28. Ezra
TWENTY-EIGHT
ezra
When my eyes opened, I was in a cellar—roots above my head, a warm dampness trailing down my eyes.
Blood, I realized, as the substance dripped onto my lips.
They’d drugged me with something to weaken me.
If it hadn’t been for how distracted I’d been this morning, leaving my bed with Rina, they never would have gotten the jump on me to begin with.
Now, they were keeping me from using my powers, the only way they knew how.
I groaned, dragging myself away from the center of the room, but my arms were chained behind me and my feet locked together.
“Fuck.” Rina wouldn’t even know where I’d gone.
Victoria thought I’d left for the palace to visit my mother.
Though I didn’t even know where I was, I had a pretty good idea.
Their scents were muddled,—witch, vampire, were, and something other.
I’d make them pay for this, one by one.
A door creaked open, dirt falling from the ceiling with every step down the wooden stairs packed with mud.
The red eyes that popped into view should have been a surprise. Dark black hair, shorn on the sides, and red eyes so dark they were almost black. A smug expression crossed his mean face, decorated with a gnarly scar—one I’d given him decades before.
When he’d betrayed me.
“Hello, Ezra,” Draven chuckled as he pressed his boot against my face before spitting on me. “Look at you. Heir to the throne, and you can’t even fight back. Pathetic.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I gritted out. “After I’ve taken your head clean off your body, I’ll put it on a spike and display it for everyone as a warning.”
That dark laugh only deepened. “How do you think you’re going to escape? After she’s done with you, you’ll be begging for my mercy. You never should have tried to take what wasn’t yours, Ezra.”
I grit my teeth. “None of that was my doing, and you know it, Draven.”
“Oh? Ravenna would disagree. My mistress has never forgiven you for leaving, you know.”
“Why now?” I asked. “It’s been a long time since I even thought about her.” Until Rina had brought me her grimoire, I hadn’t thought about the witch since I’d ended everything.
“Oh, how you wound me, my love.” That voice felt like acid against my insides.
I convulsed, trying to get away, but it was no use. How the hell was I going to get out of this? The blood trickling from my body was no accident. Pain wracked me on all sides—tiny spikes of ash wood, I suspected. The only weakness we had, and of fucking course, she knew it.
At least she’d done me a favor by keeping me here and out of the sun.
Ravenna had been beautiful once, with her long black hair and big brown eyes, but now she looked every bit the dark witch she was—corrupted by greed and desire, ruined from years of using black magic to stay young.
“What have you done?” I barked the question, not having the patience for this monologue any longer.
I just wanted to get back to Rina.
Rina, the witch that I’d left in my bed. The one that I loved. My mate, and I hadn’t even fucking told her the truth. If I’d told her about Ravenna when she’d brought me her book, would she have understood?
“What I needed to,” she answered, twirling a wooden spike between her fingertips. “To get you back.”
“You’ll never get me back,” I said, absolute conviction in my words. “There is nothing between us—there never was. You tried to manipulate me with blood magic,” I spat. “Tried to make me feel things for you that I never felt.”
“I did it for us,” Ravenna said, tracing a long fingernail down my cheek. “So we could be together, Ezra. We can still be together now. Like it was supposed to be.”
I growled. “Get away from me. There is no us, Ravenna. There never was.”
“Fate can be persuaded,” she said, pointing that spike at my stomach and dragging it up my skin, till the point pressed against my neck.
A single bead of blood seeped out of me, and fuck, my energy—my power—was waning.
“I’ve looked for someone else that could take your place, but there is no one better.
Even the demon prince paled compared to you. ”
Demon prince? It was enough effort just to raise my head. “What?” My voice was hoarse.
“He came into town looking for a witch. We knew what he was, though. Demon scum. So we cursed him and sent him packing. I hope he’s stuck as someone’s house cat, eating their meager table scraps.”
Damien. I wasn’t about to let her know the demon’s fate—that he’d made it to Pleasant Grove and found his mate. I had a feeling that would only enrage her further.
In this state, I doubted I’d be able to protect myself if she decided to kill me—or curse me. I just had to hope that whatever she wanted, it didn’t include me dead.
Or spending the rest of my eternity as a bat.
The Pleasant Grove witches had broken Damien’s curse. They could do it again if they needed to, I supposed.
I tried to transform, but the shackles and drugs in my system kept me stuck in my form. I snapped my teeth at her. “Free me, witch. I will never come back with you. Would never share your bed ever again.”
She curled up her nose in disgust. “You’d be lucky if I welcomed you to it now, Ezra.
After you’ve sullied yourself with another witch.
” My nostrils flared in anger. I didn’t want her to know about Rina.
Had tried so hard to hide her from my world, and yet…
“That’s right. I can see her all over you. Or did you forget?”
I bared my fangs at her in warning, but it was an empty threat—and she knew it.
It would have been easier if I’d been able to forget the tortures she’d once afflicted on me.
Not ones of the mind, no. Ravenna, too, was an aura witch.
A strong aura witch—which was how I’d known exactly what Rina was.
It all felt like a betrayal to my mate, one who hadn’t even been born yet.
But this witch just wanted to see me suffer.
“You stole my book, didn’t you, my love?
When you left me, alone and hurting, you stole the one thing more precious to me than anything else.
” She leaned in close. “Now, I’m going to claim what is rightfully mine.
Like the agreement I made with your mother years ago.
Once the other witch is out of the picture, I’ll make you forget she ever existed.
Don’t worry.” She patted my cheek. “It won’t hurt a bit. ”
“Mistress.” Another voice came from the top of the stairs. One I could vaguely remember, though I couldn’t quite place.
She looked at me—and then at Draven. Her voice dropped as she spoke to the other vampire, becoming sweet as syrup.
But it was all fake—all an act. “Be a good boy and guard the prisoner.” She cupped his cheek, and Draven closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.
“We just need to keep him in place until it’s time for the ritual to begin. ”
“Yes, Ravenna.”
I frowned as the witch disappeared up the stairs without another word.
“Ritual?” I asked, thrashing at my cuffs once again. “What the hell does she have planned?”
He didn’t answer me, and I figured that was probably by design.
“How did you end up here?” I asked the man—my cousin on my father’s side. “How did you end up in her clutches?” What had he done? “Does she make you share her bed, too?”
Draven’s face was stone, only anger shining through.
“Oh, Ezra,” came a sing-song voice as Tempest—another one of Ravenna’s dark witches—came into the cellar.
Her hair was a dark purple color now, though I remembered from before that she dyed it often.
The color somehow always seemed to make her look sickly, her eyes devoid and lifeless.
All the years of black magic had not done her skin any favors.
“What is this, a revolving door on a prison cell?” I muttered to myself. “Like some weird family reunion?” I rattled my chains.
She gave me a fake smile. “You’re finally back where you belong.” She leaned over, patting Draven’s chest. “And you met my pet.”
Pet. I snorted. “A vampire is a dangerous pet to keep, witch. Less I need to remind you, we bite.” I snapped my teeth, baring my fangs.
Tempest dragged her finger down his chest. “It’s a lot easier when you have him on a leash,” she said with a wink.
Oh, gods. The bitter truth washed over me as soon as I spotted the bite mark on her neck. Draven’s eyes dragged to mine. He hadn’t been in Ravenna’s bed—he’d been in Tempest’s.
“Her?” I asked. “You mated her?” The question was—willingly? Or had he been forced?
“Yes.” His voice was gruff. But gods, he looked at her like she hung the moon in the sky. Maybe that was my answer. I should have known from his scent. Would have, if my senses weren’t so dull from the bloodlust.
“This is so fucked,” I said, wishing I could do something—anything—to escape these chains. “They’re wicked, Draven. You know that. You—”
“The coven isn’t evil, Ezra. They see a better path for us. One where we’re the ones in charge, where we don’t hide from the humans, but rule them. Where we all work together in harmony.” The scents from earlier washed over me.
All of them wanted to rule over the humans. I blanched.
“This goes against everything. Every rule of our kinds,” I told both of them. “Besides, you won’t be in charge. Ravenna will.”
“Why are we hiding from them?” Draven said. “We are the strongest. The apex predators.”
“And you,” Tempest addressed me. “The future king of the vampires with a powerful witch queen at his side—you can accomplish what no one else could.”
“I’ll never be with her,” I answered with a growl.
The witch gave me a sad smile, like I was just a young boy to be placated. “Oh, but you will.”
Ravenna somehow knew about Rina—but not that she was my mate.
I wondered where she had gotten the information.
My mother? The likelihood that she was working with these witches, allowing dark magic and ritual sacrifices to happen, for blood to be spilled for them, felt wrong.
I hoped that wasn’t the case, because I intended to put a stop to all of it.
Draven kicked my stomach, and I groaned, the action making my entire body flare with pain. “Just think, cousin. If you’d stopped fucking around and hunting monsters, you could have had all of this already.”
I wheezed. It was like he didn’t remember the husk of a person I’d been after meeting Ravenna. I’d been in my early forties when she’d appeared in front of me, like a shiny toy.
But even though we’d technically been engaged for a time, she’d never worn my ring. It was never anything more than a potential alliance my mother had arranged.
I’d ended it when I realized how deeply she was manipulating me.
She wanted my power, my manor—she didn’t want me.
I’d walked away from her, taking that spell book and avoiding any mention of her for decades. Draven hadn’t left. He’d chosen her, forsaking me.
“This isn’t the way,” I told them. We could live in peace and harmony with the other paranormal races—something I believed deep in my soul. My friendship with Barrett, the way Pleasant Grove continued to grow, only proved that. But we weren’t born to rule over humans.
All I wanted was to be with my mate. How had I let things get to this?
I’d held a grudge against Rina for being a witch because of my past, but that wasn’t fair to her.
She was nothing like Ravenna, nothing like the witch who wanted to use me as a stepping stone for her own advancement.
My mate was feisty, yes, and never let me win easily, but she was kind.
Compassionate. Cared about me, even when I was just a vampire and nothing else to her.
Now she was my… everything. And I hadn’t even told her that.
“It won’t be long now,” Tempest said as she ascended the stairs. “Then you’ll see.”
Maybe I didn’t hate witches—but I still wanted these ones to suffer.
The entire coven stood around a fire, though I didn’t know all of their names.
They’d lost members over the years, and I had no idea how they continued to grow their coven.
Along with Ravenna, who stood clearly elevated from the rest of them, there was Draven, Tempest, and a few others I knew from before.
Sable, a witch with brunette hair and green eyes.
Zyra, with that bone white hair that was chilling just to look at, and Merrick—an older warlock with vengeance in his eyes.
There was also a Grimm—and a werewolf. I bared my teeth, and the creature gave me an impish grin.
Like he thought he was superior to me.
They’d all watched as I’d been pulled out of the cellar by the chains, dragging me through the dirt until I was forced to watch them.
My blood trailed behind me, and I could barely open my eyes anymore.
I had no idea how long it had been—how many hours or days since they’d ambushed me directly after I’d traced—but I knew no one was coming for me.
Some vampire you are, I thought to myself.
I’d tried to fight back, but without blood—without my power—I was worthless.
I knew exactly what Rina felt when I’d told her she couldn’t fight all those weeks ago.
Useless. I vowed to never let her feel that way again if I made it out of here.
The good news, at least, was that if I died here, she’d be free.
It was the only way out for her. I’d known it from the beginning.
The bond would be broken, and she could return to her life in Pleasant Grove.
A life that was safe from witches who used black magic and vampires who were eager to do their bidding.
Maybe in the next life, I could find her again. Maybe then, we wouldn’t get off on the wrong foot.
We should have had years together, but we’d barely even had one night.
I shut my eyes, still on my knees in front of the fire as they traced a pentagram into the dirt. All I could do was picture Rina’s face, that cross expression as she scolded me.
Even in what I was sure were my last moments, it comforted me.
Ravenna chanted something in Latin, and the other witches joined in, though I couldn’t pay enough attention to hear a single word.
Before I could blink, a silver dagger whizzed past my ear, impaling Ravenna in the chest.
“Miss me?”
And there—in a dress the color of blood and a cape of red velvet, stood the fiercest witch I’d ever known. There was fury and hatred in her eyes—for me, I realized.
Rina.
My mate was here.
Somehow—against all odds, against anything that should have been possible, she had come for me.