But we weren’t a normal devil house.
We were the ancient House of Malum.
We were the right hand of a raging god with more power inside us than the devil culture had seen in eons.
It made sense that our Revered would subvert power dynamics.
“So, this isn’t a dream?” Arabella asked with confusion, and my stomach nose-dived.
I wished it were.
I wished we could take back what we’d done.
“No,” Scorpius whispered shakily. “It’s real.”
She exhaled. “You’re the worst grovelers in the history of grovelers.”
“We’re trying,” Scorpius said softly, “but we know.”
“I’d hate to see what not trying looked like.” She chuckled. “You’d probably just bash me over the head with a shovel.”
Both Scorpius and I recoiled at her graphic words.
“Never,” Scorpius snarled, and I nodded in agreement.
“So where do we go from here?” she whispered like she thought we could still move past this.
She was a woman who’d grown up facing horrifying violence. She didn’t cower from us. She didn’t submit.
Arabella embraced suffering to the point of recklessness.
It was who she was.
I tangled my shaking fingers in her unruly curls and breathed in her icy scent. She smelled like a blizzard at midnight and holding her was akin to walking through a quiet, snowy forest under starlight.
Scorpius traced trembling fingers across her dark brows, his jaw clenched and neck muscles twitched like he was holding back a scream.
We were soaked to the bones and our clothes were heavy. Pink water pooled at our feet.
Minutes turned into an hour.
No one spoke.
Arabella’s eyes stayed closed, but her lashes fluttered, and she rocked back and forth from time to time like she was thinking. Her mouth was pursed, but no words came out.
We held one another.
Desperately.
Nothing among us but regret.
Our history was barbed wire wrapped around our necks strangling all of us, and for the first time in my painful life, I was hit with an overwhelming urge to cry. Suddenly all I could think about was Arabella’s definition of toxic in the truth journals.
She’d said it was what we had.
The twins would never lose control like we just had.
Scorpius pressed her harder between us. My back was pushed against the shower wall, faucet digging into my spine, and I couldn’t find the energy to care.
I breathed raggedly as my fellow Protector pressed us against the wall with all his might like he was trying to make us burrow under his skin.
He was making it clear that he was never letting us go.
I leaned forward so my head rested next to hers, and I pressed my face into Scorpius’s bicep. A noise of contentment sounded in her throat, and she nuzzled against me.
I sighed with relief at the contact.
It was outrageous that we’d ever thought I was a Revered.
The woman between us was our purpose.
I wanted to stare at her, watch her every second of the day, and burn her existence into my corneas until I knew nothing else.
“I’m so sorry.” Shaky words whispered across my lips before I realized what I was doing. Water splattered off my lips as I spoke.
Scorpius pressed us harder against the shower wall.
Dark lashes fluttered, and electric-blue eyes stared through me. “I know,” Arabella whispered back like she, too, couldn’t speak aloud.
I tightened my fingers in her wet curls.
Scorpius made a noise like a pained animal, and his trembling intensified. His voice was hoarse as he rasped, “I’m sorry for speaking to you like that. You should never crawl for us. Not after everything that’s happened. Never again. We should crawl for you.”
A heavy sigh escaped Arabella’s lips.
Long painful seconds passed.
She whispered very quietly, “How about everyone stops crawling?”
I released her hair and wrapped my arms around my mates in a hug. “You’re right, we shouldn’t play games with each other. What’s growing between all of us is precious, and it deserves to be treated as such—you deserve better.”
She sniffed.
I promised, “We will never speak to you like that again, sweetheart. You mean too much to us.”
Scorpius nodded and the three of us shifted. “I saw that you…” He trailed off like he couldn’t speak. Tipping his head down in shame, he said, “I saw that you were trembling with exhaustion, and I didn’t help you. I watched you crawl and did nothing.”