Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SERAFINA
I could fight back—and a part of me really wants to—but I don’t dare. Not with my mates’ lives on the line.
I hate to admit it, but Kian, Tristan, and Foster are the gentlest of all my men. They’re lovers, not fighters. Yes, I believe they’ll do whatever it takes to protect me and each other, but the results of this battle proved that their best isn’t always good enough, at least in this situation.
I can’t take the chance of harm befalling them because I chose to fight back.
So with heavy reluctance, I allow my captors to lead me away from the library and into a forest bathed in ambient moonlight. The obvious leader—a man I dubbed Scaly in my head—guides the party forward, continuously shooting glances at me over his shoulder. His scowl seems to deepen the longer he looks at me, though he hasn’t talked to me again since asking the one question.
Tristan’s on one side of me while Foster is on the other. Kian remains just behind the three of us, so close I can feel his breath on the back of my neck and his hand on my spine. None of us are in handcuffs or tied up, but I’ve never felt so much like a prisoner before.
I just pray I’m not walking straight to my execution.
“Are you okay?” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth to Tristan, who seems to be walking with a slight limp.
“Just a little battered.” He offers me a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s not the signature Tristan smirk I’ve come to know and love. Still, it’s better than the broody silence I’ve been getting the last few minutes. “I’ll be fine.”
“Of course he will.” Scaly scoffs with obvious derision, once again peering over his shoulder to glare at me. His slitted yellow eyes appear particularly malicious in the shadowy forest. “Unless your pretty-boy mates can’t handle a simple whack across the head.”
Tristan growls—the sound more wolf than human—and flames lick at each of Foster’s palms. Even Kian’s hand on my back flexes in response to his mounting anger.
“I didn’t know a dozen against one constituted a simple whack across the head,” I reply sweetly, batting my lashes for added effect. “Where I come from, your actions would be considered…” I pretend to think about it for a moment. “Well, it would be considered cowardly .”
“Bitch,” one of the men—I can’t see which one—snarls.
But Scaley simply laughs. It’s a harsh sound, reminiscent of stones rolling down a cliff face, but genuine.
“I’ve been called a lot of things over the years, but I can’t say I’ve ever been referred to as cowardly before.” His voice is almost contemplative.
“There’s a first time for everything,” I quip as we finally step out of the tree line into what appears to be a…
Camp?
Village?
It takes me a moment to understand what I’m looking at.
Tents are erected in a loose, circular formation in a clearing, the fabrics seeming to be made out of animal skin and fur. There are a few fires providing a copious amount of lighting, and stalls have been pushed to the far edges, creating a makeshift border. The stalls sell everything from food to jewelry to weapons.
I make a mental note to take a closer look at the last stall, if I’m not killed, of course.
And the fae…
All of them vary in appearance, but one thing becomes abundantly clear—even though they survived the infamous fae disease, they didn’t escape unscathed. A woman with billowy blue hair has scales covering her entire bare chest. A man has horns protruding from his forehead and fur erupting on his arms. A little girl runs past with the lower body of a horse but the upper body of a human.
“What the…?” Foster breathes in awe, echoing my own thoughts.
Scaly stops abruptly and spreads his arms wide to encompass the camp as a whole.
“Welcome,” he says simply.
A few of the fae have stopped to gawk at us. The little centaur girl is so engrossed in studying the four of us that she runs face-first into a tree. Her friends break into raucous laughter as she flushes.
“Cadmus,” a woman hisses, moving to step up beside the scaled man. She places a possessive hand on his shoulder and scowls over her shoulder at us. “Who are these… people ?”
Her lip curls in obvious disdain as she gives us a slow once-over.
“Cadmus,” I muse. “It’s nice to put a name to the face of my captor. It was getting awfully weird calling you Scaly in my head.”
Cadmus steps away from the woman, and her hand falls ineffectually back to her side.
“Scaly, huh?” Cadmus offers me a sharp-toothed grin. “First you call me cowardly and then scaly. You really are testing my patience, aren’t you, little fighter?”
“She did what now?!” The unknown woman places a hand over her chest as if I personally offended her.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she daintily fainted like one of those maidens in a Victorian movie.
I take a moment to study her.
She’s taller than me. Significantly so. The type of woman Caleb would be drooling over if he were here with us. Her dark hair tumbles around her shoulders in loose curls and frames a seductively gorgeous face—plush red lips, violet-colored eyes, and a tiny nose. I feel a strange tingling in my body the longer I look at her.
I’m not into women at all, but I can’t help but imagine leaning in and pressing my lips to hers, inhaling her sweet scent, caressing her perfect body?—
Understanding dawns on me with a startling clarity, and I break eye contact with a curse.
Motherfucker.
That woman is a succubus.
She grins, pleased that she was able to use her powers on me, before her eyes trail over my men. They stop on Kian, and possessiveness shoots through me at the sultry look she throws him.
Possessiveness…and protectiveness.
No one is allowed to touch him or even look at him if he doesn’t want them to.
She takes a step forward, her hips swaying in a way that’s designed to draw the eye, but I move before she can reach my mate. With an almost blistering speed, I grab a blade out of my hair and hold it at her throat. She stares at me in wide-eyed alarm, but this time, when her seductive magic pokes and prods at me, I’m able to bat it away as if it’s nothing more than a pesky gnat.
“If you go near my men, I will stab you,” I warn her seriously. “Don’t even fucking look at them.”
Her lower lip begins to tremble. “Cadmus,” she whines. Actually whines , like she’s a five-year-old girl instead of a twenty-something-year-old woman. “She’s threatening me.”
A single tear rolls down her cheek.
How does she make even crying look pretty?
I’m not an ugly crier by any means, but I definitely don’t make tears appear sexy.
“I heard.” Cadmus folds his arms over his chest, and I swear I see a tiny smile flirt with the corners of his mouth before he masks his expression. His eyes harden. “But you’re also aware of the sanctity of mating. You dare try to seduce a mated…quad?”
He fumbles over the last word, though his expression never changes.
“Cadmus…” She stealthily moves away from me and cuddles up against the snake man’s side, her breasts pushing against his arm. I roll my eyes so hard I practically see brain matter. “Who are these heathens? Why are they here? She was going to hurt me.”
Kian actually laughs out loud at that. “Trust me. If she wanted to hurt you, you wouldn’t be standing.”
The woman straightens and whirls on Kian, some of her tears drying up. She eyes him up and down like he’s a tasty morsel she yearns to devour whole.
Even still, anger radiates from every pore of her lithe body, permeating the air around us. “Are you threatening me, incubus?”
“Not at all.” Kian places his hands on my shoulders and gives them a squeeze. “But I will if you don’t stop eye-fucking me like you have any chance in hell of stealing me away.”
His lips touch my temple, the kiss quick and fleeting, and warmth skates down my spine.
“Rachelle.” Cadmus grabs the bridge of his nose and squeezes, almost like he’s praying for patience. “We don’t treat our guests this way.”
“Guests?” The succubus—Rachelle, apparently—scowls. “Where are they even from? I don’t recognize them from any of the clan gatherings.”
Cadmus’s gaze zeroes in on me, his expression unreadable. Those slitted eyes appear almost amber before the color darkens, turning subdued, almost brown, misted in shadow.
“That’s what I’d like to know as well.” He takes a single step closer to me, and I swear my heart pounds so loudly it’ll be shocking if no one can hear it. “Who are you, little fighter, and where did you come from? And, more importantly, how are you still alive?”