Page 20 of Soul Redeemed

Falling back on the pillow, she remained on her side, tucking her hand beneath her cheek as she watched him, the chain still tugging at her throat. “There was nowhere else I felt safe.”

“What makes you think you’re safe here?”

“Do you no longer care for me, Calix? Is that what this is about? You’ve given up on me?”

“I never gave up on you. I scoured the streets every night. Every club. Every ugly corner of this fucking city. All for you.”

Tears welled in her eyes, and she gave a subtle brush of her finger to wipe them away. “Why? Why would you do that after I … after I betrayed you?”

He shook his head, eyes casting away from hers. “I asked myself that every night.”

Ava’s heart sank at that.

His gaze lifted to hers once more. “But then I asked myself why I wouldn’t. If I could live in a world without you in it.”

Shame tore at her so much, she could hardly lift her gaze to him. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Calix. I won’t ask for it. But if you give me another chance, I promise you, I won’t betray you again.”

It could’ve only been a matter of seconds that passed in what seemed like minutes, before Calix cleared his throat. “These demons who are after you. What claim do they have on you? Why do they think you belong to them? Have you … have they laid claim to you?”

His venomous words shot through her like flames, stoking up the kind of anger she hadn’t felt in months. The man she’d fallen in love with seemed to have grown bitter and cruel in her absence. Perhaps she deserved it, but she hadn’t had a choice at the time. She’d be frying alongside her sadistic brother in Stygius, had she opted not to release Draven and steal Calla away from the mansion. “Burn in Stygius, Calix. I was a fucking prisoner for months!”

The anger on his face snapped to surprise, and Ava internally chided herself for the confession. Why she’d felt the need to keep it secret, she didn’t know. Calix and his brothers were certainly formidable enough to eliminate Oliver in one swoop. Something about that compound felt bigger than her bumbling captor and his henchman, though. From what Ava had learned of the Sang, entire races had once been wiped out by their kind.

“Tomorrow, I’ll leave,” she continued. “I’ll leave, and you’ll never have to hear from me again. I just needed a place to feel safe for a minute.”

“You’re safe here. I’ll watch over you tonight. And in the morning, we’ll figure out where we go from here.”

With a nod, Ava pulled the sheets up to her chin and lay on her side, watching Calix as he watched her from his chair.

11

Screams ripped Calix from sleep, and he shot up from the chair where he’d drifted off himself.

“No! Don’t let them do this! Please! It burns! It burns!” Ava thrashed in the bed, her body twisting beneath the sheets with every kick and flail of her arms. “Help me! Calix! Help me!”

On instinct, Calix shot across the room, dodging the swing of her fist, and grabbed both of her wrists. “Ava, you’re okay.”

Her eyes were wide, crazed, her pupils dilated as she stared up at him, squirming in his grasp. “Let me go! Let me go! You don’t know what they’re going to do! The women! They’re dead. They’re dead!” The roundness of her eyes shrank into the sorrowful tip of her brow, and sobs ripped from her chest. “That’s what they want. To hurt me. Just like those poor … women.”

The chain tugged at her throat with each jerk of her body, and rather than risk her decapitating herself, he loosened the chain and slid it over her head.

“Let me go! I have to help them! They’ll die!”

“Who?” Calix brought both of her wrists together and held them against her chest. Stroking her hair brought her gaze to his once more, and still they appeared distant. Vacant. “Tell me who did this. I’ll punish him.”

Tears slipped down her temple. “You can’t.” Her body softened, muscles going lax in his grip. Limbs trembling, she curled into her side, and tucked her head into the blankets, still shivering.

As if she’d never awoken, she drifted back into dreams.

He made quick work of the buttons on his jeans, sliding them off, and tossed them onto the adjacent chair, then stripped out of his shirt. Once naked, he sank into the bed beside her and curled himself around her small frame. Within seconds, her shivering dissipated, and she turned into him, burying her face in his chest while she continued to sleep.

Everything about her felt right, and it pissed him off that being with her was so wrong. There’d once been a time when Calix had thought Ava was it for him, that he’d never need another. That everything he’d dared to dream about her might be real.

Calix sat on the edge of the bed, head hung in shame as the last five minutes replayed through his mind. A whisper of touch drifted across his back, and he flinched, turning to see Ava on her knees behind him. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she tipped his head to the side, exposing the scars that tracked the spikes of his collar. The moment her lips made contact with the scar, his eyes screwed shut in a bid to keep from wanting to tear himself out of his own skin.

“Don’t be ashamed.” Her whisper reached through his dark thoughts, pulling him back into her. “You are every bit as worthy as anyone else. Don’t ever think you’re not, Calix.”

As if on cue, her sigh of contentment brought a smile to his face—one that quickly faded with the sudden rush that swept through his veins. Muscles hardening, his heart beat faster, his breaths arriving quicker. Pangs of starvation beat through him, his groin hammering out the raging pulse of blood that fed his erection.