Shards of Hope

Chapter 24

ZAIRA LAY IN the dark staring up at the skylight. She couldn’t actually distinguish it from the rest of the ceiling, the aerie under the cloak of night and the world outside lashed by rain. Beside her, she could hear Aden’s steady breathing, knew he’d put himself into a resting state that nonetheless meant he was alert to any threats. She should’ve done the same, but her mind was too full of thoughts that kept circling.

And her self, it was too full of aloneness again.

Curling her fingers into her palm to keep from reaching out to Aden as the feral and violently possessive want inside her pushed her to do, she focused on her breathing, regulating it to the point that she could control her heartbeat; and sometime in the hour after she first began, she fell not into a resting state, but into true sleep.

A sleep so deep that, once again, she dreamed.

Of the heaviness of the cold pipe in her hands, of how the rust had stained her palms, of the wet sound of metal hitting the pulpy mass that had once been a skull. Her arms kept rising and falling, rising and falling, until strong, pain-causing hands hauled her away, her heels dragging on the floor.

In front of her, she saw the crushed ruins of her father’s head, her mother’s, and felt nothing but a vicious satisfaction. They wouldn’t hurt her again. When others tried to take the pipe from her, she refused to let it go, though her hands were slippery with blood from the blisters that had formed on her palms; her skin tore off as the pipe was forcefully wrenched from her grasp. The blood that covered her hands was orangey, mixed with the iron of the rust. More blood flecked her face, her clothing.

Later, when the ones who had pulled her off her parents called her a monster, she didn’t protest. Because they had made her a monster and she owned what she was.

Jerking awake on that thought, heart thumping, Zaira could almost smell the blood, almost hear the sound of the pipe doing catastrophic damage. No, that wasn’t right. The pipe had just finished the job and given the rage inside her an outlet. It was Zaira’s mind that had turned her parents’ brains to soup.

It hadn’t been enough. She’d had to destroy their physical bodies before she could allow herself to believe that it really was over, that they were dead, that they wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

A rustle beside her. “Zaira.” Aden closed his hand over the back of hers, warm and strong.

Blood a roar and her mouth dry, she didn’t speak, just stared up at the ceiling again . . . and then she turned her hand so that her fingers locked with Aden’s. “I was as small as Jasper when I did it.” She sucked in air that hurt going in. “As small as him when they hurt me.”

“You were smaller,” was Aden’s grim response. “They hurt you for years.”

“How could anyone do that?” In her mind, she’d always been the monster; she’d forgotten she’d also been a tiny, scared child fighting for her life.

“Because some people are evil—and some are not. You’re not.”

Bones feeling as if they were shaking within her, she tried to hold her focus, couldn’t. “Aden.” She didn’t know what she was asking him, but when he broke their handhold, it was a brutal shock.

“Lift your head.” His breath against her ear, his body closer.

Able to feel herself devolving into panic, she obeyed his order because it gave her a way to hold off the collapse. He slid his arm under her head and, curling it around her stiff shoulders, tugged her toward him. “Turn in to me, Zaira,” he ordered when she remained rigid.

Touch had never been Zaira’s friend. It had meant pain and abuse when her parents had her, cold-blooded training and more pain when she was with the Arrow Squad. But this was Aden, who had held her so many times already. She was the one who’d done the hurting. Forcing herself to turn, she didn’t protest when he rolled onto his back and tugged her down over his chest, her head on his shoulder and her breasts pressed against his chest and side.

They were both dressed only in T-shirts and sweatpants, and the thin cotton fabric of the tees didn’t stop the heat transfer between them. Zaira wasn’t sure how long she lay there unmoving before her bones began to stop trembling and her heart calmed, the scent of Aden in her every inhale. It was warm and quintessentially masculine and deeply familiar.

Lifting her hand, she placed it on his chest, right over his heart. His pulse, steady and strong, gave her a rhythm to lock on to and use to normalize her breathing. When he ran his hand up and down her back, she didn’t protest, the contact further easing the excruciating tension inside her. His hand was big, strong, and so was he. Most people didn’t consciously realize it, but Aden wasn’t a small man. He was lithe with muscle, his strength intense.

“I’m sorry I bit you.” She didn’t know why she’d done that; maybe she’d wanted to scare him, but part of her thought she’d done it because she wanted to keep him. Like an abused animal clawing at someone trying to do it a kindness because it didn’t know any better.

“I saw one of the RainFire females bite her mate earlier.”

“Was she angry with him?”

“No. It appeared to be an affectionate act.”

Her mind thought that over, considered it from every angle. “They’re changeling, have more primal drives.”

“Some drives are universal.”

She jerked at the feel of his teeth biting down on her ear. “Why did you do that?”

“Now we’re even and you have no cause to feel as if you crossed a line.”

Reaching up, she rubbed at the bite, the abused, broken, uncivilized thing inside her not quite certain what to do. “You bit me,” she said again.

He brushed away her hand and ran his thumb over the spot. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” It had just been the unexpected nature of it that had bewildered her. “Biting is acceptable in changeling society, not in Psy.”

“I haven’t heard that rule.”

Thrown off center by his behavior, she turned and tucked her back against his side, holding his arm possessively where it curled around her upper body. “Are you going to bite me again?” The insane rage that was part of her needed parameters to handle this.

“Maybe.”

She frowned at that answer, too confused to be worried about the breakdown in her discipline in allowing the facial expression. “I’ll bite you back.”

“Okay.”

Her frown deepened as she realized he was determined to win the argument, determined to show her that there was nothing wrong with the fact she’d gone vicious on him. Since she couldn’t think of a good counterargument, she decided to see how far he’d take this—twisting around, she bit him again, this time on the jaw.

The only difference was that she made sure not to draw blood.

He flipped her, and suddenly they were locked in hand-to-hand combat. Neither one of them, however, was trying to punch or hit. Instead, they were trying to get in under each other’s defenses. He was heavier and stronger than her, but she’d always been better at this; she’d taken him down more than once, and now, managed to flip him onto his back.

But when she would’ve leaned in and bitten him again in this contest that was a game, he pulled off a difficult maneuver that put her on her back and then he was over her, the two of them breathing heavily.