lights were cut, but their engines still ran through the night.

There was no stopping the flare of panic.

The fear that any one of them might have been sent for me.

And I hated that I might not look at anyone the same ever again. That I might be terrified of any person I encountered for the rest of my life, however short it was going to be.

Pax gritted his teeth, his voice hard but hushed in its encouragement. “They likely pulled in to sleep for the night. There’s little chance we’ll run into them.”

Nodding, I swallowed around the knot in my throat and kept to the right at the fork that led to the parking lot that was reserved for regular vehicles on the far side of the buildings. Relief left me on a breath when I saw there were no other cars parked on that side. I slipped into an angled spot and turned off the engine.

Pax shifted in his seat to rummage around in our bags, his big body filling up the space with that energy only he possessed.

He passed me the shoes he’d bought me yesterday. “Put these on.”

I somehow managed to do it while in the driver’s seat, and he shoved his feet into his boots without lacing them.

He again glanced around the area before he slowly unlocked the door and climbed out, then reached behind his seat to pull out our bags.

I hurried to get out, trying to ignore the frozen wind that howled through the soaring pines that towered over the area, my thin pajamas no match for the chill.

Pax had already rounded the front of the car by the time I’d stood, and he took my hand. A rash of shivers streaked through my body. A clash of cold and overpowering heat.

His jaw clenched, and he forced out, “Let’s go.”

We rushed toward the buildings that housed the restrooms, keeping low and vigilant. He pressed us up to the exterior wall, and he peered around the corner before he gave my hand a tug when he found the other side empty, making sure that no one saw him in this state, not when we’d left a man dead a hundred miles behind us.

We slunk across the small courtyard toward the restroom. Pax again pressed us to the wall, peering around the corner and through the gaping door before he eased us inside.

It was only a fraction warmer within the white block walls, the only relief the protection from the wind. Two bright lights shone overhead, one over the two stalls and another over the sinks.

There were no mirrors or windows, and I gagged a little at the putrid stench as I tiptoed over the grungy brown tiles.

Pax grunted. “Not exactly the lap of luxury.”

“I think this is an opportune time to remember I’m not the princess you were hoping I was going to be,” I attempted to joke. To add some lightness to a disaster that weighed so heavy I thought I might suffocate beneath it.

Only a small cry got free when Pax finally turned around and faced me.

In the glaring light, his injuries were more distinct.

The cuts were deep, and bruises were starting to show where his skin had begun to swell.

“I’m so sorry,” I wheezed.

“You and I have both been through far worse, Aria.”

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip as he brought voice to the pain we endured in Faydor.

“I still hate that it happened,” I murmured, edging closer while he propped our bags on a sink to keep them off the floor. He dug into his duffel, pulled out a large first aid kit, and balanced it on top; then he rummaged around inside it, eventually producing a bottle of peroxide, bandages, and clean cloths.

He turned on the faucet and leaned over the sink. Over and over, he splashed cold water onto his face to wash away the blood, which had begun to dry and cake, before he doused a cloth in peroxide.

He hissed as he began to scrub it over his wounds.

“Let me.” It was issued like a plea to his back. Wanting to do something. To change it. To somehow make it better.

“You don’t have to take care of me.” With the way he grated it toward the brick wall, I wondered if anyone ever had.

“No, I don’t, Pax—just like you didn’t have to come for me, but you did it anyway.”

Air heaved from his nose, and he planted his hands on the sides of the sink and dropped his head between his shoulders. “I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think I could have ignored your call. Don’t think I could have ignored the lure of you.”

Trembles raced through me, and I doubted it had a thing to do with the cold. Because I felt hot. Itchy with the need to act. With the need to touch. It was close to consuming when he finally turned to face me.

Everything about him was overwhelming.

Potent and extreme.

The sharply hewn edge of his cheeks and the inflexibility of his stony jaw.

The slash of his powerful brows and the plush of his lips.

But it was the icy flames of his eyes that were completely captivating. That would swallow me down and take me under. The promise that haunted me in my dreams.

I took a step forward.

Energy thrashed.

His breaths turned hard and shallow, panted in the bare space that separated us. He watched me as if I might not be real, either. Like he was terrified I might disappear. Like he wanted to hang on but had already made an oath to himself that he had to let me go.

Unable to look away from his face, I took the cloth from his hand, and I began to gently dab it on his wounds.

Carefully.

Tenderly.

Needing him to understand through my touch what he meant to me. What he always had. Only that feeling had changed and shifted and taken new shape once he’d come to me in the flesh.

Because he was here.

Whole and real.

Flesh and blood and spirit.

The one person I’d ever truly wanted.

The one I’d needed.

The air thickened, and I thought I could hear the hands of time slow as the connection that had forever bound us crackled in the room.

A foreign blaze ignited.

One that warmed my insides. One that was stoked with every rough caress of his eyes.

I hoped in it he could feel my appreciation for what he had done.

That he could feel that piece of me that had come alive.

The piece I wanted him to keep.

My lungs constricted as I stepped even closer so I could apply the bandages: one to a small cut above his eye and a butterfly stitch, which I used on a deeper gash on his cheek.

The entire time, Pax remained silent, though the thoughts that swirled in his mind were so thick and loud I was sure I could hear them.

Like whispers he uttered directly into my soul.

His need and his terror. His desire and his fear.

And I thought maybe ... maybe he felt the same. Maybe he ached for me the way I ached for him.

The fluttery buzz that whipped through my belly and the tension that strained and pulled and possessed.

“Here,” I muttered, my fingers shaking as they went to the hem of his soiled shirt. I began to nudge it upward, and Pax emitted a low groan as I continued pushing it higher.

Inch by inch, it revealed the peaks and valleys of his muscled abdomen.

Slowly exposing the scars that had been carved into his flesh and the colors and shapes that had been woven over them.

The designs veils of our truth.

Reaching up, Pax tugged the fabric the rest of the way over his head, and he vibrated when I got brave enough to softly trace my fingertips over a scar on his side.

A live wire that had been possessed by the energy that howled.

A power that was ethereal.

Otherworldly.

I felt it battering the exterior walls of the cold, barren restroom when I touched him, felt it penetrate my soul as he stared down at me with a potency that stole through my insides.

“Aria,” he murmured.

I shook as I returned the whisper of his name. “Pax.”

He let the pad of his thumb trace the scar that ran along my right cheek.

I leaned in to his touch.

“You’re wrong, Aria. You are a princess. One I’d be a bastard to touch.”

We remained there for a long moment.

Held.

Bound.

A piece of us anchored while the rest was lost to treacherous, violent seas.

Pax suddenly cleared his throat, and he ducked away and turned his back to me.

He’d only moved a foot, but it felt like a cavern had split open between us.

He dug out a clean shirt from his duffel, pulled it over his head, then tossed everything back into the kit before he stuffed that into the duffel and zipped it.

“We need to keep moving.” A new hardness underscored the words, and he kept his gaze averted as he extended his hand for me to take.

He flinched when I did, the contact a searing burn that flamed, a burst of light flashing behind my eyes.

He led us back out, moving cautiously the way he always did, though now that he was cleaned up and had erased the evidence of the altercation, he didn’t pause to look around the corners. He just hurried us toward his car.

I still had the keys, so I clicked the lock, and he led me directly to the passenger side. He tossed our bags into the back. Once I was inside, he shut my door, then rushed to climb into the driver’s seat.

Headlights suddenly speared across the lot as a car approached.

He started the car and was getting ready to back out, only he had to wait when the car slowly continued behind us and pulled into a parking spot three down from my side.

Pax quickly pulled out just as the driver’s door opened, illuminating the interior of the small SUV. But it wasn’t so fast that I didn’t catch sight of a little girl who had her face pressed to the back driver’s-side window.

An unfamiliar face.

One I’d never seen before.

Still, my heart stalled out.

Because pale, pale gray eyes were staring back at me.

Pax shifted into gear and gunned it back onto the freeway while I tried to breathe around the clatter in my chest.

“Did you see her?” I finally managed to wheeze.

Pax hesitated for a prolonged beat before he reluctantly answered, “Yes.”