Page 5 of Dominion

I shook my head. “I’m alright.”

“No, you’re not.” The stairs creaked as she stepped down and walked toward me. “You’re swaying on your feet. I’m pretty sure you’ll collapse in five minutes or so. They wouldn’t want you to exhaust yourself, or?—”

I swiveled toward her, cutting her with my eyes. “Don’t talk about them as if they’re dead,” I bit out. “Because they’re not. I know they’re not.”

“Skylar—”

“No, Zoe.” I sniffed and put my hands into the front pockets of the coat Cillian gave me during the ride. “I can’t sleep when they’re probably being tortured. How do you expect me to relax when my entire life has been turned upside down?”

“I don’t. I’m not saying you need to relax. I’m just saying you should rest because you’ll need your strength.”

She was right. Every cell in my body knew that she was right. I needed my strength for everything that was about to come. I had no doubts that the fire I started last night wouldn’t stop in Winworth. Judah wouldn’t let it go so easily, and I dreaded the news that were supposed to come in a couple of hours when Atlas arrives with the rest of the Sons of Hades.

The bedroom Zoe took me to once we arrived was too bright. The walls weren’t familiar. The cross above the bed felt like an ominous sign, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw Dylan and Ash next to that fucking river when I told them to go after Danny.

If only I had told them to stay. If only I had hugged them before driving away. If only I had told them how much I loved them.

I didn’t regret burning the catacombs, but I regretted hiding my heart from them.

“I can’t sleep, Zoe. I really can’t.” My body trembled from the cold November chill. It didn’t matter that Winworth was miles and miles away from here. I could still feel its claws slowly creeping toward me. “I have this,” I rubbed my palm across my chest, “feeling, or whatever you want to call it. This fucking fear that the moment I close my eyes, something terrible will happen. I can’t shake it off.”

I looked to my right, toward the cul-de-sac not too far away from this house. I always wondered what it would be like to live somewhere like this. Maybe with someone I loved, maybe alone,but safe and happy. Far away from the darkness that seeped into every pore of the place I grew up in.

Just this morning, minutes before Zoe came out, I pictured a life—my life—twenty years from now. I pictured myself laughing, Dylan and Ash talking about their day, our friends sitting with us without the dark circles around their eyes and everything seemed perfect.

But it was only a silly dream.

“Sky,” Zoe murmured as she stepped closer to me and placed her hands on my shoulders. She was shorter than me, but in this moment, she was much stronger than I was. “They’re going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. But I know my brother, and I know the rest of the guys. We will find them and we will bring them home.”

Home.

It was such a foreign word for me, yet the moment she said it, I again pictured the small, two-story house, and the three of us living together. They were my home. They were everything I needed and I was on the precipice of losing them.

“What if they kill them?” I turned toward her. “What if I never see them again?”

My lower lip trembled, and I knew it had nothing to do with the cold biting my cheeks and my nose.

“What if unknowingly I sent them to their deaths?”

“This wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” I bit out. “If it wasn’t for me, the two of them would’ve been safe now.”

“Without you, the two of them would’ve been completely lost, Skylar.”

If only I could believe that.

The rational part of me knew that not everything was lost. As long as there was hope, we could do this. We could free them.But that irrational, emotional part of my soul fought me every step of the way.

That part that wanted to get lost in the oblivion just to forget that any of this ever happened fucked with my head and with my heart. Today it was harder to quiet down the voices whispering in my ear that all the people I’d loved, became the ones I’d lost.

Wasn’t that tragic, standing here, thinking the worst? Wasn’t it tragic, always believing the worst because life taught me to never hope? Judah taught me to always expect the worst possible outcome.

Just thinking about him made the blood in my veins boil, and the headache I tried fighting reared its ugly head, almost knocking me off of my feet.

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