Page 31 of Reaper's Reward

Across the table, Fenrir launched into action.

He flipped the table, sending it flying up into the air between us. Maddox yanked my chair back and twisted to put his back to the table. I covered my head with my hands, but the distraction made my grip on the fate threads loosen.

“Shit,” I yelped as I fumbled to keep ahold of the chains I’d made.

The table hit the ground with a great thud. Feet tangled, I shot out of my chair and stumbled as I twisted back towards Fenrir with the fate chains at the ready. The sucking sensation returned. It pinched my skin in warning.

“Get down!” Maddox shouted.

Maddox shoved me to the floor and covered me with his body. In the darkness of his shelter, I lost sense of the room. All sound ceased, making my ears ring, while Fenrir consumed. Only Maddox’s weight kept me pinned to the floor and not flying towards the black hole that was Fenrir.

My heart pounded in my throat. When sound came crashing back in, I realized my hands were empty. The fate threads were gone. I’d lost control of them in my panic.

I cursed to myself when Maddox moved away and let me stand. Though, when I took in the room around me, I realized that perhaps that’d been for the best. Had I tried to face off against Fenrir, I wouldn’t be here anymore.

The room was empty. Even bits of the red carpet on the floor had been eaten. It was like someone had dropped a black-hole-bomb. The man in question wasn’t anywhere to be seen, either. He’d taken his chance to run.

I laughed.

Maddox shot me a confused look. “Are you insane?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from giggling, but it barely worked. Laughter still bubbled out of me. Maybe it was adrenaline, but Fenrir’s actions also proved something else.

“He’s afraid of me.”

Maddox blinked and shook his head. “I mean, everyone should be.”

“That’s good, though!” I spread my hands and tried to explain how we had a chance after all.

Maddox seemed distracted through it all. He stared at the spot where Fenrir had been. When Maddox bent to pick up a fallen chair in the far corner, he paused. He opened his palm and stared at the chair.

My eardrums bulged when a distorted boom sounded in Maddox’s corner. The soundwave echoed through the room, but that wasn’t enough to distract me from what he’d done. A chunk of the chair was missing, in a perfect spherical shape.

Maddox stood and stared at his palm. “He can transmute matter into energy.”

Okay, well that was a really normal explanation for something that seemed extremelyabnormal.And, now, we knew that Maddox could do the same thing. That meant he could feed on almost anything.

This was not what I’d expected when Maddox first shifted. I’d thought he was something between ghost and wolf. This was…far stranger. How could one bite from an undead shifter turn a man into a beast like Maddox?

Maddox straightened and flexed his hand as he stared at his empty palm. Questions reached the tip of my tongue, but it didn’t feel right giving voice to them. Maddox’s internal thoughts were his own. I didn’t want to be a pestering girlfriend…

I wasn’t his girlfriend. Well, at least, not officially. We’d been close lately, but that didn’t make us a couple. Even if all my friends called us mates, that wasn’t really the truth of the matter.

My heart ached to put a label on whatever this was, but Maddox was clearly distracted by his supernatural abilities. Now wasn’t the time to prod the man with my yearning. Still, it felt like no time was right. In this situation, we could very well die before either of us managed to say anything about how we really felt.

I opened my mouth to say something while my heart was full of burgeoning emotions.

“What happened to my restaurant?” Beryl bellowed.

I barely had time to twist towards Beryl. I caught the flabbergasted expression on her face right as Maddox wrapped his arm around me. The sensation of a familiar portal grazed my skin right before we tumbled through it.

My stomach flipped. The portals between the world of the living and the afterlife had been really unpredictable because of the rips that Vincent had left in the fabric of reality. I’d fallen through too many gaps in reality to trust this portal. Yet, we landed with both feet on solid ground.

I had to pry my fingers out of Maddox’s arm as I gulped down mouthfuls of fresh air. He peered down at me with a guarded expression. I gave him a queasy smile, but the memory of falling through reality in the afterlife still haunted me.

We weren’t in Lakesedge anymore. The wooded land around us was familiar, but only barely. It took several moments to remember where I’d seen this landscape before. It was only when the smell of roast chicken reached my nose that I realized Maddox had brought us to his uncle’s property.

A big smile reached my face when I turned to Maddox. He was gone, though. My jaw nearly hit the ground. I scanned the surroundings, expecting to catch a glimpse of a white wolf. Instead, I saw his platinum hair because he remained on two feet rather than four.

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