Page 305 of Psycho Gods

Convalescence (noun): time spent recovering from an illness.

“Meet the Heroes of the Realms” flashed across the top of the enchanted news tablet that John was reading. Headshots of twenty soldiers were displayed in bright neon underneath. My picture was the largest.

I didn’t feel like a hero.

I felt tired.

Drained.

Numb.

The warmth of a mate bond strummed in my chest, but it didn’t take away the bone-deep exhaustion. When I closed my eyes, I could see the infected shivering as they froze to death.

The heaviness in my chest reminded me that I could tear the world apart if I needed to. However, the connection was not at all how Sadie explained her mate bonds.

I couldn’t identify any of our individual emotions inside my chest.

Malum had meant it when he said his mates were his soul in a way that other species couldn’t understand.

We were one.

As individuals, we were breakable. Together, we were a terrifying source of endless power.

We were weapons of mass destruction.

It was hard to comprehend.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t felt the power as I murdered hundreds.

But I had.

I’d killed. Again and again and again and again and again and again, until I’d lost count of how many infected and ungodly I’d sliced to pieces with serrated ice.

I should have been catatonic over what I’d done, but I was a little proud.

The last bit was the part that scared me the most.

It didn’t help that my soul had been mutilated. The memory of Mother still haunted me. Jinx was under the thumb of leaders who had us all on strings like sick marionette dolls.

Everything I’d gone through these last few months was real.

Having mates didn’t make that go away.

Time was warped. We’d fought the ungodly just yesterday, but it felt like the battle had happened weeks, maybe even months, ago.

It didn’t help that the High Court had already launched victory parades across the realms and published dozens of news articles. They’d even canceled the funeral for the fallen soldiers. Dick had announced, “It’s a time for celebration.”

It was all too much.

The world had color and I wasn’t empty anymore, but I still spiraled.

It didn’t help that we didn’t have answers. No one knew why the ungodly had chosen this realm in particular.

Why were they hiding in that basement? Why did they have a village in the mountains? How did they infect people?

So many questions.

But there was no one to ask.

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