Page 31 of Mate of a Monster

“I didn’t let you do anything,” he says, and there’s strain there, but not guilt. “If I could control you, mate, we wouldn’t be standing here in the first place. But if you want someone to blame…” His deep voice rumbles, his red eyes flashing. “Blame the part of you that still feels him and the anger he feeds you.”

The accusation digs deeper than any blade.

Maybe he’s right. That place where the bond lived, it still exists.

It bleeds like an open fucking wound deep in my gut. Or, it did.

Right now, it pulses.

Reaches?

What the fuck is it reaching for?

I groan, gripping my hair and spinning with my eyes closed. “What is happening to me?” I scream.

Two massive arms wrap around me. I struggle against the hold, kicking and yanking, but then my back meets the beast’s hard chest. A single breath later and every muscle in my body sags in defeat.

It’s like my body surrenders without permission and I don’t know what to make of it.

“When you are weak, I am strong.” The Nightkin breathes, or maybe his voice is back in my head. I can’t say for sure.

“Is he really gone?” I ask, and I hate the strain in my tone.

“What if I told you we can get him back?”

The world stills and I look up at him, his massive frame towering above me, horns gleaming under the sun. “Resurrection?”

“No.” His knuckles come up, and my skin tingles when they brush along the jewels at my temple “Exile Island rebels against us. The wards have fallen before the fates intended, and now the space between us has narrowed.”

“I don’t understand.”

He tilts my head upward, his nose falling into the crook of my neck as he inhales with a groan. “Die here, waken there.”

I tense and he hums in response.

“Yes, mate. Back to the place you were taken. Back to him.”

“No.” I try to scramble but he holds me still. “Fuck him. Fuck them! I would never go back.” A literal ache sweeps through my body—an ache reflected in the beast’s eyes.

He aches for me, but why?

Little Hellpet, do you want your friend back?

He glides his fingers across my closed lips, tracing the shape of my mouth. It shouldn’t draw a shaking breath from me, but it does.

“This isn’t just about you,” he says. “If the exiles learn the only way to get home is to pick a fight, there will be no going back. We must fix what’s been broken and return what doesn’t belong.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means our time has come, Hellpet.”

“Time for what?”

“For the guarded warrior to rise.”

His thumb drags slowly along my jaw, and my pulse answers him in a way I don’t understand, a low hum beneath my skin that feels too familiar.

“The fates have been wronged. Now they’re stepping in, and they come with vengeance,” he murmurs, red eyes dimming just enough for something else to surface beneath them. Something he clearly wants me to see.