Page 77 of Wrath

With a roar of rage, I lunged at her, wrapping my hand around her throat. I shouldn’t have been able to touch her, not in real life, but this was a dream, after all.Mydream. And I wanted her to suffer for even insinuating that she’d touched Killian.

She dangled in the air, her feet just barely grazing the brown grass beneath her, and managed to smirk. The sight infuriated me like nothing I’d known before, and I tightened my grip.

But Aaliyah simply waved a hand, and I was thrown backwards. I landed on the ground with a startled “oomph” as the wind knocked out of me.

“Don’t worry your pretty, little head. I never touched your incubus.” Aaliyah brushed at her clothes with a haughty sneer. “I just wanted to see how you’d react.” Her lips firmed, disgust rippling across her features. “It seems as if I was correct in my assessment.”

I jumped back to my feet and balled my hands into fists. “What assessment?”

“That you’re not over them yet.” She heaved out an elongated breath. “That you still love them.”

I gaped at her. “Of course I still love them!”

“Why?” Aaliyah’s eyes flared with fire—it felt as if I were looking into the bowels of Hell itself, a deep, dark abyss full of wicked monsters and things that go bump in the night. “What have they done to deserve your loyalty?” She held a hand up before I could respond. “You know what? Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter.” Her upper lip curled away from her teeth in a snarl. “I see that Mommy Dearest has been helping you.”

“Lilith?” I asked in disbelief.

“First the mages, then the vampires, now the incubi.” Aaliyah threw her head back and laughed, though the noise was devoid of any genuine mirth. “You were always Mom’s favorite.”

“She’s not helping me, Aaliyah.” I didn’t know why I was trying to reason with her. I’d learned long ago that there wasnothing I could do to help her, save her, heal her. Still, I found the words leaving me despite my better judgment. “She’s just fulfilling her promise to the nightmares. If you complete the trials, you’ll get her blessing.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Once again, Aaliyah waved her hand in the air, almost as if she were physically swatting away my words. “The Trials of Lilith. I’ve heard of them.” Molten green eyes speared me with an unreadable look. “You’re trying to get enough support to kill me, aren’t you?”

I sucked in a sharp breath and then managed to say, “You’re not leaving me much of a choice.”

She canted her head to the side and frowned. “Is it wrong for me to love you?”

“When you hurt other people? Yes. Yes, it is.” I took a step closer to her, adrenaline and something else, something I couldn’t name, controlling my movements. “When you try to kill my mates? Yes.”

“I was trying to protect you from them!” Aaliyah snapped. “Everything I’ve done has been to protect you.”

That indecipherable emotion pierced my chest, making it suddenly hard to breathe.

I squeezed my eyelids shut and then forced myself to reopen them, to focus on her face. “If that’s true, then stop this, Aaliyah. Stop all of this. Turn yourself in?—”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

For the first time since I’d met her, Aaliyah didn’t sound like a confident demoness, but like a vulnerable, forlorn child throwing a tantrum. I half expected her to begin stomping her foot or throwing herself to the ground.

“Aaliyah, please. We can end this without any more violence. We can?—”

“No!”

I swore that the entire world began to shake with the force of her scream. The trees dipped and swayed, the flowers tilted precariously, and the ground rumbled beneath my feet.

“Aaliyah!” I begged, reaching for her.

“If I can’t have you, then no one can!” She shoved her hands out, and though she didn’t physically touch me, I felt myself fly backwards.

Then I was falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling?—

I jerked upright in bed, my heart battering against my rib cage.

“Z!” Dair, who slept beside me, immediately pulled me into his arms. “What happened? Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?”

I sucked in a ragged breath, but it got stuck in my throat, causing me to gag. Quickly, Dair reached for the pitcher and cup on the nightstand and poured me some water.

The rest of the tent was eerily silent. I didn’t know where the rest of my mates were, but I imagined they were debriefing with the others. Perhaps establishing a game plan now that we’d stopped the goblins.

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