Page 6 of Hell to Slay

“Jax,” Nico called to me, and my breath caught in my throat.

This was it. Nico was going to leave us. He would say it was for our own good, just like last time.

But with his usual bad timing, my brother interrupted.

“Nico, Jax, get in the van,” Hudson ordered. “We’ll talk later. DHA agents are on their way here right now.”

To my surprise, Nico jumped into the back of the van with me, and I couldn’t help but over-analyze what he’d planned to say. I still had the feeling he was planning to play the ‘I’m too dangerous to be in a coven’ card.

I’d spent years pining over Nico. Now I’d finally formed a coven with him, but had things between us really changed at all? No.

As the van started moving, Nico and I collided. I automatically wrapped an arm around him to steady him, then thought better of it. He’d kept me at arm’s length for years, instead of confiding in me and letting me help work through his fears with him together in a relationship. I pushed him away from me, wanting nothing to do with him at the moment.

Mel started debriefing us, giving us as much intel as she could about the devil. Nico’s expression grew more and more grim, and I imagined how helpless he felt now, having been unable to protect Mel as she faced down the devil alone.

Strangely, though, Nico interrupted Mel — not to ask her a question about the devil, but to apologize to me. Was he really going to do this right now?

I glared at him and said, “We’re fine.”

“Sorry,” he muttered as Mel continued, apparently missing our brief exchange.

Honestly, Nico’s poorly timed apology only made me angrier at him. He indulged in his own failings, totally unaware of how he trampled over others’ feelings on the subject. He wallowed in his self-induced misery instead of working with us to figure it out together. He’d never once apologized to me for leaving me the way he had or ghosting me, but now he wanted to randomly apologize for his frenzy in the middle of Mel’s debrief?

I would never understand him. He’d kissed Mel like she was his entire world, but now he wasn’t even listening to her?

And while he’d been frenzied, he’d locked onto Mel like a heat-seeking missile, but hadn’t even recognized me. It was a blow to my ego, to be honest.

I still desperately clung to my younger dreams of a perfect coven, but reality wasn’t measuring up to the fantasy. I knew it would be worth the effort if we could heal our coven, but I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.

Nico’s feelings for Mel had been developing for a while now… and maybe his inability to admit them to himself was causing his instability, increasing his propensity to frenzy.

Nico and I had both drained people dry — we were both at greater risk of falling into a frenzy than a vampire like Hudson, who’d never committed such a sin. I wanted Mel to be safe, too, yet I hadn’t frenzied. So what had sent Nico off the cliff, when I’d had no difficulty maintaining control?

I wished I knew, but I should be the last person to talk to Nico about it. With my current frame of mind, it wouldn’t go well. Nico had endangered us all, when he should’ve been fighting at our side like a team. Rather than acting as part of a coven, he’d done the most selfish thing of all and let himself fall into the frenzy to go after her alone. He let his vampire nature take over to save her.

If the devil had stayed behind, Nico’s frenzy would’ve left us at a massive disadvantage, with our attention split between the devil, Mel, and him. We’d been lucky everything had turned out the way it had.

No, I couldn’t be the one to talk to Nico about the frenzy. And Hudson would go about it like an agent in charge instead of a coven-mate, which wasn’t what Nico needed, either. No, if anyone could set Nico straight, it would have to be Mel.

That was the point of a coven — I should feel confident depending on my coven-mates because their strengths covered for my weaknesses. And however much I wished otherwise, Nico was still one of my weaknesses.

Part of me knew I should be glad that Mel might get through to him. But another part of me remembered how it had felt to watch them kiss like that. Like they were the last two people on Earth.

I loved Mel and always would. If she came to care for Nico the way she cared about me and Hudson, it would only strengthen our coven. That’s what I needed to remind myself.

There was a massive rift between me and Nico, and it only seemed to be getting wider. I still hadn’t gotten over him, and I needed to accept that being in a coven with him might mean I never would.

Chapter Four

Nico

Coming out of the frenzy with my fangs in Mel’s throat flooded me with fear… until I realized her fangs were also latched to me. Regaining control of myself was a shock to all my senses, but in a fucked up way, I was getting used to it after having gone into the frenzy multiple times before. I pulled my mouth away from Mel’s perfect, tender throat and felt my fangs retract.

An unfamiliar, vaguely feminine voice echoed inside of my head.“Nice job, big guy. You brought her out of it.”

Color returned to Mel’s mesmerizing eyes as they fell to my mouth, causing me to glance at hers. Her normally delicious pink lips were stained red with my blood, and somehow that made me feel… proud?

My emotions were all tangled up, and if I hadn’t just shot a load in my pants from her orgasmic bite, I probably would’ve gotten hard at the sight of her licking my blood from her lips. She leaned in to lick her own blood off of my chin before devouring my mouth with her own.

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