Page 8 of As Darkness Fall
“Throw me the clothes, will you?” I said, sticking out one hand toward Aaron, using the other to cover my tits as his eyes drank in the sight of my bare skin. I shivered, but not with the cold, rather at the promise of his stare. Of what he would do to me if I went to him.
All of a sudden, I was warm again.
“We should try again,” Vir said abruptly, interrupting the unspoken conversation going on between Aaron and me.
“Try what?” Aaron asked.
With a tiny sigh, I pulled my gaze away from Aaron’s nearly naked form. The annoying thing about Vir is that he was right.
“Wait for us outside, okay?” I told Aaron.
The guide didn’t look happy about being ordered to leave Vir and me alone, but as he’d made clear several times on our expedition, he was hired and under my orders. As long as they weren’t going to get him killed, he would follow them. So, he did, dipping his head at me and ignoring Vir completely before retreating from the domed chamber to give us some space.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” I told Vir.
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t call it the first time. I didn’tdoanything.”
Vir shook his head. “You must have. It responded to you, Dani. That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.”
We spoke in low, hushed tones so Aaron couldn’t eavesdrop. I didn’t know if he had supernatural hearing, but I was no longer going to assume anything about him was human.
“I–” I stopped speaking, thinking back to what happened.
Johnathan had been chasing me through the underground city of Shuldar, the ancient shifter city that was lost to us over a thousand years ago. Most had thought it a myth, little more than legend, but my father had spent his life hunting for it, and in the end, before he disappeared, I think he located it. Or at least, he thought he had. I longed to ask him, but I couldn’t. He’d been gone for months now, him and my mother having disappeared the same night, without warning, explanation, or hint.
“Dani?” Vir prodded.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking aside the sadness. I’d spent months searching for them, paying anyone I could to try and track them down, with no luck. Every pack in a five-hundred-mile radius had come back without any clues. It was like they’d disappeared into thin air.
“What happened in here?” Vir asked.
“We entered the chamber. Me first,” I said quietly, reliving the horror and sheer agony that had filled my body. It wasn’t hard. Only half an hour ago, I’d wanted to die because it hurt so much. I could still easily remember the feeling of my mind splitting in two as I continued to reject the Soulbond to Johnathan.
I wasn’t looking forward to going throughthatagain. But I would. For myself. For the right to have achoice.
“Nothing happened when we first entered,” I continued. “It was dark, cold, musty. Like nobody had been here in a long, long time.”
“Mmm,” Vir said. “Probably a thousand years or more, to be precise.”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head, trying to wrap it around that concept. It was such a long period of time to a mortal.
To Vir, it was probably like a decade. Maybe less. I couldn’t grasp what that would be like. To live forever, time passing so quickly. To him, I would be nothing more than a sneeze. A little blip in his undying life. How sad.
“We fought, he and I,” I said, looking over at the body lying in the corner. “He was winning, I think. It’s kind of blurry. But then the power just erupted from the center around me. It filled me. I struck him with it.”
“It’s amazing he survived,” Vir said quietly. “If it was anything like what you tried to hit me with.”
I cringed at the reminder I’d tried to strike a god.
“Uh, oops,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Plus, I was pissed.”
While we talked, I got up and grabbed Aaron’s clothes. It was a process trying to put them on. I was tired, and my body was starting to ache everywhere as the adrenaline faded. I’d been hurt somewhat badly, and though the wounds were closed up, I was still drained of blood and energy. It would take some time to recover before I was back in full health.
“You don’t feel anything, being in here?” Vir asked, standing up as well. “No residual power, no call?”
I know what he meant by that. Before I’d come here, back when I’d still been Soulbound to Johnathan, my mind had wanted to get closer to him, to accept him as a mate. I’d rejected that pull with all my might. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d done it. What I hadn’t realized until later on was that somethingelsewas pulling me, calling to me.
