Page 129 of The Female

I curl my fist around the rock at my clavicle as Silas steps back and crushes me against the wall. I grunt and push at his back, but he doesn’t budge. Is this his way of keeping me from moving? I crane my neck and stick my face out from behind his back, feeling slightly claustrophobic.

“You two need to leave,” Silas says, wiping at his bloody mouth.

He looks like shit, but so do Aziel and Gray. My stomach roils as I notice a few crooked fingers on Gray’s hand.

I could feel the tension building, but I didn’t realize it would come to a fight of this magnitude. I thought Gray would give a few snarky remarks and Aziel would punch a wall or something. Why don’t they throw iron weights at each other’s heads as I do?

It was an excellent way to relieve my anger, and nobody got hurt.

“Charlie, let’s go,” Gray says, his voice taking on a desperate edge.

Silas steps forward so I’m no longer trapped, but I don’t move.

“I’m tired of the fighting,” I whisper, not caring if saying this makes me look weak.

Aziel scoffs but doesn’t leave. He can pretend he doesn’t care about anything or anyone all he wants, but the concern in his eye as he looks at Gray’s bloody nose tells me otherwise. He cares for Gray more than he lets on, and their fighting isn’t healthy.

We need to work together to fix the female issue, and to do that, they need to be in a room together for longer than ten minutes without bickering and fighting like a bunch of children.

“I’m done fighting with him,” Gray promises, stepping forward.

Silas shakes his head, stopping him. “Either you two leave and sort out your issues, or I take Charlie away until you’re seeing eye to eye.”

“Charlie isn’t unsafe here.” Aziel scoffs and gestures wildly in my direction.

“Charlie just cut her neck because of you two. She’s hardly eating and is sleeping a good seventeen hours a day. Her lips are bloody and cracked from constantly biting them, and she’s ripped most of the skin off her fingertips,” Silas points out. “Both of you need to leave and cool your heads. We’ll talk when you return.”

Gray hesitates, his eyes lowering to my hands that, until now, I’ve been doing an excellent job of hiding. I grab the back of Silas’s shirt as Gray looks to Aziel for confirmation. His shoulders slump as the older demon looks toward the ground and nods.

My heart hammers as Gray steps forward and wraps his arms around me.

“I’m so sorry. I promised I’d take care of you, and I’m doing an awful job at it,” he whispers before kissing the top of my head.

Aziel’s gone by the time Gray pulls back, but the incubus hardly seems to notice as he frowns and looks me over head to toe. My intentions were never to cause a rift between the men.

“Gray,” Silas warns, curling his hand around my shoulder and pulling me against his chest. “Go.”

Gray frowns, his eyes darting between Silas and me before his body’s gone and I’m stuck staring at an empty, blood-coated room.

__________

“Come on, Charlie,” Silas mutters, rounding the corner of my office. His eyes flicker around the dark room before landing on me. “It’s time for bed.”

I blink my heavy eyelids and straighten my spine before shaking my head. Despite my anger, I want to be here and awake when Gray gets home. His fight with Aziel was hard to watch, and I’m sure he’ll be in a state when he returns. I want to show my support, and falling asleep is doing the exact opposite.

Silas leans against the doorway. Nobody’s forcing him to stay awake with me, and I’ve told him many times that he’s free to go to bed if he’s tired.

“Shay’s gone. It’s safe to leave me alone,” I say, resting my elbows on the desk and dropping my face into my hands.

The last time Silas came in, he turned off the overhead lighting and left me in the dark. I cursed him out as he walked away, but I haven’t gotten the energy to get up and turn them back on. It was a transparent attempt to get me to fall asleep, but I’m not going to let him win.

My eyes flutter shut as I give them a moment of rest. Each minute feels as slow as an hour, my mind racing through the possibilities of what Gray and Aziel are doing right now.

I hope they aren’t fighting. Silas is one of the strongest demons in existence, and if he struggles to break them apart, I don’t think anybody else will be able to.

If they get into it, there’ll be nobody to stop them.

“What would happen to Aziel if Gray died?” I ask.

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