Page 140 of Tortured Soul
His face looked tense as he looked around them, eyes scanning the perimeter as they progressed in the stone forest.
They must have left at least two hours ago to be already this far. Why didn’t Arc tell me anything?
“Are you planning to stay here after we get back?” Arc asked.
Something bugged me in his voice. It was casual, but forced. Anxious.
The Nephilim didn’t hesitate a second. “If Lola stays, I’m staying. If she wants to leave, I’ll try and convince her to stay, but ultimately, if she does I’ll follow.”
The silence stretched for a few minutes and my unease grew with it. The sun started to rise on the horizon, partially illuminating their path through the dense forest of trees turned to stones.
“What makes you think she’ll want to leave?”
Dimitri turned his head toward him briefly.
I had heard Arc and Lola talk in the kitchen the night she helped me pluck the crystal shards out of my back. She did say she planned to go away. To wait until Dimitri was back and then leave Arc and I behind. She had some good reasons and arguments, to be fair; none of us had exactly been models since she arrived here…
“You wouldn’t be the first,” Dimitri answered.
“The first what?”
“Mate to be left behind.”
Arc’s vision narrowed and jaw clenched.
“I understand that you guys have had some highs and lows since you met, but weren’t you the one who left the last time?”
Dimitri chuckled, the sound a little dry.
“I’m not talking about me.”
My friend froze abruptly and Dimitri groaned but stopped a few feet farther.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on,” the Nephilim grunted. “You didn’t think Carter and you are the first mates she’s met since finding me over fifteen hundred years ago? You said so yourself, we’re a group of six, which means she has five mates. Lola lived a long life, she obviously stumbled upon at least another one of her mates before.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and from Arc’s stillness, he hadn’t considered this possibility either.
“What do youmeanleft behind?” Arc snapped, taking a step closer to him and grabbing a hold of his forearm.
Dimitri’s eyes dropped to the hand on his skin and his eyes swirled angrily.
“Let go or you’ll lose the arm.”
An empty threat, but filled with a painful promise nonetheless.
Arc ignored it. “What. Do you. Mean?”
His grip tightened and Dimitri’s eyes darkened before he threw his other hand forward, sending Arc stumbling backward like he'd been hit by a car.
“You might be powerful but you don’t scare me. Touch me like this again, and you’ll be going to this prison on your own, only to return and find Lola and me gone.”
“Are you insinuating that Lola left her other mate because you told her to?”
Dimitri scoffed, shaking his head, the rising light reflecting on his silver hair like a beacon. The red in his eyes was vibrant and menacing as he took a step closer to my oldest friend.
“I didn’t. But I helped her flee when she asked me to. I helped cover her tracks and hide herself so he wouldn’t find her again, even during our decades apart. I’ll stop at nothing to protect her, even from herself or the people who care about her so much they put her and themselves at risk. She’s—”
