by Rhea Watson
Declan took orders well. He did whatever the recipe called for, but only after I read off the instruction or asked him to. The hellhound looked to me for everything, then completed the task diligently—perfectly, even. It had proven my initial read of him correct: eager, thoughtful, and thorough. All traits Alexander had told me you wanted in a hellhound.
That and staunch loyalty. This evening’s cooking endeavor had given me some confidence that Declan would excel once we started our actual training, that we could work together as a team. Of course, there was still time for him to prove me wrong, to rip the rug out from under me and show his true colors. They all had that chance, and while at the end of the first day I felt gingerly optimistic about our potential, I kept my guard up all the same.
Because after cooking, the boys had gone back to the silent treatment. I had taken the trio on a tour of the house, from the basement cellar right up to the rickety attic with holes in the roof. As the sun dipped below the horizon, setting late this time of year, I’d shown them the grounds up to the tree line—the gardens, the overgrown walking paths, the ruins of an old caretakers cottage, the field where we would soon practice tracking, retrieval, and the sit-stay-come routine Alexander had drilled into my head. Neither Gunnar nor Knox had looked too thrilled about any of it, but every now and again Declan had shot me a trying smile.
So.
That was something, right?
After the tour, I’d let them be, and the pack disappeared up to their floor without so much as a backward glance. Although I could have dipped into a little magic to tidy the kitchen, I cleaned it all by hand, right down to scrubbing the countertops, all of them stained with something somehow resistant to soap and elbow grease. Standing in the doorway now, admiring my work, it was hard to see what had actually been done over the last hour; despite my efforts, a layer of grime clung to the whole house from top to bottom. I let out a defeated huff.
Gut job. Everything needed to go at some point, but unfortunately for the pack, their training took priority. But in time, I would get it up to snuff. They deserved that… Hopefully.
With my scythe resting on one shoulder, I drifted from the kitchen to the foyer, then up the stairs toward the second floor. It had been an age since exhaustion touched me, but tonight, in the settling darkness, it made every step labored, my eyes heavy, my cheeks sore from forced smiles and one-sided conversations. On the landing, my free hand went to my hair, loosening the base of my braid in front of the dusty window. The woven white locks peeled apart as my hand worked its way up, my reflection captured in a glass pane speckled with dirt. At least the muck was on the outside. Like today, it could have been worse.
In the distance, an endless sea of red cedars danced in the breeze, their pointed tops swaying to and fro. A peaceful summer night met my absentminded staring, just as quiet out there as it was in here. I glanced at the staircase branching off from the left of the landing, up to the pack’s floor. Maybe it was a little… too quiet?
So, instead of going right, I went left—into pack territory. To give them some breathing room, I had set up my quarters in the right wing of the house. Even though I didn’t need to sleep, I could, and I had allowed myself a room with a bed, a little table to set my antique record player on, a closet to hang my black wardrobe in. The pack had more than me, and in my mind, that was the way it should be; they needed more than me, on this mortal plane and the next.
Ruffling my hair, a mass of unruly white that spilled halfway down my back, I paused at the top of the stairs just to listen. The nightly exhale of the house responded, the foundations groaning, the walls sighing. But no hellhounds.
Declan’s room was the first in the corridor; it sat dark and empty. I frowned, scanning the whole space, just as capable seeing in the dark as my pack. Nothing. With a firm grip on my scythe, I hurried down the hall to Gunnar’s room, to the bookshelves I’d filled with tomes that I’d hoped at least one of the pack would appreciate.
Empty.
Fear crept up my spine. In the time I had taken to diligently scrub the kitchen, had I missed an escape attempt?
Had they played me?
With that in mind, I sprinted to the open doorless frame dead ahead, then stumbled to a halt a few feet inside Knox’s room.
Because there they were.
My pack.
My boys.
Fear released me from its grasp, giving way to exhaustion once more. My whole figure sagged at the sight—at Declan sprawled out across the end of the king-sized bed, still wearing that bloodstained shirt, an arm thrown over his face as he snored softly. Up against the ornate wood headrest, Gunnar slumped, head hanging, thin lips slightly parted and brilliant blue eyes closed, an open book in his lap.
Here they were.
Even my scythe weighed on me tonight. I took it off my shoulder, holding it in both hands, letting it hang in front of me as I surveyed the dozing pair. They each had their own room, but they had ended up here.
They’d wanted to be together.
I should have realized…
Unshed tears blurred the dark bedroom, and I blinked them back with a sniffle. My presence felt like an intrusion into a deeply personal moment between the pack, and I stepped back, watching, trying not to cry, only to pause when moonlight glinted off a pair of eyes in the shadowy corner. I stilled, blood running cold.
Knox had repositioned the furniture, dragged the armchair into the corner next to the fireplace…
So he could face the door, I realized.
So he could stand guard while his pack slept.
His massive frame of pure muscle dwarfed the chair, his posture rigid, his expression masked by that wild hair, the thick beard.
But his eyes said enough. I faced him without a word, imploring him to see that I wasn’t Fenix, that I was good. If I had a black soul, a cruel soul, I couldn’t reap. I would have been in Hell, on the list to reincarnate as a demon.
My goodness probably didn’t matter though. His eyes slid to my scythe, and that highlighted the issue between us. I possessed the ultimate weapon—period. I could end all three of them in a second.
I brought my scythe back to my shoulder, keeping one hand wrapped tightly around the yew handle. No way would I walk these halls without it—not yet. A reaper wasn’t dead, but we weren’t alive either. We were the right hands of Death, a creature unlike any other. Knox couldn’t kill me if he tried, but he could wound me. Hurt me. Tear my flesh, rip out my throat. Paint the walls with my golden blood, then do it all again the next day when my body regenerated.
The scythe was my safety guaranteed—my power guaranteed.
Hellhounds were domesticated, sure, but only in comparison to their rogue counterparts, the true hounds of Hell. Compared to Earth’s shifter community, the trio before me was wild.
And I hated that I needed my scythe to keep them in line, but there was no way around it yet. Without trust, as much as it pained me, I’d have to remind them of my nuclear bomb every chance I could.
Silent as ever, Knox sunk deeper into the floral armchair, a menacing shadow watching over his own. Even if he never said a word to me, I understood his concerns—because I had concerns of my own.
Only there was nothing I could do to address them tonight. Probably not tomorrow either.
Maybe not even this first month.
So I left.
Halfway down the hall, the weight of the day quashing me brick by brick, I paused and looked down at the chipped wood floor, feeling all of it again after a day of distraction.
The crushing loneliness.
The emptiness inside.
That’s what we reapers were: empty.
And nothing in this world, the next, or the beyond, was ever going to change that.
6
Declan
This was paradise.
Why couldn’t Knox and Gunnar see?
A clear blue sky above, unfettered sunshine warming our skin. A balmy breeze and fresh, real, honest to goodne
ss grass at our feet. Scents galore—and not just brimstone and shit and death and blood. A house of our own. A territory that stretched to the horizon in every direction, safe and secure inside a ward. Birds in the trees, chattering. A circling hawk. Creatures with no connection to Hell, not a demonic inkling in their body.
A gorgeous reaper whose smile could set the world on fire.
A reaper who smelled like fresh dates and agarwood bakhoor, who made the three of us four—who sent my mind back to a time of endless roaming and full bellies and kind eyes. A time gone by. Fleeting. Painfully fleeting. A time my packmates no longer remembered, probably, but I still felt in my marrow, still longed for in the dead of night after the nightmares ripped me awake.
This was what I imagined Heaven to be like, smell like, feel like. This place was everything we had always wanted, reaper or not, and it was their own stubbornness that kept my fellow hounds from realizing it.
But I would follow them wherever they went, even if it was away from here. If—more like when—Gunnar found a way around Hazel’s ward, I’d walk with them into the great wide world, dragging my feet, a new hole in my heart. Because they were my brothers, my soulmates, my pack. The two stubborn assholes meandering about in front of me now, trailing too far behind Hazel, squinting in the afternoon sunlight, were a part of my essence.
No other pack had so openly accepted me before.
No one else had loved me.
I had the scars to prove it.
Their unwillingness to see paradise, however, was starting to get under my skin. We were only a day into our training as Hazel’s hellhound pack, but already their inability to make nice had me ready to scream.
I didn’t.
Because I understood.
Gunnar and Knox had suffered through the same fucked-up bullshit as I had in Hell. Knox came away wearing those tribulations on his skin, flesh that usually healed from any injury slashed and torn and scarred. Gunnar carried it all on the inside, whether he’d admit it or not—I saw the agony in both of them. I’d recognized kindred spirits from the moment we were introduced through the bars of our kennel, me on a leash with that spiked collar cutting into my throat, Knox and Gunnar on the other side, sniffing me out, more intimidating in looks than any alpha-beta pair I’d suffered before.
Their spirits were softer, however.
I owed them my life.
And if I could, I’d pay that debt by making them realize just how fucking great we had it here—even if we were, technically, collared again. Hazel was our new mistress. She hadn’t given us physical collars like my last reaper had, but the ward was basically one giant collar, and it would be a monumental battle to make my packmates look beyond that.
Although nearly impossible to see in the mortal realm, if you caught it at just the right angle, you might detect the rainbow-colored shimmer of the magical barrier. Gunnar and Knox would test its strength as soon as Hazel left us to our own devices, but I just appreciated its beauty—the security it offered.
She offered it too—security. Beauty. I’d sensed it the moment our eyes first met in Fenix’s cage, and that feeling amplified here. Hazel had fed us twice today already, at regular intervals, my hunger properly satiated for the first time in years. Between our meals, we had learned about modern human devices; Hazel had taken us to the third-floor study, the only room on that level without a hole in the roof, where she introduced us to television, computers, and touchscreen tablets. The importance of understanding the souls we were set to reap had been stressed, and much of this month would be dedicated to studying modern-day humans.
The electronic devices were supposed to help with that, each one like a library that fit in the palm of your hand. It had been a little difficult to navigate at first, but overall the devices were fairly intuitive. Gunnar picked it up the fastest, as usual, while I preferred watching human behavior on the television.
Knox just tapped around distractedly on his tablet screen, staring Hazel down like he wanted to eat her.
Not that I could blame him, really.
Alphas were born, not made. Knox came into this world with instincts none of us could ever touch—and one of those was the intense need to protect his pack. Although Hazel had been nothing but good to us so far, her voice sweet, her smiles lovely but short-lived, we all struggled to shake the shackles of our pasts.
How could you trust anyone after a lifetime in Hell, raised under the boots of demons?
Hazel guided us down a gentle slope, drifting toward the forest, her scythe resting on her shoulder. She looked rather delectable in her thigh-length trousers, her flowy black shirt; when the wind hit her just right, that loose fabric stretched taut over her curves, eliciting an intense physical interest through our pack bond. When she finally stopped, her feet bare and toes wiggling in the grass, her eyes narrowed against the sunshine, so did we. Knox set the distance, while Gunnar and I stood behind him.
Without realizing it, all three of us had crossed our arms, a united front of fuck-you to the reaper before us. Frowning, I dropped mine to my sides, fidgeting with the fit of my new trousers—jeans, Hazel had called them. A gust of hot air toyed with my hair and ruffled Hazel’s white waves, her scent catching and carrying toward us. A quick glance at Gunnar, then Knox told me my packmates would have preferred to be upwind from her. Their nostrils flared, same as mine, and a renewed desire twanged through our bond. Gunnar’s jaw clenched briefly as he looked back toward the house.
“Today we’re going to work on recognizing a soul signature on the celestial plane,” Hazel told us, planting her scythe’s wooden staff into the earth. When she released it, the most powerful weapon in all the realms stayed upright on its own, its hooked blade carved with ancient glyphs I’d never understand, somehow both terrifying and beautiful. Hazel caught her wild hair in both hands, smoothing it back and out of her face as she said, “A freshly departed soul will be different than the souls you’ve seen in Hell. It feels different. Smells different. Behaves different. So, it’s important to recognize that.
“If we pass the final trials, you will be responsible for tracking souls without me and holding them until I can reap. Lunadell is substantial. Bigger than anywhere I’ve ever reaped. Hundreds of humans die each day—from disease, murder, accidents, and old age. One reaper, even with their hellhounds, can’t manage that. It’s paramount that you can scent, track, and contain souls on your own and as a pack.”
My last reaper had kind eyes too, a warm presence despite his ice-cold flesh, but I hadn’t had the chance to train with him; my old pack turned on me the second we left Hell, eager to pick off the perceived weakest link before we even started. I welcomed the challenge now, the chance to prove my worth, no matter how the others felt about doing what was asked of them.
“The first step in all of this is accessing the celestial plane,” Hazel remarked, snatching up her scythe and huffing her hair out of her face with a frown. “No matter what anyone has told you, you are celestial beings—like me, like demons, like angels, like the old gods. You can travel the celestial roads through worlds, and you can do it without me.” She cleared her throat, cheeks pink—perhaps from the wind, perhaps from the way Knox and Gunnar looked at each other like she had just given them their key to freedom. “I mean, the ward works on both planes. So. You know. It’s not… Never mind. Let’s practice going in and out of the plane together.”
For once, my packmates had no objections to her command, which didn’t surprise me. Going from the mortal realm to the celestial was a valuable skill that we had never been taught by our demon trainers; this was our first taste of power, so of course Knox and Gunnar wanted to take advantage of it. We reaped on the celestial plane. Lost souls waited for us there—and I wanted to help them. Finding my way onto it, through it, was essential.
Not easy, mind you, but nothing in our lives ever was. Hazel insisted that, as with all magic, it was about intention. Wish it, want it, think it hard enough and your mind can make anything happe
n.
My mind was just a little too interested in a certain reaper, unfortunately, which meant I was the last to eventually access the plane. We spent the better part of an hour on the attempt, Gunnar sliding from one realm the other first, then Knox, then finally, finally, with the assistance of all three and Hazel standing downwind from me, I crossed over.
Like walking through a blast of cold air, stepping from the mortal realm to the celestial plane was disconcerting at first. Inside, the world was so much brighter, every element in sharper focus, yet somehow muted too. Scents lacked their potency. Twittering birds turned to whispering echoes. The wind through the piney branches no longer sang but hissed. Standing there with my pack, a little light-headed now that I’d mastered a smidgen of magic, I decided the mortal realm was just better. More exciting.
But the souls were here, and so was Hazel, the smell of honeyed dates and incense the only one not dulled—which made it all the more overwhelming. The others sensed it too; Knox and Gunnar immediately found a position upwind from her, at a distance, and I followed in their footsteps so that I could concentrate.
Scythe planted at her side, Hazel produced a brilliant white orb between her delicate hands, molding it, perfecting it, making it round and thick. Recognition rippled through the pack bond; she had created something to mimic a soul signature.
And she’d been right—it was different to the human souls we had seen in Hell. Brighter, stronger, it hummed with an enthralling energy that the damned lacked. It buzzed and trembled, full of life, like the essence of humanity still clung to its depths.
“Every soul feels different, but this will give you an idea of what to expect,” Hazel told us softly, her hands circling the orb almost with reverence. It possessed one other element the damned souls didn’t: it smelled like… like… I stepped closer, entranced, racking my brain for a word to describe it and coming up short. Sweetly scented, it invoked relaxation and calm.
