Page 35 of Eternal Mate

I moved to Sariel’s side. He was still glaring hard at the beast in the circle, like he could set it on fire with his gaze alone.

Gulping, I said, “I guess it’s time for you to say goodbye, Sariel.”

A look of pain crossed his face for a brief second. It soon went away, and he turned to Barimuz. “I want to wait until Auren is here to kill him with me.”

Barimuz watched him steadily for a few seconds. After seeming to lose whatever battle of wills that was, he sighed once more. “As long as he doesn’t take a century. The circle will break after that, and I’m not doing this nonsense again.”

13

GOODBYE

SARIEL

In order to speed things up, Barimuz went and fetched Auren himself, vanishing into another smoky, black-and-red tear in the fabric of space and time. Ashe would have done it, but the gash in his side wasn’t healing as quickly as anyone would have liked.

Soon enough, a pair of familiar aviators came out of the portal. Barimuz followed after him.

My brother’s mouth was in a thin line, and I could see that his muscles were tensed up as he took in full stock of the scene: Azazel’s living demonic skeleton in a puddle of black ooze, the brightly glowing lines that made up the magic circle, and how badly all of us were banged up.

Aria and I were filthy and sweaty from all of the dust that had been kicked up during the fight, and we were also littered with minor cuts and bruises that looked way worse put together than they actually were. Neither of us had even noticed getting these little nicks; we must have been too hyped on adrenaline.

Ashe and Atlan had received the worst of it. Ashe’s wound was at least healing steadily, but Atlan’s ribs had been cracked in multiple places to near-fracturing points and were much slower to fuse together. It hurt for him to move too much, so he was curled up on his less injured side, all eight eyes closed in rest.

No matter how much time I spent around him, I wasn’t getting used to the terror he was subconsciously putting into my head. At least it was getting diluted with pity this time around.

Also, Barimuz was unscathed, the smarmy bastard.

Auren seemed to stare at Ashe for a long while, whose red eyes stared back.

A shiver went up my spine. I couldn’t lie to myself and say that the way he looked didn’t dredge up age-old trauma, even though this wolf wasn’t even fallen-blood.

One day, I’d completely get over my fear of them. Just not yet.

Right then, Auren locked eyes with me from behind his shades. I knew what he wanted to ask, so I sent him a single nod of permission.

He made a beeline for Ashe. In response, Ashe’s weird lizard tail started thumping against the ground next to him.

“You got hurt,” Auren stated as he crouched next to him.

Ashe shrugged his right shoulder only, since his left hand was busy holding his wound closed. “I’m not much of a fighter, but a slash is better than our buddy here getting trampled to death.”

Atlan huffed from the ground.

“Are you going to be okay?” Auren asked.

Ashe grinned, the weird light coming from his throat also staining his teeth red. “I’m going to be an invalid forever now. You’re going to have to do everything for me.”

Shaking his head, Auren stood to full height. “If that’s what you want.”

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you never to make a deal with a demon?” the wolf quipped. “But, seriously, don’t worry about me right now. I’ll be fine. You have something else to take care of.”

Auren stiffened. He nodded, then turned to face me.

I wasn’t sure why, but my stomach was doing flips.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Barimuz dragged out, “how about we get started with snuffing this out?”

He gestured to the immobile Azazel, and my eyes followed.

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