The Dark City Chronicles ⁓ Book Three
The apocalypse looms ever closer! Steamy romance, heart-stopping action, seductive vampires, magic that defies nature, sprinkles of dark-humor, and, as always, the everlasting bonds of friendship.
Hannah's strug...
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The evening was cool, and the chilliness brought dreadful apprehension. It would be winter in less than four months, and whatever Azrael was preparing for would come to fruition. He would face the monster in battle.
If they could still rely on visions and fate, he would be the one to defeat his uncle.
Staring at his wrist and watching the bruise fade slowly, he didn't believe such a thing was possible.
He couldn't even face angry Lucas. Reid thought he could, gathered his courage, and walked up to the man, feeling righteously pissed off that he was being ignored.
He didn't expect Lucas to be furious enough to tell him to get lost. Reid should've walked away and tended to his emotional wounds in private with some of his pride intact.
But, no, he didn't do the smart thing. He lost it. He would have been shouting if they'd been alone. But knowing Kenneth was in the basement, he whispered so harshly it burned his throat and left his voice hoarse.
He called Lucas an asshole and so many other names that, now thinking back, made him want to choke on his tongue. Somehow, Reid found the audacity when the man was bruised and battered because of him.
Lucas let him go off with a cold gaze that only made Reid more furious. Then he questioned Lucas's claim to love him. He'd said Lucas had been lying to play some sick game this entire time, abandoning him when he needed the man most.
Reid didn't know he felt that way until the words escaped angrily.
Before he had time to react, the wrist of the hand he'd been flailing angrily was seized, and he had been shoved bodily against the hallway wall.
The warmth he'd begun to grow familiar with in Lucas's eyes had been snuffed.
He had felt a jolt of genuine fear.
He could have used his strength to contend, but he'd been pinned with an icy glare that made him feel helpless.
Lucas took his turn to rant angrily. He didn't hold back, even when Reid's nostrils flared to keep back the burn in his eyes. Lucas made it clear he thought Reid put them all at risk because he had a martyr complex.
Then Lucas had stopped, chest heaving. His gaze had flickered over Reid's face heatedly, juxtaposed with the fury he'd just shown.
"I love you," Lucas had said, breathing heavily. "Nothing would change that. Nothing. Not even you acting stupid as hell."
The admission had both hurt and lit a fire in Reid that he didn't want to stoke, not when Lucas looked a second away from hitting him or kissing him. They had been close enough he could feel Lucas's breath on his trembling mouth.
Reid had pushed Lucas away then and left, slipping outside to lean on the deck's railing that overlooked the dense forest.
