Chapter 1

(Ambrosia)

I felt like I had a flaming rod shoved straight into my chest cavity… And I guess by all standards, I did. The pain was explosive in my upper abdomen and I couldn’t tell where the incision started or stopped. 

Both hands instinctively shot up to the wound, covering the knife handle and the panic set in when I realized he really stabbed me… Andres, he really fucking stabbed me... 

What a fucking bastard! After all that time we spent together I thought we were friends. Well, I knew we werent friends, but still… STABBING ME?

I wanted to yank the knife from my chest cavity and throw it straight at him, but I knew better than to pull it out. I would just bleed out faster if I did. 

I could hear commotion and screaming from both sides, but my mind was a blur. I couldn't focus on any one thing, just my own heartbeat in my ears. Then the feel of my blood draining from my body and spilling into the ground below where I lay dying. 

Holy fuck, I was dying… The thought was so foreign to me. And the feeling of losing this much blood, this fast, it was almost freeing. But I didn’t want to die, I wasn’t ready! Not yet. Not like this! What a stupid way to die. 

All those nights we spent narrowly escaping death at the hands of much more brutal creatures while in Pandora’s Box… And a fucking knife is going to kill me? A goddamn stab wound. 

I don’t know what was more ironic. It’s a time like this when my Human body really hinders my survival. The ability to die when you get stabbed is so stupid.

“You have about 3 minutes until she bleeds out completely and you wouldn’t be able to revive her. Give us the amulet!” Andres snarled. 

I instantly heard Rowen snap his fingers and I could feel the amulet being lifted from my chest. Rowen didn’t even fucking flinch, he just handed it over. Jesus, Rowen, what the fuck! 

I desperately tried to reach up and grab it. Just to try and stop it from moving, but It was like my hands couldn’t move fast enough. 

Everything was in slow motion and I could hear shouting from somewhere behind Rowen. I assumed this was his brother’s shouting in protest. 

I had hoped they would protest! I tried to shout out for him to stop. I didn’t want him to give it to them either. 

My life definitely wasn’t worth the looming apocalypse. One life versus many. But I couldn’t make out any words. All I could feel was the blood pooling in my mouth. 

Any word I tried to speak just ended in blood spewing out of my mouth at this point. I leaned over and started coughing up blood onto the ground. 

“God damnit Andres, why did you have to fucking stab her? She was my fucking prize and now you’ve gone and killed her! What the fuck man!” Dominik snarled under his breath at his brother. I could hear the frustration in his husky voice.  

Then I saw Dominik clasp his hand around the amulet, and he looked down at me with pity in his eyes. His look was really more one of frustration, panic, and sorrow. As if he were trying to say sorry to me with his looks. 

Then he and his brother lifted themselves into the sky and were gone, taking the amulet with them. 

Immediately Rowen had me in his arms. He ripped the knife from my solar plexus sending pain shooting through my body. It was a way worse pain than what was already there. 

I groaned in agony as blood ran out of my mouth and down the front of me. Rowen stuck his hand over my solar plexus and tried to heal the wound. 

“Fuck, why isn’t it working? Why isn’t she healing!” Rowen cried. I could feel his sheer panic, it was radiating off him like an atom bomb. 

Just the feeling of his fear had me in a full blown panic, but my mind was too disoriented to really feel the panic, or understand what I was feeling. 

“This is an Angel blade!” Raziel snarled, and the sound of his voice made me tremble. I had never heard him angry before, and I never wanted to again. He had the scariest pissed off voice I had ever heard. 

I suddenly was grateful that I was not on the receiving end of that voice. It could have been the blood loss making things seem worse than they were. 

But, if we are being honest, I wasn’t in pain anymore and that had to be a good thing… Right? 

“We can’t heal a wound created from this.” Raphael chimed in. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. What should I do? How can I save her?” Rowen shouted. 

The desperation in his voice was unnerving. 

I should have been more afraid, but I was in and out of consciousness at this point and wasn’t sure what was really going on. I blacked out momentarily, and when I came to, I found myself in Ramses’ arms. 

He had his hand over my wound pressing hard on it, but I was too weak to protest. Hell, I couldn't feel it anyways. I was just struggling to keep my eyes open. 

“Adiuro vos ab Angelo magica ferrum. A insanabile vulnus habetur nunc, et sanábitur ánima mea.” Ramses chanted over and over. The words swirled through my brain like a knife through fog. 

Suddenly, I could feel something moving inside of me. It felt like it was leaving my body, whatever it was. I felt the wound in my chest start to stitch itself back together, and it made me sick to my stomach. 

I immediately rolled over, out of Ramses’ arms, and hurled all over the sand next to us. It was a mixture of blood and whatever I had in my stomach, which wasn’t much from what I can remember. 

My senses were all still out of whack from whatever Ramses did to me. I no longer felt the life force leaving me, but it was still a disorienting situation. 

As soon as I gathered enough bearings to sort of know what was happening, I couldn’t stop my loud ass mouth. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?!” I shouted at Rowen. I didn’t even care that he was my Master and I just broke every pet rule there was. 

I looked up from the sand and wiped the blood from my mouth, locking eyes with Rowen. He gasped and I could tell he had a mixture of emotion flowing through his face. 

He Just grabbed me and pulled me straight into his chest. He didn’t say a word, he just held me and tried to calm his erratic breathing. 

“Ramses, what did you do? How did you do that? How did you heal her?” He said slowly. 

“I bound the magic from the Angel blade, and allowed the wound to be healed. I had no idea if it would work. but I panicked and had to try!” He stammered. 

So Ramses saved me, what the fuck is an Angel blade? My thoughts were still a mess in my jumbled mind. 

“Thank you, brother. And regarding the amulet, I don’t want to hear a fucking word from anyone. I know what I did, and I’m not fucking sorry!” Rowen growled. 

“And I would do it again, and again, to save her.” He said softly. I heard incoherent mumbling but couldn’t make anything out. 

“We understand, brother.” Ramses said cautiously, trying not to make the mood worse. 

“But you can’t deny the fact that we are so fucked now.” Nico chimed in. Rowen took a deep breath in. 

“I know, and I don’t exactly know what to do about it just yet.” Rowen said. 

I hadn’t even realized how hard I was clinging to Rowen until he tried to pull me off him. I promptly released his suit vest from my hands and reluctantly sat up, locking eyes with Rowen. 

I was feeling a lot less foggy by now, and the realization of just what happened started to sink in. The Angels had the amulet. 

“Why… Why would you let them have the amulet?” I asked him. Pain flashed through his face, sheer agony as he replied. 

“I couldn't lose you, not again.” And I thought I saw a tear starting to form, but he blinked it away before I could be sure. 

I looked up at everyone standing above us. The sheer turmoil plastered on everyone's face was enough to say everything I was thinking. 

First off, the apocalypse is about to start and it’s all because Rowen decided to save a Human, which was me. Secondly, with the Angels having the amulet, they would open Pandora's Box. 

I had just spent months inside that Box, and I was familiar with the creatures that lurked there. No one here had any fucking idea what they were getting themselves into. 

The terror that’s about to hit us when that Box gets opened made me shudder. And Third, whatever creature was inside Pandora’s Box that could create the portal between here and The Otherside would definitely be creating that portal… 

While I wasn’t familiar with The Otherside, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be. Handling the creatures inside Pandora’s Box was going to be challenging enough. 

I knew we were in for a war between the realms, and I had a sinking feeling that this was one war that we may not be able to win.