Page 285 of Psycho Devils: Aran's Story 2

I was hyperaware of how out in the open the arena was. We were sitting ducks with no protection.

Five a.m. tomorrow was hours away.

One, three, five. I counted upward in odd numbers and tried desperately to clear my mind.

The panic remained.

A frigid gust of wind pushed my feet backward, and I dug my heels in as I slid across the grass. Falling to my knees, I scraped my fingernails against the soil to keep myself from being blown away.

I shivered.

Breathed out a puff of frost.

When I’d first stepped outside ten minutes ago, my breath hadn’t condensed.

The temperature of the realm was plummeting.

Rapidly.

“We just have to survive a few hours out here. It shouldn’t be too bad!” someone bellowed to my right, and their voice was swallowed by the wind.

I pushed my whipping hair out of my face and squinted.

Long blond hair billowed around a muscled figure. The man looked up. Glowing purple eyes met mine.

Sadie’s mate Xerxes was hunched over on all fours a few feet away.

I shuffled toward him.

Tensed my abs and dug my numb toes deeper into the soil for purchase. It was excruciating.

By the time I was by his side, my leg muscles were cramping with exhaustion like I’d run thirty miles.

Xerxes’s eyes flickered over my abused skin with pity.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I didn’t know what to say. Out of all four of Sadie’s mates, Xerxes was the one I was the least comfortable with.

He’d been my mother’s assassin.

He’d been the one who’d betrayed us and brought us to the fae realm.

He was the reason “WHORE” was carved into my back. Not that he knew it.

Ascher had at least apologized to me for the part he’d played in kidnapping us into the fae realm. Xerxes had never said anything.

The man hunched over in the wind beside me was the one who’d walked beside my tormentor.

Served her faithfully.

For years.

Xerxes was inches away, but he screamed to be heard. “How could he make you do this when you look like…” He gestured to the bruises and stitches on my face.

For a second, I felt an irrational urge to defend Malum.

I shrugged and yelled back, “It was between me and one of the devils. They’re mates. I never had a chance.”

It didn’t hurt to say the truth aloud.

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