Their Thief: Redemption

Chapter 6

Jace

The metal straw bounced across the surface twice with a clink before coming to a stop in the pile of coke and various other substances. My powder cocktail. Music attempted to mute the noise, but my senses weren't numb enough to miss the faint sounds of contact. Not that I hadn't tried to get them to that point. My nose felt raw from the multiple attempts I had made, but it seemed impossible, no matter how much I took, to drown out the movements I could hear from above. No matter how faint.

My senses were fine-tuned to her. Her soft footsteps, the sound of her opening and closing anything and everything she came across, and even the annoyed sighs that left her lips. I wondered if she was searching for something to use as a weapon. The thought had my lips lifting unconsciously, she wouldn't find anything. Alec would have made sure of that after...

My smile instantly dropped as a memory of her with an unnaturally pale complexion that was covered in her dark blood rose to the front of my mind. It didn't take long for other memories of her blood and pain to follow. Guilt twisted and clashed with the anger in my chest, engaging it in a dual that caused my heart to lash against the inside of my chest with every beat.

'You deserve it. It's nothing compared to what you put me through.'

My eyes slammed shut against the voice that had been haunting me for the past two years. Two years that seemed to have passed by at a snail's pace compared to the many others that I had to live through. Even the ones that were spent suffering in a cell alongside my brothers. The soft voice had returned once again to remind me of guilt that I would rather have numbed. Because once the guilt hit, I couldn't stop the truth from slapping me in the face.

'It's you that I don't want. I could never want you.' Damaris's voice hissed in my head.

Damaris. The mate that we rejected and broke. The mate that chose another man while we were trying to make it right.

My Jaw clenched as I brushed aside the painful memories that arose when Damaris's voice spoke in my head; the voice that I had become accustomed to hearing two years ago. It was different than the one that had talked back to me only minutes ago. The woman that returned to meet my eyes with ones trying to hide fear that permitted the air wasn't the same one that we had last seen.

That we abandoned.

This time it wasn't Damaris's haunting voice that was taunting me. No, the thought had been conjured on my own, brought forth by the anger of my baser animalistic sides that craved for their mate.

But was it abandonment if she never even wanted me? Never wanted us?

A weight pressed down on my chest as a ghost of the pain I had suffered that night started up, making it difficult to breathe. Flashes of her covered in another man's scent were projected against the insides of my closed lids along with fabricated images that I couldn't help but conjure after knowing what had happened in there before I had arrived at a bloodied scene. It was just as impossible to escape them as it was the memories that haunted me.

Not without aid.

Shaking off the arm that was wrapped around mine like a serpent, I reached into my pocket in search of an escape. I wasn't ready to face her. Not yet. There was too much unresolved and conflicting anger and guilt I had to face first.

And that was also something I wasn't ready to do yet, either. Not when the results of how all this would end again were so clearly written on her face. She didn't want us. She never would. Even Alec's mark seemed to have little to no impact on her.

Pulling out a small bag filled with Xanax bars, I took a few out before tossing the bag onto the table, causing a few more to scatter over the surface. Grabbing one of the empty liquor bottles that lay scattered around us, I place the pills on the surface and used it to crush them into a powder. Lining the powder up. I grabbed the straw to take another temporary escape from the emotions bombarding me at her unexpected appearance.