by Selena Scott
“No!” Tre shoved Arturo off of him bodily. He was up and pulsing. For a moment, the demon got control and rushed the porch, toward the women, but Tre knew what to do.
Because Arturo was right. The demon didn’t get to take this from him.
Tre shifted quickly into his human form, fast enough that the demon got confused for a moment. He ran the other way, away from the porch. On the fly, he shifted into his bear form. And then back. Jack and Arturo came bounding after him and there was Martine, slicing the sky in two in her hawk form. She flew in tight circles around Tre and the demon. Tre saw a strange, golden electricity arrowing out from her wings, circling him.
Tre shifted back into human form and rolled across the ground. He felt the demon’s grip on him slip. Tre knew then that the demon couldn’t hold on if he kept up like this.
The golden whirlpool of Martine’s electricity swirled around him and Tre thought of the night he’d first slept with Caroline. He thought of the swirling want and warmth that had enveloped him. He knew then, instinctually, what to do.
He shifted to bear form, felt the demon’s rage, his anger, his hunger. And then Tre sprinted forward, toward Martine’s wall of light. He shifted into human form on one giant jump through the air, flinging himself through the golden electricity.
He knew, as he hit the ground, scraping the hell out of his naked body, that he was gone. The demon was gone. Tre was alone inside his body.
He thought of Caroline, and passed out cold.
***
“It wasn’t me, okay?” Tre said for the tenth time to Celia who scowled at him from across the van. She had her arms crossed and a dirty look on her face.
It was two days after the demon’s attack and the group had already said goodbye to Thea’s farm. The maps had given them another destination and they dutifully drove across country yet again.
“Yeah, yeah.” Celia faced front, a scowl on her face.
“Baby,” Jean Luc chuckled tightly, the huge bruise on his face looking dark and ugly. Their warm water trick had mostly healed him, but they’d had to get on the road before he could get pretty again. “You know it wasn’t Tre. It was the demon who did this to me.”
“Well, of course I know that in my heart. But it sure as hell looked like Tre’s bear backhanding you across the yard.”
“It wasn’t across the yard,” Jean Luc bristled, offended at the idea that he hadn’t held his own in a fight against the demon.
“It was pretty much across the yard,” Arturo said from the back of the car. Jack and Thea slept in the seat beside him.
Tre tried to hide his smile at Jean Luc’s annoyed glare through the rearview mirror.
Tre wasn’t trying to rile anyone up any further. After he’d come to in a bathtub of warm water, Caroline wrapped around him, he’d made it his business to deeply apologize to every single member of their group.
Everyone had understood. Even Celia. But it was going to take a while for them all to forget how it had felt to see their friend turn on them like that.
Caroline had forgiven him the fastest, of course. She’d said that she’d known almost right away that it wasn’t him. She knew how much he hated being without his glasses. And then by the blank way he’d looked at her.
“It wasn’t until then that I realized how much love you always look at me with,” she’d told him, snuggling him in bed the morning following the attack. They’d been breathing hard and were still sweaty from loving on one another so hard. They’d come together passionately, desperately, but it had given way to a sort of languid, grateful slide against one another. He’d kissed her for an hour before he started to feel some of his anxiety ebb away. She trusted him. He could feel it. She didn’t blame him. He could feel that, too. She definitely loved him. He could totally feel that.
She’d gone on to explain that after Tre had passed out, the whirlpool of Martine’s energy had spun faster and faster, trapping something large and dark inside its web. None of them had seen what the demon actually looked like because Martine’s energy went as bright as the sun and seemed to sort of eclipse everything else.
When the light had faded, the demon was gone.
Arturo explained later that the light was damaging to the demon, but that he’d gotten away before Martine could really finish him off.
Arturo guessed that the demon would be down for the count for a while. Giving them a bit of time to get the hell out of Montana.
Tre tucked a sleeping Caroline into his shoulder as he watched the Badlands zip past them. He could feel the demon on their heels, but he also felt a deep sort of calm. He’d faced off with the demon and won. He’d battled and come out on the other side. He’d survived and come out stronger.
When he’d survived his mother’s death, Tre had come out weaker, missing a sense of his own self-worth. But this fight? This fight had proved to him who he really was.
Tre looked into the back seat where Arturo was also watching the countryside pass by. Arturo turned and looked at Tre and the two men held one another’s eyes for a moment. Communication passed between them and Arturo nodded his head before he turned back to the window.
They were alike, in so many ways. But Tre hadn’t allowed himself to lose what Arturo had. He’d fought and come out on the other side with himself and with the woman he loved.
The day gave way into evening and when the sky was a graying lavender out the window, Caroline stirred in Tre’s arms.
She blinked up at the man she loved.
“Thinking good thoughts?” she whispered to his stern, serious profile. Even in the dim light, he burned like a torch. A beacon of light and warmth.
“Mostly,” he answered honestly, whispering back to her. Her eyes tracked every expression on his face and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to tell him everything. To be truthful and open and to ask for what she wanted, and know that she deserved it.
“I want a small house,” she told him. “A messy one. And I don’t want to cook anymore. Ever. I hate it. And I want a dog.”
Tre laughed. “All that sounds pretty do-able, love.” He turned thoughtful. “Maybe we’ll move down south. You really liked Jean Luc’s area in Florida, right? Would you wanna live there?”
Her heart swelled so hard and so fast that she felt it was a miracle she didn’t lift right out of the car.
She nodded her head vigorously enough to make him laugh again. “And I wanna get married,” she told him, flat out.
Tre’s eyes dilated and his breath got a little shallow. He banged his head back on the headrest. “You’re supposed to wait for me to ask, okay?”
“Why?” she demanded. That had never made any sense to her in the first place.
“Because I want to make it perfect. And I’m only gonna get to do it once in my life, love. If we get married, that’s it. None of this divorce nonsense.”
“None,” she agreed somberly.
“Then be patient, love. It’ll happen.”
She scowled. “I’m not good at being patient.”
He kissed the scowl off her face, a laugh on his lips.
“Then you’re in luck. Because neither am I.”
She smiled into his shoulder, understanding what he was saying. That they were on this path. That he wasn’t leaving it. He wasn’t leaving her. They were moving forward, wherever this road would take them, together.
The End
Other books by Selena Scott
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