It made sense that our Revered would subvert power dynamics.
“So, this isn’t a dream?” Arabella asked with confusion, and my stomach nose-dived.
I wished it were.
I wished we could take back what we’d done.
“No,” Scorpius whispered shakily. “It’s real.”
She exhaled. “You’re the worst grovelers in the history of grovelers.”
“We’re trying,” Scorpius said softly, “but we know.”
“I’d hate to see what not trying looked like.” She chuckled. “You’d probably just bash me over the head with a shovel.”
Both Scorpius and I recoiled at her graphic words.
“Never,” Scorpius snarled, and I nodded in agreement.
“So where do we go from here?” she whispered like she thought we could still move past this.
She was a woman who’d grown up facing horrifying violence. She didn’t cower from us. She didn’t submit.
Arabella embraced suffering to the point of recklessness.
It was who she was.
I tangled my shaking fingers in her unruly curls and breathed in her icy scent. She smelled like a blizzard at midnight and holding her was akin to walking through a quiet, snowy forest under starlight.
Scorpius traced trembling fingers across her dark brows, his jaw clenched and neck muscles twitched like he was holding back a scream.
We were soaked to the bones and our clothes were heavy. Pink water pooled at our feet.
Minutes turned into an hour.
No one spoke.
Arabella’s eyes stayed closed, but her lashes fluttered, and she rocked back and forth from time to time like she was thinking. Her mouth was pursed, but no words came out.
We held one another.
Desperately.
Nothing among us but regret.
Our history was barbed wire wrapped around our necks strangling all of us, and for the first time in my painful life, I was hit with an overwhelming urge to cry. Suddenly all I could think about was Arabella’s definition of toxic in the truth journals.
She’d said it was what we had.
The twins would never lose control like we just had.
Scorpius pressed her harder between us. My back was pushed against the shower wall, faucet digging into my spine, and I couldn’t find the energy to care.
I breathed raggedly as my fellow Protector pressed us against the wall with all his might like he was trying to make us burrow under his skin.
He was making it clear that he was never letting us go.
I leaned forward so my head rested next to hers, and I pressed my face into Scorpius’s bicep. A noise of contentment sounded in her throat, and she nuzzled against me.
I sighed with relief at the contact.
It was outrageous that we’d ever thought I was a Revered.
The woman between us was our purpose.
I wanted to stare at her, watch her every second of the day, and burn her existence into my corneas until I knew nothing else.
“I’m so sorry.” Shaky words whispered across my lips before I realized what I was doing. Water splattered off my lips as I spoke.
Scorpius pressed us harder against the shower wall.
Dark lashes fluttered, and electric-blue eyes stared through me. “I know,” Arabella whispered back like she, too, couldn’t speak aloud.
I tightened my fingers in her wet curls.
Scorpius made a noise like a pained animal, and his trembling intensified. His voice was hoarse as he rasped, “I’m sorry for speaking to you like that. You should never crawl for us. Not after everything that’s happened. Never again. We should crawl for you.”
A heavy sigh escaped Arabella’s lips.
Long painful seconds passed.
She whispered very quietly, “How about everyone stops crawling?”
I released her hair and wrapped my arms around my mates in a hug. “You’re right, we shouldn’t play games with each other. What’s growing between all of us is precious, and it deserves to be treated as such—you deserve better.”
She sniffed.
I promised, “We will never speak to you like that again, sweetheart. You mean too much to us.”
Scorpius nodded and the three of us shifted. “I saw that you…” He trailed off like he couldn’t speak. Tipping his head down in shame, he said, “I saw that you were trembling with exhaustion, and I didn’t help you. I watched you crawl and did nothing.”
His entire body convulsed.
Arabella whispered, “I thought it was a dream.”
I squeezed my arms with all my might and tried to hold all three of us together before we shattered into irreparable pieces.
We were fragile, jagged edges and broken promises.
For people brimming with power and strength, we all shared one thing in common: we were terrifyingly flawed.
“Prove it to me,” she said. “Please prove that you care. Prove that this isn’t all some toxic power trip.”
Scorpius pressed my back painfully against the tile wall.
I squeezed us together until I lost circulation in my fingertips and my muscles ached from exertion.
We squeezed her between our arms.
“We’re your hounds to command,” I whispered reverently, the words a prayer across my lips. “We have no purpose other than to serve you. I promise.”
“I don’t want that.” Her voice cracked. “I want to be more than your Revered. I want to be a person to you. I’ll never be your perfect, ideal mate. I’ll never be him.”
Scorpius staggered back and pulled away at her purposeful use of the male gender.
My stomach dropped to my feet, and I swayed like I was going to collapse. She wrapped her arms around me and kept me from falling.
“We don’t want a male devil,” Scorpius rasped loudly. “I-I used to think I wanted one, but I was a fool—I don’t want anyone but you. You’re the only person I’ve ever sat in a shower with fully clothed for hours talking. You’re the only person I don’t like seeing in pain.”
She squeezed me tighter, fingers pulling my sweatshirt taut as she clung to me.
Scorpius pulled the wet hair off her nape and softly kissed the exposed skin. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted, Arabella,” he said fiercely like he was proving something.
She exhaled against my chest.
Her heart raced with such force that it pounded against my sternum, and I could feel it through our clothes.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever spoken to without fear,” I whispered down to her. “And you always listen. You see me for who I really am, and I want to provide that same solace to you. I want to be your person because you are mine. No one can ever compare, and you deserve to be treated like the treasure you are.”
She sighed loudly. “You know, you guys aren’t as hopeless as you think you are. You’re different from the fronts you present to the rest of the world. Even Malum.”
Scorpius wrapped his arms around both of us and resumed pinning us against the wall of the shower. “We don’t deserve you,” he said.
I agreed, “No, we don’t.”
Time slipped around us under the warm spray.
No more words were spoken.
There was nothing left to be said because words couldn’t fix our mistakes. Only we could.
Chapter 35
Aran
STRATEGY
Dreich (adjective): dreary.
DAY 25, HOUR 16