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)
“Yes.”
Rage and hate lit up my insides. “Was he trying to drag you back there? Compel you?”
“No,” she wheezed, and her eyes slammed shut. Distress held her in a fist. “He was showing me what he was going to do.” I shifted off the side of the bed, and I slowly rounded the end of it to come to stand in front of her. In front of this woman whose spirit was shaking so badly I could feel it battering into me. “What did he show you?”
“Dani.” She choked on her name.
Dread spiraled through the center of me.
“He’s going for her,” I said, the words blunt.
Filled with the fury this bastard evoked.
I wanted to end him. I wanted to end him with my bare fuckin’ hands. Destroy him for the destruction he’d employed. But I knew it was going to take so much more than me.
“He wants to hurt me. Make me suffer before he brings me to my end.” Aria’s voice tremored.
“Or it’s a fucking trap. A manipulation to get you where he wants you.”
“He can obviously find me anywhere, Pax. That was the whole plan, wasn’t it? That I’d draw him to me.”
“It worked before the bastard ran away.”
“And I think he’s changing tactics. He’s filled with hatred. He wants to torture me. Weaken my resolve by stealing the ones who mean the most to me.”
“Because he’s afraid,” I said. “Afraid of what you can do.”
Aria blinked those pale, pale eyes in the dimness of the room. Sparks of white flamed in their depths. “I don’t know what his twisted intentions are, but I can tell you I’m not going to let him get to her.”
She went to her phone, which was charging on the nightstand, her face pinching as she input the number, faltering over a couple of them. She wheezed in frustration, “I don’t know if I remember the exact number.”
She made the call anyway. It rang and rang. Never doing anything.
“Dang it, Dani.” Worried frustration rolled from her before she grabbed her duffel from the floor, where we’d left our things packed in case we had to leave quickly in the night. She tossed it onto the bed, unzipped it, and dug through to find a change of clothes.
“You know where she lives?” I asked.
Aria sniffled as she shucked off her sweats and dragged on a pair of jeans. “Yeah. I’ve always known she lives in Oregon, but I got her address the other night. She lives in a small suburb outside of Portland.”
“Shit.” That was almost a two-day drive straight through.
I paced the floor, roughing my hands through the mess of my hair as I toiled through my thoughts. I turned back to Aria, who was pulling a pink sweater over her head.
“Maybe he’s manipulating you, Aria. Sending you on a wild-goose chase so you’re distracted from your purpose.”
“And you know I can’t take the chance that he’s not.” She turned toward me, her hands fisted on her chest, agony whittled into every gorgeous line on her face. “This is Dani, Pax. My mentor. The one who was there for me through my entire childhood. The one who tried to prepare me for what it was going to be like when I first descended on Faydor. My friend. My sister.”
It was horrible what was happening with our Laven family. To all Laven. But I knew there was a special bond between Aria and Dani, just like there’d always been one between me and Timothy.
There was no way Aria would turn her back on her. And I wouldn’t be the asshole who tried to stop her.
“Do you have any idea when? What his intentions were?”
Dejection roiled in her spirit. “I just saw him outside her house . . . waiting for her. It was in the middle of the day. What day that was, I don’t know, and I can’t take the chance of waiting to warn her tonight.”
My head bobbed as I calculated, and I knew there was only one thing we could do.
“Hurry and get your things together. We’ve got to go.”
An hour and a half later, we were speeding along a remote narrow road that cut through snowed-over fields that lay dormant in the middle of winter. We were about fifty miles outside the city.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, spraying pinks into the dusky gray sky, and every so often, we passed by the sporadic farmhouse tucked within the croplands.
Everything was quiet and still.
It felt like we’d gotten lost in the middle of nowhere.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Aria murmured as we flew down the road. Lines weren’t even painted on the asphalt.
“Yeah.”
Seemed crazy that this threat loomed so distinct, yet here, in this moment, there was peace. Like the world hadn’t gotten the message that things were about to go to shit. We had to keep it that way.