Page 157 of The World Undone

Of course.

Of course that was the name.

It was where Darius had pulled Claude, Nash, Nika—where he’d ripped a portal with an ease that he shouldn’t have been able to master.

Our time at The Lodge had drawn out the shadow magic he fought so hard to repress for years.

Hell, he’d been drawn to the lake long before he even met me.

I didn’t breathe as the pieces slowly knit themselves together.

The edges of the dream fractured and tore.

I was vaguely aware of Lucifer yelling my name, of him reaching for me.

It was a futile, panicked gesture, and too late for me to say goodbye.

I woke up, blinking, my head doused in an icy cool, familiar pool of water.

I fought back the urge to laugh, kicking my way to the surface as the waves kissed my skin.

When I broke it, I took a deep breath, lying back in the lake and floating for a few moments.

Erratic splashing pulled me from my reverie.

“Max!” Wade’s arms wrapped around me as he pulled us both to the shore. “I went to check on you in the clinic and you were gone.”

I blinked as the ephemeral haze between sleep and waking melted slowly from the edges of my mind. “The clinic?”

He hugged me to him, his warmth seeping against me, my skin humming with the sensation of his nearness.

“Ralph brought you back, you were knocked out.” He cursed. “We’ve been waiting for the sedatives to wear off. They were working through your system quickly, you weren’t out that long, considering how many darts those assholes hit you with.”

Jarrod.

The town.

Our cabin.

Cy.

The threads of what had happened came flooding back, stealing the breath I’d only just found as they stitched together.

I’d kill him.

Rip his soul from his body and tear it to shreds, if such a thing as a soul even existed—if someone as foul as him could even possess one.

I pushed back from Wade, locking my eyes on his. “Dec, Ro?—”

Had Ralph carried us all?

He clenched his jaw, his fingers digging deeper into me as he held onto me.

I knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth, saw the truth, the fury, etched into the indigo wells of his eyes.

“They took them.”

My mind went temporarily blank. Then the silence was eclipsed by a dark, unfamiliar rage that boiled low and steady in my gut.

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