Chapter Forty-Three Pax

Chapter Forty-Three

Pax

We drove straight through, and we made the trip in just under twenty-four hours.

Exhaustion had set in hours ago, but it was the antsy kind. The kind where reality was skewed and you fought to keep your eyes open, but you knew even if you did let them drift closed, your heart would be pounding so goddamn hard there wasn’t a chance you’d be able to sleep because of the drumming in your ears.

Aria had slept on and off, fitfully, her body twitching in tumult and not allowing her to fully rest. We’d made our plan during the trip, and decided it was best that I didn’t sleep at all since I basically was going to need to go to sleep on command.

Now both Aria and I were wide awake as we took the exit off the freeway that would lead to the neighborhood where she’d grown up.

She itched in the seat beside me, sitting forward, clutching at the dash as she peered out the windshield, like sitting that way might get her there a second faster.

I reached over and wove my fingers through her hair, rubbing my fingertips into her nape like I might be able to soothe the riot inside her, which was probably faulty planning, considering the way I was vibrating like a beast released from its cage into an arena.

Ready for the fight even when it knew it was about to get slaughtered.

I didn’t like it.

This fucking plan.

Aria was the one who had insisted on it, told me it was the only way and there was nothing I could do to sway her from it. Truth was, she was the only one who was capable of seeing this through, if seeing it through was even possible. She was the one with the strength.

But knowing that didn’t do shit to calm the piece inside me that wanted to wrap her in fucking bubble wrap.

I could barely stomach the idea of her putting herself in harm’s way like this. But I knew her loyalties. Knew what she would give, just the same as I would do for her.

“Left,” she rushed, gulping around her anxiety, and I slowed and made a left off the main street and into an older family neighborhood.

It was just after one in the morning, and darkness shrouded the modest houses that lined each side of the road. Not a soul was out at this time.

Everything was still.

Too still.

Bated.

Held.

A thin dusting of snow covered the long-dead front lawns, and the trees were barren in the winter cold. Their branches were so gnarled and twisted it was like looking at a distorted mirror of Faydor.

“Take a right at the next road,” Aria rasped as she pointed at the approaching street. My stomach was in knots as I followed her directions.

Our headlights speared across the vacancy, illuminating the obliteration that was to come.

I had to fight with all the willpower I possessed against the instinct to whip the car around, fly from here, and carry Aria away someplace safe.

But it’d become clear it didn’t matter where we went. The one who wanted to ruin Aria would only meet us there.

I could feel the weight of Aria’s swallow ricochet through the dense, crackling air, and she inhaled a shaky breath as she whispered, “It’s the second house on the right.”

Slowly, I eased to a stop at the curb in front of it, my limbs shaking like rattling chains as I took it in.

It was two stories. Brown and plain and innocuous. The only light glowed from a sconce hung on the wall beside the front door.

But I could still feel the evil radiating from the walls.

The depravity that oozed and wept.

Aria did, too, and she flinched as a shock wave of dread rolled down her spine as she peered out the passenger-side window.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” My words scraped like barbs that impaled her back.

Aria’s response was haggard. “I have to protect them. They didn’t ask for this.”

“You didn’t ask for it, either.”

She glanced back at me. Tears blurred her pale-gray eyes. But they would always be the warmest things I’d ever seen.

“But it’s who I am, isn’t it? And if there is any way I might have the power inside me to stop this? To protect them? Then I have to try.”

Fear pulled taut between us, apprehension billowing on our connection at what we were about to do.

I reached for her at the same time she reached for me. My hands tangled in her hair and hers fisted in my shirt as I captured her mouth in an anguished kiss. Intensity lit, a viable, palpable thing, the protectiveness—the possession I felt—tangible in the connection.

She poured everything I gave her right back into me.

A promise.

Our truth.

Our love.

I didn’t want to end it. Didn’t want to let go.

But I finally slowed and dropped my forehead to hers, gasping through the devotion that I had for her. My palm was splayed over the side of her head when I begged, “Please be careful.”

She nodded against me. “I will. This is going to work. It has to.”

A light flicked on somewhere on the first floor of the house, jarring us back from our cocoon, and we both knew he was awake inside. A trap had been set that had led Aria back to this place.

To the place I’d hated for as long as I could remember.

To the people whom I’d always worried would be her demise.

Turning back to me, she set her hand on my cheek, her thumb caressing a soothing path over the scar cut down the right side of my face. “I love you, Pax. Forever. For eternity. What happens here doesn’t change that.”

Inhaling a steeling breath, she cracked open her door. She paused for one apprehensive second before she fully tossed it open. Then she strode across the frozen thatch and angled up the walkway to the door, the long length of her black hair trailing behind her.

For a beat, she looked back, meeting my gaze through the window.

That stunning, unforgettable face was locked in determination.

She gave a tight nod.

A go.

And I reclined my seat at the same moment she walked through her childhood door.