Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
“Fine, just as long as you remember my favorite way of waking up.”
His chuckle was dark as he raked his fingers through the crop of white hair on his head. “You think you’re going to find me complaining?”
Heat flushing my skin and a tiny grin threatening my mouth, I slipped off the side of the bed, taking the top sheet with me, and dipped into the bathroom.
I showered quickly. It seemed ridiculous that I had a smile plastered to my face the entire time, but I wasn’t going to feel guilty for it. As far as I was concerned, we’d earned whatever scraps of happiness we could scrape together.
Once I’d finished, I stepped out and wrapped myself in a towel before I headed back into the main room.
Though I froze when I felt the anxiety gripping the room the second I stepped through the door.
Pax was propped up on the bed, and his head was downturned, all his attention trained on his phone.
“What is it?” I croaked around the tension, not even sure I wanted to know.
Foreboding filled his features when he looked up at me and said, “William is dead.”
Chapter Seven
Pax
“What? How do you know?” Aria begged from where she stood wrapped in a towel outside the bathroom.
In an instant, the bubble we’d been cloaked in earlier popped. Those threads of peace that’d been weaving around us stripped away.
Grief tugged at my insides, but it went so much deeper than that.
It was dread.
The heaviest kind of dread sank down to the pit of my stomach.
“Didn’t know him well,” I told her. “But I knew his last name and his hometown. Couldn’t shake this feeling, so I looked him up.”
I lifted my face so I could fully meet her gaze as I delivered the news. “He died of a drug overdose two nights ago.”
“Oh my God.” It gushed from Aria’s mouth, and I knew her heart was immediately stretching out for Claire. Like she might be able to reach her on another plane and comfort her. Though I doubted there would be much comfort for this.
Aria blinked through the disorder, and I could feel it gather inside her. The same awareness I’d been terrified of recognizing last night. “You don’t think it’s random.”
I exhaled heavily. “I can’t say for certain, but this shit doesn’t sit right. Two of our family in a week? Both of them young and healthy? When we haven’t lost anyone in years? And I don’t buy that bullshit that William OD’d. He didn’t strike me as a junkie.”
And God knew I’d encountered many of them hunting the streets of Las Vegas.
I looked to the floor, processing, before I tentatively returned my attention to her. “What that bastard said to you . . . something about ending you all. You took it as him meaning Valients . . .”
It took her a moment of the same processing. “You think he meant all Laven and not just me.”
She didn’t phrase it as a question. I think we’d both arrived at the same conclusion a while ago. Or maybe we’d just known it was coming all along.
“I don’t know for sure. But if it is? If these deaths weren’t by chance?”
“Oh God, Pax.” Tears blurred those pale-gray eyes.
“Maybe I’m being paranoid . . .” Sighing, I anxiously ran a hand through my hair. Nothing about saying that sat right. Fit right.
Slowly, Aria moved toward me.
A lure, because there was nothing I could do but shift around to sit up on the side of the bed. My hands went to her thighs, and I held on to her like she could be an anchor.
She breathed out. “We have to stop him. Find him here, on this plane, and stop him like Ellis said. And we have to do it soon.”
Silence stretched between us.
“How the hell do we do that?”
She softly brushed her fingers through my hair, surety in her voice. “He’ll come for me.”
My arms curled around her waist, and I blew out a ragged breath where I buried my face in the towel at her belly.
Terrified that she was right.
Chapter Eight
Pax—Tearsith
He and Aria remained at the motel that entire day, watching out the window for any sign of the depraved, wondering if and when someone would come for them.
When it’d been quiet for the entire day, they curled themselves together on the bed, where they fell through time and space to emerge in their sanctuary.
Only, when they stepped out into Tearsith, it was anything but a sanctuary.
It was a place of torment.
One of grief.
Claire sobbed from where she was huddled with Margarethe, while murmurings of distress rolled through their Laven family.
Five others had not come tonight, and the worry of what might have befallen them was distinct. Palpable as it rippled through the cool breeze.
Many paced, ripping at their hair. Others mumbled among themselves, their voices hushed and dripping with fear.