Ascension - Book Eight - Man x Man

Chapter 135

Verando presses a button on his key fob, opening one of the doors to the car, and with a short whistle, Eve leaves our side to jump into the car. "Any chance you can be that obedient?"

I growl low in my throat, flashing my teeth at his audacity. With a scoff, he seemed to accept that there was little I would be willing to do if it involved leaving his side. "We don't need to meet with him, we can just go." I retort back, gripping his wrist firmly, feeling the tension building in his arms. 

The power struggle of fighting off Fenrir was excruciating, I knew any chance of us leaving here would be minimal if it meant locking us together in the same car while we drove back home. Fenrir wanted out, he wanted to communicate with this creature, and while we both might live a firey crash... would our child? Would Verando's body recover? 

It seemed like the god had a bad habit of pushing us into his will no matter how much we tried to suppress him, he wanted to meet with Anubis or he wouldn't of given Verando the god's eye. 

"I don't think that's an option." He murmurs back, stiffly putting the keys in my hand. "Listen to me-"

"Don't you dare." I grip his face, blotting at the blood seeping from his nose. I can't help but curse, this damned creature was killing him, ripping him apart from the inside at every opportunity. He clutches my hands, focusing on me so intensely with the icy blue eye, waiting for my breathing to settle. 

"If something happens you go. You do not fight this, you don't stay here, do you understand?"

I'm already shaking my head, clenching my hands so tightly into fists. Why couldn't it just go right? Why couldn't we just have a moment of peace? Was this our punishment for surviving, for coming to the future? "I can't. I won't.."

"You will. Nic, I'm not asking you. You run, do you understand?" 

Yanking the keys out of his hand, I shove them into my pocket, fighting back the emotion welling up in my eyes, gritting my teeth with a shakey inhale. "Let's get this over with. The gods seem to have been mostly curious, maybe we're overreacting and it's just a conversation."

I had a sinking feeling that if that were the case, Fenrir wouldn't have pushed us to meet. My heart pounds wildly in my chest, but I'm better trained than my traitor of a body believes. I know how to pull this off, I know how to get us out of here safely if we could play our cards right. Yet my body was not my own, it belonged to this new space in which I was fragile and unpredictable in how I would feel.

I force myself to put space between me and Verando. It would be too obvious that we were the other's weakness if we went in clutching each other like star-crossed lovers. Verando guides me further into the depths of the heavily wooded area, following his nose to wherever the summoning force beckoned him from. 

It'd be pleasant if I wasn't so on edge, the heavy humidity wasn't nearly as suffocating in the vegetation, it gave the woods a perfume that I found vaguely familiar. It was a scent that reminded me of those first shakey days together when I'd smell the woods on everything he owned. 

Anger boils into my throat, threatening to bubble over as my wolf claws at the cage of my mental blockade. This would have been the perfect opportunity to try hunting or to enjoy time together as our inner beasts desired, I wouldn't be so quick to forgive this unwelcome intrusion. 

I smell the man before I see him, the heavy scent of blood and ash, the smell of death and decay, a dark omen immitting from the darkening wood that seemed to converge on one spot of inky black where the man stood. His mask was dark, the canine head with its long tendrils cloaking his shoulders, yet as he lifted his gaze I could see the black eyes weeping with heavy strings of blood.