Page 77 of Visions of Darkness

Chapter Nineteen

Pax

Light streamed through the cracks in the drapes, rays spearing into the dim light and covering her in glittering gold.

Her breaths were deep and long as she slept. As she found the peace that I so desperately wanted her to possess.

Rage threatened to close off my throat when I thought about not knowing how long that would last.

I scrubbed an agitated hand over my face. How the fuck would I ever be able to give that peace to her?

For hours, I’d watched her sleep, sitting on the side of the shitty twin bed, my stomach in knots as I contemplated what all this meant.

Finally, I’d started to pace the small room because I couldn’t remain sitting still. Thinking if I kept moving, I could find some clarity. An answer. A solution to get her out of this.

Anxiety tripped through my bloodstream.

I’d had one singular goal in mind when I’d left Las Vegas three days ago.

Get to Aria and get her out.

But there hadn’t been a whole lot of time to contemplate what we would do after.

Running seemed the only prudent answer.

The problem with that was, whatever you were running from always had a way of catching up to you. And no matter where we went, evil would lurk in every corner.

Wickedness covered this Earth in a shroud that humans were blind to.

But I saw it clearly.

Every night and every day.

I knew the sickness. Knew the depravity.

I didn’t only hunt it in Faydor. I hunted it while I was awake.

It’d been my sole purpose since I’d understood what this calling meant.

Now my gaze slanted to Aria. To the purpose I should have known would be mine all along.

The tiniest moan murmured from between her lips as she shifted from her back and rolled onto her side, leaving her face fully turned toward me.

I guessed what I’d been most unprepared for was what had slammed into me the moment I saw her.

The way the protectiveness had pulsed, a blast hitting me so hard that it’d shattered the boundaries of the way I’d seen her before. It had been my own thoughts that veered in a direction I couldn’t let them go when I first saw her in the flesh.

My gut had tangled in a need I should not feel.

Hungry for something that I knew better than to ever take.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t known she would be a beautiful woman. But I’d convinced myself that I could never see her that way, even though it’d grown harder to keep my thoughts from drifting that way over the last year.

It’d become impossible when she’d been standing in front of me.

Whole and in the flesh.

Knocking the fucking breath from my lungs. And when she’d reached out and touched me with those tender fingers? I’d nearly come undone.

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