Chapter Twenty

 

THEA

 

Cam never returned. Months stretched by and he never appeared. Thea didn’t really expect him to after what she had said to him.

It broke her that she let him think she didn’t care about him, but she couldn’t have him making decisions for her like that. She told herself she was better off without him but each day seemed a little darker and gloomier than the last, like the sun was being slowly chipped away and soon no light would be left to guide her.

Her mind was ripe with thoughts of him, her body missing him so deeply it almost ached, especially in her angel-form. It was as if her body was searching for him.

She trained and practiced by herself in the quiet apartment when she wasn’t out fighting, putting all of her anger and aggression into her weapons and perfecting her shifting. Being in her angel-form was unsettling at first. She was definitely stronger, her senses more powerful, but she still couldn’t do anything more than she had already learned. She couldn’t even fly, only levitate with her wings. However, she soon got used to it and reveled in the power it gave her.

At night, she tore through assignment after assignment, destroying demons one or two at a time. Still, she wanted more. It kept her from thinking about and obsessing over Cam and what they could have had if she’d just said yes to his proposal. Or at least, the assignments slowed the thoughts down, kept them from overwhelming her. The money she got from doing the assignments was excellent and enough to keep her from having to do any other job.

One night, while hunting, she was cornered by four Spectras. They seemed to have planned it, closing in on her with disfigured grins that suggested they knew she would be there. She focused her mind, unsure if she could take them. She had never fought more than two demons at a time. Mustering all her strength and angelic energy, she produced two shining balls at once, in either hand, for the first time.

One of them, a female, swung at her, hitting her hard in the stomach and almost knocking her backward. Thea stumbled but didn’t fall, instead kicked to push her away. Her foot connected with a pressure point on the demon’s thigh, just where Cam had told her to hit, and the demon yelled and fell to the ground. Another lunged at her and she darted out of the way and swung an energy ball into his ribs. She almost winced at the ugly crack but she didn’t have time to think about it; the female demon was getting up from the ground. With the other ball of energy, she destroyed the female demon’s skull, folding her face inward in one gruesome hit.

The other two demons came at her from either side and she rolled away. They missed her by inches. Before she knew it, she had gathered the energy into her palms within a couple of seconds. She shot them both off at the same time, hitting each one in the gut. The remaining demons were on the ground. Thea walked to each of them and pushed spikes through their throats with a calmness she almost didn’t recognize in herself.

By the time she was done, sweat trickled down her temples and back, her breathing heavy. When she started training, she never would have guessed that she’d get to the point where she could fight four demons at once. She was somewhat proud of herself for doing it without coming to much harm, though her abdomen hurt where the demon had hit her. It would leave a bruise but she could heal that easily. Her peaceful soothing came, lasting longer than usual due to the number of kills. It rippled through her and her last climax with Cam sprung to mind. As the feeling petered away, she pushed away those thoughts. They wouldn’t help her recover from him.

She was in her car heading home for a shower when she saw Cam. He stood with two other angels, speaking to them intently. Thea gripped her steering wheel as the urge to scramble out of the car overcame her. All she wanted, really, was to kiss him and laugh with him again. Have him slide into her and hold her, keep her where she belongs—with him. But she clenched her jaw and kept going, locking her eyes on the road before her and ignoring the deep ache within her.

Thea wasn’t someone who cried. It wasn’t a part of who she was. Amber used to say she was made from steel because she never seemed to get upset. But she found that she had tears in her eyes as she pulled up to her apartment building. She fought them back as hard as she could. When she got into her apartment, though, she broke down, dropping to her couch and letting the sobs wretch out of her for what she had lost, the desperate anguish engulfing her completely. It had been so painful seeing his beauty again that she still ached from it.

“You only get one chance with the love of your life, right?” she whispered to herself. It had seemed stupid when Amber always said it, but she finally understood it now. She loved Cam, truly and deeply, and now he was gone from her life. She had never felt anything like this with anyone else, like her soul was tearing apart.

She had held onto her anger for months, convincing herself she was weak to feel upset about somebody who had tried to control her and then left her for good when she wouldn’t comply. She had believed that she was better off—that it was best for her to stay in the human world, to protect Amber and to stay independent. She didn’t want to be under the control of any man again.

However, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she was being deceived by her feelings about past men. When she was with Cam she felt stronger. He didn’t treat her like she was weak or incapable. In fact, he had trained her to go out each night and fight.

A part of her wished she had gone with him to be his mate. Things weren’t perfect between them, but they were damn near close. They were good, natural, and loving together; she hadn’t had that with anyone. Thea regretted losing that because of her inability to trust, her suspicion and pride, but throughout her life, her sharp pride and mistrust had kept her from harm.

Eventually, Thea cried herself out. Exhausted, she got up to peel her dirty clothes off and take a shower. She washed slowly, looking down at the bruise blossoming on her stomach. She put her hand over the bruise and healed it, feeling the relief that came with using her healing powers. She wished she could press her fingers to her temples and heal the parts of her that didn’t manifest as physical bruises or cuts.

When she finally crawled into bed that night, she relaxed into the mattress, her whole body tired. She swore to herself that she would call Amber in the morning. Thea hadn’t talked to her much in weeks and the guilt niggled at her. She had been so caught up in demon-hunting, in missing Cam, that she had barely thought about communicating with anybody. She deposited money regularly in Amber’s account to help her with her savings but didn’t want to talk. Her father had called a couple of times too and Thea had ignored him. Her dad was the last person she wanted to talk to, especially after what had happened the last time she saw him. She had arranged for him to get nursing care and, based on reports from the company, it was going well.

Thea had trouble sleeping that night, though she was more tired than she ever remembered feeling. In the morning, she found that she wasn’t in the mood to call anybody. Talking to Amber would be uncomfortable; especially if she figured out Thea was hurting. Amber had an uncanny knack at that. If Thea broke down and told her the truth about who she was and what she’d had with Cam before he left her, she’d never be able to take it all back. She promised herself that she would call her friend soon. As soon as she got over Cam.