The Unforgiving Moon

61.

The hallway was empty—but I'd be foolish to think I was alone. I could feel their presence, their life essence just beyond the safety of the hallways, somewhere.

My powers protected me, warned me, cared about me. I had always thought of them as a curse, yet they had saved me time and time again.

I had saved myself. Sariranyasa had given me that: the chance to fight, the power to defend myself against any and all intruders.

I had not valued it, I had cursed it, but it had been a gift. A gift meant for much more than this, but I did not understand its meaning yet.

The walls of the hallway seemed to warp as I coursed to Aven's room. Death had not yet tainted this part of the hallway; they had indeed come for me first. The easy target.

It had been a foolish mistake, and their very last one.

I didn't bother to knock as I barged into Aven's room. I went straight to his bed, where he was still sleeping. The commotion in my room hadn't even woken him up—that was how stealthy it all had been.

"Aven," I whispered. I had hoped the sense of urgency in my tone would carry loud enough through the room to wake him, but not to alert Beckett's assassins waiting somewhere for us. Anticipating our escape—or perhaps just Aven's.

"Aven," I repeated, but his body remained still in his bed. His bare back was turned toward me—muscular and broad as it had once been, but covered in trails of white and light pink scars.

His shoulders moved with the rhythm of his steady breathing—a pattern that remained untouched by a slumbering wake.

I walked over to his bed and grabbed his shoulder. It was the last thing I did before I found myself pushed to the floor, Aven's hand wrapped around my throat and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, his eyes flaring in shades of silver I had not seen before, twirling with rage and death.

His powers bounced against mine—they fought and did not dance. My heart was surrounded by a wall of darkness of my own; meant to defend but not to attack. It was too soft to kill, it could never kill him.

But he could kill me, even without his gift. My throat strained under his hand, and my breathing hatched as my lungs burned.

"Aven," I rasped, and it cost me too much to say a name that was usually so easy.

His hand loosened and his weight disappeared. I hadn't realized how close he had been—how much of his body had pressed into me—until I felt the lightness as he had left.

My hands reached toward my throat as if on instinct—assessing the damage, but there was none. My throat felt a bit raw, but with my wolven abilities, I knew that would fade quite soon.

Aven sat on his knees next to me, looking at his hands as if they were weapons that had tainted something pure. He was trembling, and panting. I hadn't realized until I looked at him now.

"I'm sorry," he said, without looking at me.

"We need to go," I answered. "Lisa betrayed us. Beckett sent assassins to kill us, two are dead in my room as we speak. More are coming."

He looked at me, then. The silver in his eyes had not diminished in the slightest, but his trembling body seemed to have receded, tucked away safely in the darkest parts of himself. Parts he'd never show anyone, but I had now been forced to witness.

"What?"

I stood up and motioned for him to do the same. "We need to get to Cailean, and leave."

Aven jumped up and didn't bother to lose precious time to dress himself. In nothing but his undershorts, we ran to the hallway. His nostrils flared, sensing the blood of the dead men in my room.