Page 139 of Mortis

“I’m afraid.”

My teasing disappeared immediately. I reached up and cupped his face, brushing my thumb along his cheekbone. Kael turned into the touch and pressed a kiss to my palm. “Afraid of what?” I asked.

His answering smile was wan. “I don’t know.”

I frowned.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he added with a shrug.

“Most fears don’t.”

Kael hummed, his gaze drifting towards the ceiling.

“When I escaped from the cult, I thought I was finally free.” As he spoke, I drew slow, meaningless shapes across his chest with my fingertip. “But I wasn’t. Not really. I had simply exchanged one prison for another.”

My finger stilled.

“The walls of the crypt became trees. The chains became my hunger. The Beast demanding to be fed.” His chest rose beneath me with a deep breath. “I was terrified of leaving. I thought if I ventured into Blackthorn, I would lose control. That He would kill whoever we found.”

I nodded slowly. Before I’d come along, I supposed Blackthorn would’ve looked less like a quaint town in the Cotswolds and more like an all-you-can-eat buffet to a flesh-eating demon.

“So you stayed there,” I whispered.

Kael nodded. “For sixty years.”

Something about the way he said it made my chest hurt. Sixty years. Longer than I’d been alive twice over, spent hiding among the same trees because he’d been too frightened of what might happen if he left.

“Then you came along,” he continued, looking down at me again.

“Lucky you.”

His mouth softened at the edges.

“Very.” My heart did something embarrassingly pathetic. “You gave me another way to survive. Then you gave me somewhere to live. A family. Work. You taught me that I could leave those woods and nothing terrible would happen.” He paused. “That I was allowed to leave.”

I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat. “And now you don’t want to go back.”

Kael shook his head. “I can’t.”

His words came out sharper than I expected, and Kael seemed startled by them too, as his hand stopped moving through my hair.

“Every time I see those trees, I remember what it was like before you,” he admitted quietly. “The hunger. The bodies. Waking covered in blood and not knowing who He had killed.”

The Beast was strangely silent throughout this exchange. Listening, perhaps.

“I remember believing that was all our existence would ever be. And I know it isn’t logical. I know the cult is gone. I know Mammon cannot take our freedom. I know I have you.” His arms tightened around me. “But sometimes I look at those woods and wonder if this is the part that isn’t real.”

My chest squeezed. “Kael . . .”

“What if I walk back in and wake up? What if I open my eyes and I’m beneath those trees again? Alone. Hungry.” His voice grew quieter. “What if you were nothing more than an illusion I created because the truth became too difficult to endure?”

I crawled up his body and tucked my face into his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of woodsmoke. Kael wrapped himself around me immediately and pressed his lips against my hair.

“If I discovered this life had never been real . . .” His voice vibrated against my cheek. “That you had never been real . . . it would shatter me beyond repair.”

I closed my eyes and we lay together in silence. The movie continued playing on the screen, screams and frantic footsteps filling the room. But I barely heard them anymore. I just listened to Kael breathe. Felt the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath mine. The occasional drag of his claws through my hair. The reassuring weight of his arms around my body.

Eventually, the credits began to roll, and I pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. Pushing myself onto one elbow, I looked down at him and brushed a few strands of smoky hair away from his face.