Page 24 of Fated Wings
Silence stretched between them, taut as a tripwire.
“How am I supposed to trust you now?” Vaughn finally asked. “How do I know you won't disappear again the moment my back is turned?”
“You don’t, I guess.” Newt’s shoulders slumped. “But I’m here now. I came back.”
“Only because your magic screwed up and landed you in vampire central.”
Newt’s eyes flashed. “That’s not fair. I would have come back anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” Vaughn said. “Neither do I. That’s the problem.”
The hurt on Newt’s face should have made Vaughn back down, but he couldn’t. Not when the fear of abandonment still had its claws so deep in his chest he could barely breathe around it.
“I thought we had something,” Vaughn said quietly. “Something worth being honest about.”
“We do.” Newt’s voice cracked. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix trust once it’s broken.”
Newt stared at him for a long moment, eyes glistening. Then, without warning, he strode past Vaughn toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Vaughn called after him.
Newt paused, not turning around. “Crazy,” he said, voice tight with unshed tears, “and you’re not allowed to come with me.”
The door slammed behind him with enough force to rattle the pictures on the wall.
“Already there,” Vaughn muttered. “You just walked into the closet!”
With a shake of his head, Vaughn crossed the room and swung the door open and walked inside.
The door slammed behind him, bathing the closet in darkness.
“Vaughn?” Newt whispered. “Tell me you’re the one who cut off the light.”
He grabbed his mate, pulling Newt toward him right before he felt them freefalling.
Chapter Seven
Newt felt like he was going to vomit as they slammed into a floor. He landed on top of his mate, feeling the wind being knocked out of him. What the heck? One moment Newt was standing in the closet, glancing around and embarrassed he’d made his exit through the wrong door. And then this? What was this? With a deep moan, he tried to push off of Vaughn, but his mate tightened his arms around Newt, whispering, “Don’t move.”
Something invisible yanked Newt upward, ripping him from Vaughn’s protective embrace. His body jerked through the air as if caught by a massive hook, arms and legs flailing uselessly. Before he could even scream, his back slammed against a cold metal table, knocking what little breath remained from his lungs.
Metal cuffs snapped around his wrists and ankles with brutal efficiency. The restraints bit into his skin, cold and unyielding. Newt gasped, trying to make sense of what was happening as his brain struggled to catch up with his body's sudden imprisonment.
“Vaughn!” he cried out, panic rising like bile in his throat. The room spun around him—stone walls, dim torchlight, and the sickening smell of old blood and fear.
Vaughn scrambled to his feet, face transforming into something feral and terrified. “God no,” he muttered, rushing to Newt’s side. His hands flew to the restraints, pulling at them with desperate strength.
“What’s happening? Where are we?” Newt’s voice cracked as he pulled against the metal bands securing him to what felt horrifyingly like a medieval torture device. The metal frame beneath him was cold enough to seep through Vaughn’s borrowed shirt, raising goosebumps across his skin.
Vaughn’s face drained of color. “We’re in Vex’s dungeon.”
The words fell like stones into Newt’s stomach. Vex. The demon who had tortured Vaughn. The source of his nightmares, his trembling hands, his fear of shadows…
And now they were trapped in his lair.
“This is where he—” Newt couldn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t need to. The answer was written in every line of Vaughn’s face, in the way his breathing had gone shallow and fast, in how his eyes darted to every corner as if expecting monsters to materialize.
