The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,117

then snapping back to where I stood.

This was the first time I’d been able to feel an Arum. There was no doubt in my mind that was why it felt like I’d been drenched in ice, but was he what I sensed that felt different? I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t shake the crawling sensation of awareness that tasted like heated asphalt in the summer. His head tilted to the side in a movement as fluid as water and so snakelike it reminded me of the Arum I’d met outside of Foretoken. The one called Lore.

The one who’d asked what I was.

He’d sensed the Arum DNA in me, and it was obvious this one did, too. His nostrils flared, and then he took a step toward me, pulling free from the human woman’s grip.

“Serena,” he said, his voice so deep it spoke of dreams and nightmares, and somehow manage to rise above Spencer’s screams of pain. “I want you to get out of this house. Now.”

“What?” Confusion filled the woman’s voice.

The Arum never took his eyes off me, but I saw, along my periphery, Grayson remove the Blow Pop from his mouth. “Because you’ve already seen too much horror to last a lifetime, and I don’t want you to watch as I kill this thing standing in front of me.”

23

I should’ve felt fear—more like pure terror. This Arum looked like he could cash that check his mouth was writing. And I should’ve been thinking about grabbing that rocket launcher, because the edges of his body suddenly looked like they were shaded in charcoal. The blurred effect started to spread, causing his features to lose their clarity as deep shadows bloomed under thinning skin. The woman called Serena was backing up, reaching around to her back.

Spencer went quiet, all the stiffness seeping from his body. He was still, and I had no idea if he lived or breathed …

And something colder and other was waking from the cavern of my chest, and it slithered up, mingling with my thoughts, tracking not only his every breath and the slightest movement but also the human woman’s, through my eyes.

This was not like the night of the nightmare, nor was it anything like what I’d felt when I’d been training. It reminded me of the woods, of the fight with April, when something other than me whispered through my veins, seizing control and erasing me in the process.

This was the Source—the kind of power that wasn’t used to just move objects or to speak telepathically with Luc.

And it was not afraid.

It wasn’t even slightly concerned that it somehow knew the woman was reaching for a gun.

The Source had simply sensed a threat, like it had done in the woods, like I suspected it had done with April. But this was also vastly different.

Because I still had control.

I would have to overanalyze all of this later, along with the whole Nadia thing. Right now, when an Arum wanted to straight up murder me, was not the time for any of that.

I met the Arum’s gaze head-on, and his lips peeled back in a snarl as smoke and shadows stirred around him.

“Hunter.” Luc’s voice was calm in the way that sent a shiver of warning down my spine. “I like Serena, and I like you, so I’d hate to have to kill you in front of your wife.”

Hunter.

What an accurate name, because I felt hunted, but I was not prey.

That was what the Source was feeding me as my chin tilted back a notch.

Grayson threw his Blow Pop in a small plastic trash bin. “I was told you were out meeting with Lore and Sin.”

“I just got back,” Hunter replied, and I swore the temperature dropped twenty degrees. I bet he and his wife had no problem in the hot, humid Texas summer.

Evie, I want you to move to stand on the other side of the table, but move slowly.

I heard Luc, but I didn’t move. I didn’t need to.

Half of Hunter’s body became nearly transparent. “If you know what that thing is and you’re thinking to protect it, we’ve got a problem, Luc.”

“I know exactly who I’m protecting.” Heat pressed against my back. “And I also know what will happen if you take one more step toward her. You will become nothing more than a pile of ashes. She is not responsible for what happened, and man, I’m sorry to know that went down. He was good. Better than you. He didn’t deserve that.”

I had