Take me! Not him!
I love you. I love you.
“Constantine!”
I come awake with a start.
And freak the fuck out because I’m inside a coffin.
Wait. Not a coffin. I’m under a bed. Eight years have passed since the last time this happened. Maybe seeing Hendrix sleeping on the floor triggered me somehow. But why would…
A pounding ache reverberates through my skull. My vision swims with hazy fragments of memories. And then everything comes back to me in a sudden, soul-wrenching deluge of heartbreak.
Aleksei. Guns. Blood. Aleksander. An explosion.
“Constantine!” I cry out hoarsely.
Pain tears into me as I scramble out from my hiding place as stiff, bruised muscles refuse to move. A roar fills my ears, and an inferno of emotions engulfs me as my mind is barraged with image after image, a slideshow made of horrific nightmares. New ones that have me gasping for breath, and old ones that I never wanted to remember.
“Constantine!”
Every bone and joint scream as I clamber to my feet. Dizziness spins the room around me, and I stumble and crash into the side of the bed. My stomach lurches with nausea that leaves an acrid, nasty taste in my mouth, and I gulp down the vomit that wants to rise. Breathing deeply in through my nose and out my mouth, I try to fill lungs that don’t want to cooperate. With a shaking hand, I cup the back of my head.Thud. Thud. Thud.It pounds to the same throbbing agony as my heartbeat until it feels like my skull wants to split wide open.
I struggle to blink away the disorientation as my tear-crusted eyes frantically search the dimly lit room. A room that is unfamiliar. Not mine or Constantine’s or Tristan’s or Hendrix’s.
The walls are adorned with faded paintings, and even though I don’t see a bookcase in the room, there’s a musty scent of old books that hangs in the air and mingles with the ashy aftermath of the explosion that clings to my skin and clothes.
“Constantine!”
My limbs feel heavy with invisible iron chains shackled around my ankles. Ignoring the discomfort, I stumble toward the door, my legs unsteady beneath me. Light spills into the room when I throw open the door, and I cover my eyes with my forearm to block out the glare.
My voice quivers as I quietly call out, “Constantine? Tristan? Hendrix?”
My words seem to vanish into the vastness of nothingness, swallowed by the house’s eerie stillness. Where am I?
Cautiously venturing into the corridor, a shiver of unease trickles down my spine. The dark hallway is cloaked in silence, broken only by the sound of my own faltering footsteps. Shadows dance along the tapestried walls, appearing to twist and contort as if alive.
The hairs on my arms and neck raise when a noise at the end of the hallway catches my attention. There’s someone else here. Flattening my back against the wall, I bite the whimper of pain that wants to escape my lips when every part of my body protests the sudden movement. I’m in no shape to fight, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. My thoughts are single-minded and focused on one purpose. Find Constantine.
I never got to say goodbye. I never got to kiss him one last time. Touch him. Have one more morning of waking up in his arms. Hear his beautiful, broken voice. I never said the words…
I cover my mouth when a sob breaks free, the agony unbearable as it beats down on me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
“Syn?”
I respond to the name I’ve been called for the last ten years spoken by a vaguely familiar voice that isn’t the one I want so desperately to hear right now.
I look up from my grief. Dark hair. Hazel eyes. Black-rimmed glasses. Clark Kent looks.
“Evan?”
I react without consideration.
Framed paintings fall off the walls and crash against the unforgiving hard wood when my body collides with his, and we tumble to the floor. A surge of pain jolts through me at the impact, and Evan grunts as the wind is knocked out of him, momentarily stunned by the unexpected attack. I use it to my advantage.
Our bodies thrash and twist, limbs entangled in a messy struggle for dominance. Using nothing but pure adrenaline, I lock my legs around his torso when we roll, then jerk my forearm under his neck in a debilitating chokehold.