Page 36 of Fated In Forever
For one glorious second, everything fell away, and I grinned back, then reality crashed in and I turned away. Her fingers trailed lightly over my arm, Malachi, please. Let me in. Just…You don’t even have to tell me anything, just…let me in. Stop shutting me out.
I didn’t answer. Oh, I wanted to. But what could I say?
We’re now soul-bound—until the end of time, by the way—and I’m an hour away from becoming your worst fucking nightmare. No. I couldn’t. Iwouldn’tbreak her heart like that. Instead, I slammed our connection closed once more.
Not to punish her…but to protect her.
I’d started off this day with the unshakable belief I was doing Vicious a kindness by coming here, but none of this was kind. Forcing her to endure this hideous place wasexceedingly cruel, and the more the doubts crept in, the more I dragged my feet.
But every time I almost broke, every time I opened my mouth to call this off, every time I ached to speak mind to mind with her, that hungry darkness rose up again to claim me.
Reaching, reaching down our bond.
Reaching for Vicious at the other end.
I was utterly corrupted. Ruined. Unredeemable.
There was no hope left for me. But I could give Evangeline this one last gift. I could keep her safe. The evil inside me might want her, but I would never let the shadows take her. Vicious wasmine. She belonged in the light and I meant to ensure she remained there.
So I locked our bond down tight.
This was cruel, and unfair, but the only way to protect Evangeline was to cut her off completely, keeping her safe. Because the Underworld could have me, but I swore not a hint of that realm’s corruption would ever touch the female I loved.
No, I would willingly die down here, so long as she walked out, free and alive.
The plain, gray granite tunnel became veined with dark obsidian, and I idly wondered who—or what—had carved them. Hands…or claws? Slaves, or willing labor? And the deeper we went, the surer I felt I was coming home.
That Iwashome.
That the portal, wherever it led, was where I needed to be.
That truth was cruel, and liberating, and unavoidable, at the same time. I sensed that welcoming hum in my marrow. These dark-veined stones knew me. Whatever magic hadbirthed my bloodline, we’d been born down here, fed on old blood and darker promises.
I was only returning to the source.
Vicious cast her eyes back, her mouth tightening when she realized I’d caught her looking. But my heart glowed. Shedidcare. Despite my faults, despite me being a literal monster…she still cared.
A sudden rush of jealousy burned away that warm glow.
Not envy of Blake or Riordan, though I knew I’d never touch her again, never hear another of her soft, helpless moans, never watch her tip over the edge of pleasure, the way stars exploded in her eyes.
No—I was jealous of theirfutures.All that precious time stretching out in front of them. The simple, miraculous fact that tomorrow existed…for them.
My future was written in the rock of this mountain, in these shining veins of obsidian, in the swirling black behind the portal, a fate that had been written long before I even existed. Perhaps I’d been foolish to ever imagine there was such a thing as free will, or destiny.
When this was where I’d been meant to end up all along.
The important thing was, Evangeline would survive this war. She would have the future she deserved with two males who would lay down their lives for her, worship her every breath, which was no less than what she deserved.
And I would be a whisper of a memory that came to her just before darkness fell, and she forgot by the time her head hit the pillow.
Another trap, this one hidden in the walls—blades that snapped out at chest height.
Blake tested the trigger with a tossed stone, and metal screamed as the mechanism activated. Wickedly sharp teethsheared through the air and embedded into the opposite wall.
Finn frowned. “This is a problem. We didn’t encounter these the last time.”
“I’m in no mood to lose a finger or a hand,” Nash muttered.
