Page 2 of Hellfire to Come
But Dominic knew. Sometimes I thought he knew me better than I knew myself.
He could hear my heartbeat, a mournful echo trembling beneath ribs heavy with grief, the same way I could feel his,a quiet drum of love and defiance through the silence we both drowned in.
“Let me in, my love, it’s been days where you suffer alone.” His voice cracked beneath the weight of desperation, fragile as butterfly wings, trembling with the ache of a man begging to hold together in me what was already unraveling. “You don’t need to carry this guilt, Brooklyn. Let me help you search. We’ll find her faster together.”
But we both knew the truth. I didn’t want help. Not anymore. I had opened my soul, piece by fragile piece, to the idea that I could lean on others. That maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to fight this battle alone. And look where that tender foolishness led me.
Look what it cost.
I’d learned the hard way that trust is a currency too often forged and too easily broken. I betrayed my own instincts when I chose to trust.
Now, Alice, the one person apart from Dominic I couldn’t afford to lose, might pay the price for my hope.
A single misstep of faith, and it may have signed her death warrant.
“Go away, Dominic.” My voice cracked like a brittle shell beneath an unassuming foot, and I tore myself from the mirror’s accusing gaze. I paced the room in jagged, restless strides, every stomp a battle cry against the ache in my chest. “I’m not fit for company.”
“I don’t need company,” he replied immediately, calm and unwavering. “I need you.”
A bitter laugh escaped me, hollow and sharp. “We all need things, Dominic. But want doesn’t shape reality. It just burns in our bones when the world denies us the simplest of things.”
The silence that followed was agonizing. I heard him shift, his boot rasping across the wooden floor as he recoiled from mycruelty. The stories he’d shared with me about losing his family, the grotesque way the Council punished everything he held dear hung between us. Guilt swelled in my throat, but I swallowed it like poison.
“You think driving us away is helping Alice?” His voice trembled, not with anger but with pain. “You think pushing me away is what she would want?”
There was a muffled thump as his fist met the wall beside the door, a muted echo of the storm within him. My instincts flared, snapping my head toward the sound. I wanted to snarl, to fight, to retreat deeper into the grief that cloaked me, but he kept going.
“We all love her. We all want her back.”
I stormed to the door, my hand wrapping around the knob with a fury that turned my knuckles white. “Then tell me who betrayed us. Give me that truth, Dominic, and I swear there will never be another door between us again.”
The moment the door flew open, he was there. No hesitation. No anger. Just arms, warm, trembling, pulling me close, anchoring me against the chaos. His face burrowed into the curve of my neck, and I realized I was clutching him, not to push him away, but because I needed something—I needed him—to stop me from breaking into a million pieces.
He said nothing, just held me, breathing me in like I was oxygen and he’d been drowning.
My chest ached and my hands tightened on his arms as if I could hold the world together that way. My lower lip quivered, my eyes stung so I blinked as fast as I could to stop the moisture gathering there.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he murmured, voice low and rough as shattered stone. “I failed you. I failed her. But we will find her.”
His nose grazed the column of my neck, stopping beneath my ear. “Just... don’t shut me out. Don’t leave me outside while you bleed alone.”
He shuddered, breathing in my presence like it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
“I couldn’t bear it, Brooklyn.”
“She’s gone, Dominic.” All the fight left me and I sagged in his arms. “I turned the city inside out and I can’t find her.”
“We will look together again.” Tightening his hold, my mate shifted slightly and picked me up. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”
“You don’t think I can be objective?” Scoffing at the insult, I debated jumping away from him, but it felt so good to feel the warmth of his body that I decided against it. He started walking down the hall, but I couldn’t care less where he was taking me as long as I could steal the heat from him. I didn’t realize how cold I was until that very moment.
“You?” He glanced down at me with a slight curl on one side of his lips that looked so sad I felt a pang under my ribs. “Objective when it comes to those you care about?” His hair had grown longer than he usually wore it, so it tumbled around his face when he shook his head. “Never. Objective is not a word I would associate with you in this situation, my love.”
“You’re an ass.” I thumped his chest with the back of my hand, and we both stiffened.
“You sound like Alice,” Dominic muttered as he resumed walking after faltering for a second.
A lump formed in my throat the size of a fist, and I had to swallow it before I could speak. “Where are you taking me?” Ignoring the comment was in our best interest at that moment.
