Michael lifted his head, those shattered blues burning holes in him. “You’re too close to the edge.”
Nik shrugged. Being with Shadow wasn’t making it easy, but he didn’t dare leave her alone. Years ago, he’d done so with another, and she now lay six feet under. “I can hold on for a while longer.”
“No.”
“The damn blood moon hasn’t appeared,” Nik snapped, his tenuous hold on his mind shields shuddering. “Why do you even want me around when you know how dangerous I am? I couldn’t die permanently in Tartarus, but you could have ended it that night, millennia ago, when you found out the truth. You didn’t. It won’t be a few people who will die this time, Arc. I’ll infect this city—the entire realm with the evil I house! After we destroy this fucking trafficking ring, I want out.”
“No—”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Dammit.” Michael dug his fingers into his temples as if wanting to gouge out his brain. “You’ve endured for millennia, just hold on for a while longer. You will find your peace—”
“I’m not interested in absolution.”
“The others found their mates in the last year and a half.” The Arc seemed determined to drive his damn point home. “You will, too.”
He wasn’t fit to be a mate to anyone.
Nik picked up a flat stone disc and hurled the thing. It bounced over the frozen sea. “You would sentence an innocent to her death, so I’ll be happy? No.”
“Hell,” Michael growled, glaring skyward. “Just when I thought the most intractable of you all were mated, I find another hardhead, and you don’t even want a mate.” He rose to his feet. “Only you can make this work, Nik. No one can walk destiny’s path for you.”
“How can I contemplate a mate with the shit that’s in me?” he demanded, even as thoughts of Shadow crept into his mind. “I never left Tartarus behind. It still lives inside me. It’s always going to be inside me, ripping at me. There is no fucking peace inside here—” He stabbed a finger to his skull. “None!”
Breathing hard, Nik glared back at the ice-covered sea, struggling for calm. No need for Michael to know the paralyzing truth of his imprisonment. The unseen torturers who’d brutalized him, just because they could.
His fury dissipating, he let a sliver of power escape him. The ice melted, and the sea reverted to it smooth, undulating motion once more.
“You brought Shadow back to the castle?” Michael asked after a minute of silence.
“Yeah.” Nik picked up another stone and flung it, and it skipped across the undulating waters. “We got trapped by a horde of demons underground sent directly from the Dark Realm. I dealt with them, but one marked her.”
His teeth ground down, remembering the wound on her chest and the node the bastard had tried to dig out.
Michael nodded. “She’ll be safe here. I’ll have Aethan and Blaéz check out the underground. Give them the coordinates of the place. Anything on the trafficking?”
“No, nothing yet.”
“It makes it damn hard with these demon abductors always one step ahead of us,” Michael muttered. Then those laser-sharp eyes pinned him. “Get yourself back to Romania. I’ll have one of the other unmated Guardians keep an eye on Shadow while we deal with this problem.”
“Race,” he said coldly.
“No. Another. You haven’t met him yet. He’ll get here fast enough so you can leave.”
Damn fucking angel. “Don’t,” Nik snapped, a surge of power shooting out, sending the waves crashing again. “I know what you’re doing.”
Michael arched a brow at the turbulent waters then back at him. “Shadow isn’t your responsibility—”
“I’m what she needs.”
“Then let me lay this out upfront.” The archangel’s hard stare allowed no argument. “Considering your territorial stance over her, make sure this is what you want. You cannot keep her without claiming her, mate, or not. And if she is your mate, and you go through with this, be prepared for the Absolute Laws. She is mortal.”
Fuck, he couldn’t think beyond the rampaging darkness inside him, save holding onto his sanity. And the Arc would shovel out more shit for him to wade through. Right then, every fucking thing irritated him.
“None of that will happen. I won’t put her life at risk. But she is my responsibility. I don’t trust her to escape back to the underground tunnels. Not until we find and end the bastards running the trafficking ring.”
There, he’d laid it all out. Hoped the Arc would just let it go.
“Hell, I’ve dealt with mules more accommodating.”
Apparently not.
He cut Michael a flat stare.
His leader pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled a massive breath. Then those fragmented blue eyes impaled his. “Very well, as you deem fit then.”
His jaw still clenched after his talk with the Arc, Nik opened the door to the elegant, pale green room decorated with white, period styled furniture from two centuries ago now fragrant with burning incense.
The Oracle sat in an armchair, facing the bed, but staring out into the moonlit gardens.
“There was the oddest storm earlier,” she murmured. “Snow falling in this still night.”
He ignored her veiled question and stopped beside the bed, making sure his psychic shields were shut tight. Shadow lay covered again, only her bare shoulders showing.
“How is she?”
“In a healing sleep.” Jaden rose and joined him, standing at the other side of Shadow. “She’s…” Then she shook her head.
“What?”
“Those nodes aren’t normal for a human,” she said, frowning, and Nik stilled. “I can venture a theory, but I need to understand a little more about how they came to be.”
He’d rather have the truth from Shadow herself than hazard a guess. Because right now, the only thing that came to mind was she had demon blood in her because of the dark energy he picked up in the nodes. And the thought chaffed at him.
“She’ll be fine,” Jaden said softly, pushing up from the armchair. “There isn’t much more to be done until the potion I’ve given her pushes out the demon’s tracking spell. Then she’ll start to heal. It’ll take a few days.” She glided toward the door. “In the meantime, keep her close and off the streets. Or whoever marked her will easily find her.”
Yeah, he knew this.
The door shut softly behind the Oracle. Nik lowered to the vacated seat and scrubbed his jaw wearily. Warmth enfolded him. Someone had lit the fire in the hearth despite it being summer. Probably a good thing since Shadow was always cold. His mouth thinned, recalling the chilly basement room she’d lived in.
He laced his fingers over his stomach, his mind back on those nodes. There was someone who could give him answers. Eddi. It had to be why he watched over her like a guard dog. In the morning, he’d go speak to the man.
A soft moan reached him.
Nik flashed to Shadow’s side. “What is it?” he asked softly, sweeping her sweat-drenched hair away from her fever-flushed face.