Page 118 of Walking in Darkness
Pax looked between Dani and Timothy before he set his full attention on me.
“He thought he would end you when he dragged you to that other plane when you had been in Faydor. Then he thought he would again behind that grocery store. He was afraid, Aria. You saw that he was afraid—shocked—that your demise wouldn’t be simple. I saw it, too, that afternoon.”
“Is he running?” Dani asked.
“That, or he’s keeping us distracted with all the rest of this bullshit while he’s working toward something that will make him unstoppable.” Spite filled Pax’s voice.
“He is somehow allowing the Kruen to break through the barriers of the otherworld and into this reality ...” A heave of air pressed out from my lungs as the weight of the consequences fell over me.
“Which means he’s about to take control of this world,” Timothy surmised. “Fully.”
“He told me he would rule it.” I hadn’t understood the fallout of what that’d really meant when he’d declared it. Had never deigned to imagine it might come to this.
I couldn’t even fathom what that would mean for humanity. If the skies were busted apart and Kruen crawled out to run rampant on Earth.
The two worlds colliding.
The one thing I knew for sure was this one wouldn’t last long.
It would be trampled.
Crushed.
Devastation strewn from one end to the other. Complete ruin left in its wake.
“We can’t allow that to happen.” Agitation curled through Pax’s voice as he roughed a hand through his hair, the man itching with the need to hunt. To slay the evil the way he’d always done.
“We won’t,” I asserted, and I reached out and took Dani’s hand, sharing a look with the woman who had been my mentor for so long. My sanity when I’d been so confused as a young adult. Support through all the trauma and fear.
My best friend.
My sister.
She took Timothy’s hand, and I reached out and grabbed Pax’s.
It linked us all like a chain.
And I could swear that, deep inside me, the light flared, and with the way everyone inhaled sharply at the contact, I was sure it did in them, too.
“Together,” I said.
“Together,” they reiterated.
Then surprise rocked out of Dani on a huff, and she cocked her head at me with those pale eyes wide. “Um, not to interrupt this whole pact to save the world that we’re making here, but what the hell is that?”
She cast a pointed look between Pax, me, and the ribbon tied around my left ring finger.
Pax shifted his attention to me, a cross of resolve and affection on his face before he shifted it back to Dani. “Aria and I are getting married.”
Then he squeezed my hand and murmured, “Tonight.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Pax—Tearsith
Pax held tight to Aria as they eased out from the dense foliage that hedged in their sanctuary. The air was pleasantly cool. Perfect as it murmured across their flesh on the temperate breeze that rustled through the boundaries of Tearsith.
The massive, magnificent tree stood proud in the distance. Limbs forever full of dense leaves stretched out to create a canopy of green. A tree where he and Aria had played as children. Where they’d laughed and giggled and chased each other.
