They were two hulking guys with charisma seeping from their pores. It could be overwhelming for a human.

Grayson passed Uri a plate, and he put two steaks on it then passed the plate to me.

“Eat,” they both said in unison.

They joined me a moment later, and for half an hour, it was just us and yummy food and conversation.

Cora materialized with Vi and another woman just as we were finishing up, and my stomach was instantly in knots.

I pushed back my chair and stood. “Let’s get this over with.”

Vi and her doctor friend Missy had me lay on the couch. Missy attached electrode thingies to my chest. I’d had to take Grayson’s shirt off for that, but I was wearing a sports bra, so it felt pretty covered up regardless. They stuck electrode thingies to my temple too, and a machine read my heart rate and brain waves.

We were ready.

It was time for Vi to stop my heart.

A heart that was beating so fast I was afraid I’d pass out.

Uri and Grayson stood at the back of the sofa and Vi sat by my hip, while Missy sat on a chair with a beeping machine by her side. She was a petite human with a perpetually startled look about her and a soft, soothing voice.

“Calm down,” she said. “Your pulse is crazy.”

“I’m about to have my heart stopped…I think it knows.”

Vi rubbed her hands together. Her palms had inked patterns on them, and sparks flew off her fingertips.

“Oh, it’s working.” She sounded surprised.

“You had doubts.”

“I’ve never done this before.”

“You’ve never—” I tried to sit up, but Missy gently pushed me back down.

“Vi?” Grayson’s tone demanded an explanation.

“Look,” Vi said. “I’ve seen it done on several occasions and it’s foolproof. I charge up the emblems with a chant, drawing on my connection to miasma, and then I touch Fee and will her heart to stop. It stops. We wait a minute, and Missy brings her back.”

I looked up at Grayson. This was the part where he said something. Something like we don’t have to do this, or maybe we can find another solution. I saw the doubt play across his face, and then his gaze dropped to my neck, to the spot where I’d cut myself, and the doubt melted.

“Fee, if we don’t do this, that curse will take control,” he said.

He was right. This was the plan. The only loophole. “Where’s Cora, I need her.”

“I’m here.” Cora appeared by the fireplace clutching Hunter’s arm.

“What are you—” His gaze fell on me, flicking to my chest and then to the machine I was attached to. “What the fuck is going on?”

“They’re about to stop her heart,” Cora said. “I thought you might want to be here.”

He looked at me, then up at Grayson. “Are you fucking insane?”

Grayson groaned. “Hunter, this is none of your concern.”

Hunter’s expression smoothed out to something cold and lethal. “Not my concern? Last I checked I was the third wheel in this Tribus. She’s my mate too, and her welfare is the welfare of the Tribus.”

For a moment, I’d thought he go down a different route with that reasoning and say that my welfare meant something to him. I shoved away the errant thought. Since when did I care if I mattered to him anyway?

“I have to do this.” I took a deep breath. “I’m cursed, and this is the only way to end it.”

He looked like he was about to argue, and it hit me that this could be the last time I spoke to him. To any of them.

I couldn’t do this without him knowing the truth. My gaze flicked to Cora, who I wager had brought him here for that very reason.

“Hunter. It wasn’t pity, okay.” I didn’t want to say more. I didn’t need to. “I’m sorry if it felt that way.”

He snapped his mouth closed.

I looked up at Grayson. “I lo—"

“Don’t,” Grayson said. “Tell me when you wake up.”

I looked up at Uri. “When I thought you were dead, I felt like my heart was breaking. I need you to know that I’m falling in love with you. I just need you to know that.”

His throat bobbed, but he didn’t say anything.

“Cora, if I don’t—”

“No.” Cora cut me off. “Enough with the speeches. You’re going to wake up, and if you don’t, I’m fucking coming after you.”

There was no way she could do that, but hearing her say it and seeing the fierce look on her face was enough to give me the strength I needed to do this.

I looked at Vi. “Do it.”

“Stop!”

The electric scent of a storm hit me, followed by a citrus aroma, and my pulse, which was already hammering, shot into my throat. I sat up so fast the electrodes tore from my skin, but I didn’t even feel the sting.

“Azazel! Mal!”

They were here. They’d come.

They strode toward me, grime and blood-streaked, reeking of the elements, and then Azazel lifted me off the sofa, and I was kissing him, legs wrapped around his waist, hands in his hair. He tasted like smoky fires and freedom.

“Ahem?”

Azazel gripped me harder, deepening the kiss for one delicious moment before breaking it.

“Thank you,” Mal drawled.

Azazel reluctantly set me on my feet, and I stepped into Mal’s arms. He hugged me tight, his hands diving into my hair, lips grazing my cheek.

“I fucking missed you. I’ll show you how much once this is over.”

“Are we going to have a problem, Azazel?” Grayson asked.

Oh shit.

I’d almost forgotten about Azazel’s curse. The one that made him keep me, the last descendant of Cain, alive.

Azazel’s silver eyes dipped to me. “I’m compelled to keep her alive. Although there is a risk in this, doing nothing means certain death for her and consequences for Lilith.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t feel compelled to stop this. I think the curse, whatever it is, understands this is the only way to save Fee.”

“And if he tries to act up, I’ll put him out for a while,” Mal said with a smirk.

Yeah, I bet he’d enjoy that.

Azazel stripped off his weapons belt and holster and handed them to Mal. “I’m ready. I’m here.”

The fear, the nerves, the rock on my chest, they were gone. My guys were here with me.

I could do this.

There was no stalling now. Electrodes back on, the people I cared for most around me, I closed my eyes.

“Do it, Vi.”

A fist gripped my heart, and then there was darkness.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The darkness was absolute, but only for a moment, and then a light bloomed up ahead, and suddenly, I was moving toward it with no control over my body. Shit. Was this supposed to happen?

Didn’t going into the light mean death?

Who knew when it came to us outliers. This was uncharted terrain.

Had it been a minute yet?

They were going to pull me out after a minute.

The light was a lamppost with a sign jutting out of it. There was a vehicle drawn onto the wooden sign…a bus. A shelter and a bench were stationed on the other side of the lamp, and two figures were already sitting under it. A man and a woman. They were talking animatedly. It was only when I sat down beside them that it was obvious that they were arguing.

“I told you, time and time again,” the woman said. “Two pinches of citra, not three. Now look what you did.”

“Then you should have made it yourself,” the man retorted.

“If I’d known you were about to poison us, then I would have!”

“How many times do I have to say it. I’m sorry, okay? Sorry.”

“You can say it until your face turns blue, it won’t help now.”

There was a rumble, and then a bright purple bus appeared out of nowhere and came to a standstill in front of us.

“Is this it?” the man asked.

“I assume so. Look.” She showed him a piece of paper in her hand. “Didn’t have this before.”

He frowned and looked down at his hands. “I don’t have one.”

The woman’s smile was sad. “Yes, that makes sense. You never finished the soup, did you?” She patted his cheek. “I think you have to go back, luv.”

“What?”

She stood, and he grabbed hold of her hand. “No. We go together. We’re always together.”

The doors to the bus swished open, and she turned to quickly hug the man. “Not this time, Timmy.”

A light bloomed on his back, and then he was whipped away from her. She stood staring off into the distance for a moment and then climbed onto the bus.

Was this my way out of here?

I hurried to the doors and made to step on.

“Whoa!” a gruff male voice said, halting me in my tracks. “Not you.”

I looked up at the driver, a creature so hairy I couldn’t even see his eyes. “Um…why not?”

“You got no ticket.” The doors shut in my face, and the bus whizzed off to be swallowed by darkness.

Shit, what now? I stepped back, and heat bloomed in my chest, sudden and sharp. I gasped, grabbing hold of my torso as the wave of heat came again.

What was this?

Scratch, scratch at the back of my mind.

What was happening? Where was I? I was at a bus stop… I needed to catch a bus.

I turned back to the bench to find it occupied by a guy. He looked young, maybe mid-twenties, but his eyes looked out of place in such a youthful face. They were too knowing. Too shrewd.

“You waiting for the bus?” I smiled tentatively at him before sitting back down as far away from him as possible.

“No,” he said.

“Friends?”

“No. You?” He canted his head. “Where are you headed?”

“Me? I’m…” My mind was blank, and maybe that should have bothered me, but it didn’t. “I…don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.”