Lovers (Lycan Series: #3)

The Death Kiss

I woke up the next day feeling like an 18-wheeler had slammed into my head and reversed over my corpse. My ears were ringing violently, my skin dimpled as I experienced cold shivers.

Beside me was Thanatos. I found myself reaching for his arm.

He sat up in the bed to place a cool hand on my forehead. "She's burning up."

My tongue felt limp in my throat- everything tasted like singed copper. Tear pooled into my eyes as the air seemed to crackle with electricity that zapped at my veins, causing twitches.

"What's wrong with her?" Jasper demanded, but his eyes showed a different story. He knew, but he didn't know.

He sitting at the foot of the bed with Callie standing by his side. The snake of a woman had an arm slung over his shoulders, gently caressing his bicep. A smile was on her face. A knowing one. That bitch charmspoke him to do something to me.

My eyes screamed to kill her. My very being wanted to charmspeak the fuck out of Jasper so he could come back to senses.

My wings reacted to my emotions, flapping wildly. Oliver flew out of Athena's notebook to settle in his perch above my bed and began to gently croon. Jasper reached forward but Thanatos was quicker, slipping into bed behind me. His large black wings that were double my wingspan enclosed us in his cocoon of glossy black feathers.

"Faye?" he said quietly. "Are you alright?"

I couldn't speak, I couldn't do anything. My hands scratched at my throat.

Jasper did this. He put the silencing charm around my throat because Callie told him too. And I couldn't warn Thanatos, couldn't save Jasper, not with my voice gone.

I sobbed harder.

Thanatos didn't touch me, even when I leaned back into his chest and gray wings tucked into my back. Even when my cries died down and my shoulder wracking sobs and twitches from the electricity in my body and in the air died down.

I pulled out Athena's notebook and a pen, writing slowly as I blinked away the tears.

"How long have I been asleep?" Thanatos read outloud.

His breath hitched when a response was written on the opposite page. "Four days. You've come into consciousness now. Oliver has been keep tabs. He does not trust Callie."

Thanatos laughed wryly. "Me neither. She's been rather forceful in what she wants."

I scribbled fast on the notebook. She is a charmspeaker.

"Aphrodite knew that, didn't she? That's why she gave you the power of charmspeak." Thanatos' chrome eyes flickered into something like molten mercury. "She's entrapped your mate."

This time it was turn for my breath to hitch. I wrote again on the notebook, this time letting a few of my tears soak into the yellowed pages. He's no longer my mate. Jasper and Draver only get one, and Draver claimed me before Jasper did. Now he hates me.

Thanatos scowled, forcing me to look him into his eyes again as the coccoon of his wings rustled with his frustration.

"Faye, Jasper is your mate. So is Draver. They'll both never stop loving you- caring for you, It's obvious that..." Thanatos parted the seam of his joined wings to scan the room before locking us into blackness again. "It's obvious that Callie has taken control of him. But he wouldn't be fighting against Callie's control if he didn't truly love you. Don't doubt what they feel for you. If they truly didn't care, Jasper and Ryland wouldn't have called me over."

I cried again, writing on the page in a messy scribble. IT'S MY FAULT.

He laid his hands on me for the first time, grabbing me by my shoulders. "Then fix it. The Trials are tomorrow Faye. You're out of time. You're about to go into a slaughterhouse and now is a good time then ever to tell them how you feel about them."