Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AMARI
This man was going to be the death of me. A woman had never made me chase this much. I thought that getting Val on board with what I had to offer would be easy.
I was wrong.
I’d always been an equal-opportunity lover. No strings attached was the only way for me. There was something about Val, though, that made me have flutters in my stomach.
He was in his pool. Naked. I knew it was wrong to watch when he thought I wasn’t, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. His body was long and lean, and I wanted to bury myself inside him.
I’d kissed him twice already, and his eyes had sparkled with life again. But apparently, that wasn’t enough for him to let me further my advances.
He put his arms over the side of the pool and looked right at me. A smile played at the corners of his lips. “I know you’re watching me.”
I pretended not to hear him.
“Fine.” He lifted himself out of the pool, the red-tinted water dripping off his skin.
My eyes moved down his body, where his cock stood erect. A purr rumbled in my chest, and I wanted to hide. I wasn’t the purring type.
A smirk spread across his face as he walked toward me. What game was he playing?
He stood in front of me, my face close enough that my whiskers nearly brushed his cock. I couldn’t help the purr this time.
“I think I’m ready to play, kitty.”
He turned, and I nearly pounced on him as he walked into his house.
But when I tried to take a step forward, my left front leg gave way, pain ripping through every bone, tendon, and muscle.
My chest vibrated as a gentle hand stroked my head. My entire body ached, but it was the sharp pains running down my arm that woke me.
I sat up, panting, and reached for my arm.
Nothing.
It all came back to me. The look of fear in Val’s eyes. The glint of the sword. The pain.
“My arm.” I gasped for breath, and a hand found my back, rubbing in small circles. I turned my head to meet Nico’s red-rimmed eyes.
Where did he come from?
I was in a cell again, but so were a few others. One man didn’t look like he was doing too well, and the other was watching us. He looked vaguely familiar.
I looked down at what was left of my arm.
It was gone below the elbow, and the wound had already closed.
I put my fingers to it, feeling the smooth edges of stone as if the cut had been artfully prepared, then sealed by a sculptor rather than violently severed by a guard’s blade.
The flesh-to-stone transition was jarring both visually and to my senses.
I could still feel phantom pains shooting down to fingers that no longer existed.
“It was already healed like that when they brought you in here.” His voice was raspy, and he ran a hand over his face.
He looked rough, dirt covering his face and tracks where tears had streamed down his cheeks. He had a smear of blood on his arm, but other than that, he looked unharmed.
“Where are we?” I kept my voice low, not knowing if we could trust the two men in the cells next to us.
Nico leaned his head against the wall, his eyes closed. “You don’t know? Your beloved vampire betrayed us.”
“He wouldn’t.” Even as I spoke, doubt crept into my mind. Val looked at his father with equal parts hatred and a desperate need for approval. It was a dangerous combination.
But he wasn’t here in the dungeon with us, and I didn’t sense that he was dead. In fact, he was close by, because otherwise, my chest would burn. Wherever he went, I went too, unless I wanted to stay at his house as a guard cat.
“Val was there when I met with his father to discuss our alliance. He knocked me out, and I woke up here. I’m not sure what has happened to my village, but Valentino likes to taunt me with not having a village to return to.
” The man who hadn’t taken his eyes off us moved closer to the bars of his cell. “I’m Winston.”
Fuck.
I cleared my throat, the sudden ball of emotion threatening to choke me. How had Val done this? Why had he done it?
“You didn’t know.” Nico was watching me closely.
“I didn’t.”
The silence hung heavy in the cell, broken only by the occasional drip of water in a corner. I flexed the muscles where my arm had been, pain shooting up through my shoulder and into my chest.
Losing my arm would severely limit my ability to protect Val—not that he deserved my protection if what Winston said was true.
Did Val betray us? The thought felt like a knife twisting in my chest. I’d protected him and continued to turn to stone every night for him when I could have so easily ended my curse like every other man in my line had done.
With death.
And yet here I sat in a dank cell, missing a limb while Val roamed free.
I traced the stone where flesh should be. My curse had saved me from bleeding out, but would I still be able to shift properly? Could I still fight? These thoughts spiraled through my mind as I processed what this meant for me.
“Was it quick?” Nico’s voice startled me from my dark thoughts.
I glanced up to find his jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. And his eyes? He looked like a man barely holding himself together, like one wrong word might shatter whatever fragile control he’d scraped together.
Was it quick?
The question hung between us, simple and terrible in its directness.
He wanted to know if I’d suffered when they took my arm.
Part of me appreciated that he cared enough to ask.
The part that was still reeling from Val’s possible betrayal wanted to snap at him that it didn’t matter, that the physical pain was nothing compared to the rest of it.
“Yes. Thankfully, the blade was sharp. Painful as hell, but quick.” I rotated what remained of my arm, examining it from different angles.
A choked sob escaped him, his body hunching forward as if punched in the gut. Confusion rippled through me at his extreme reaction to my injury.
“Didn’t think you cared that much about me, squirrel. Not to worry, I’m ambidextrous, so it won’t take me long to adjust.” It was a lie, and I attempted a dark laugh that sounded hollow.
Nico’s head snapped up, his eyes wild with grief and sudden rage. “Sammy. How did she die?”
My brow furrowed. “Die? She didn’t die.”
“What?” His voice cracked and went up in pitch.
I stared at him, understanding dawning that this poor man had been led to believe that one love of his life was gone before he had the chance to tell her how he felt.
“Is that what they told you? That she was dead? When the guards attacked, she went to Earth.” I didn’t know if she was safe wherever she’d been transported to, but something in my gut told me she would survive whatever Earth threw at her.
Nico’s face transformed, grief giving way to shock, then fury. He lunged forward, grabbing my shirt with both hands, nearly lifting me. Quite a feat of strength considering we were sitting. “What do you mean she went to Earth?”
I glanced at Winston, who was listening intently. He knew about Lilith and her plans to take demons to Earth, but I didn’t want him to know it was as simple as Sammy touching dried angel blood.
“We can’t talk here, but the three of us escaped from the castle dungeon that way, and when we returned, I was shot with a poisonous arrow. That’s when she escaped.”
“If you’re fucking with me right now—” His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip, trembling with barely contained violence.
I didn’t move to defend myself. “She’s alive, Nicolas.”
His grip loosened marginally as hope and disbelief warred across his features. “You swear it?”
“On my life.” I held his gaze steadily, refusing to let my eyes waver even as my thoughts churned with all the dangers I’d witnessed during my brief time there.
But I wasn’t about to burden him with those fears, not when he’d just learned she was alive.
I’d let him have this moment of relief before reality came crashing back down.
Nico released me abruptly, slumping against the wall. He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, dry sobs.
I shifted closer and placed my remaining hand on his shoulder. The contact felt inadequate for the magnitude of what he was feeling. “She’s resourceful. If anyone can survive there, it’s her.”
“Valentino said Val watched her die and did nothing.” His voice was muffled behind his palms.
“Val loves her.” Of that, I was certain. He looked at her with barely concealed devotion. It’s what had originally made me want to scratch her eyes out. “We need to figure out what his role is in this.”
“His role?” Nico dropped his hands, revealing eyes that had shifted from grief-stricken to blazing with renewed fury. “His role is a fucking traitor.”
Val was calculating, but I wasn’t ready to condemn him completely, despite the evidence.
“Or maybe there’s something more happening.”
“I don’t understand your loyalty. He’s a vampire. They think of no one except themselves.”
My jaw tightened, a familiar defensiveness rising in my chest. How many times had I heard variations of this sentiment? How many demons had looked at me with that same mixture of confusion and disdain when they saw my loyalty to a vampire?
For a while, I let myself believe it was my curse, but in time, I realized it was deeper than that.
“You wouldn’t understand.” I turned my gaze away from Nico’s penetrating stare, focusing instead on the rough stone wall across from us. The torchlight flickered, casting dancing shadows across the room.
“Try me.” He waited for more, expecting me to elaborate or defend myself.
I rarely spoke of my past, keeping the memories locked away where they couldn’t hurt me anymore. I’d buried my feelings so deep I’d convinced myself they’d stopped existing.
My throat tightened, and I swallowed against the uncomfortable sensation. This was dangerous territory. These weren’t thoughts I allowed myself to have. I’d learned long ago that survival meant keeping the past exactly where it belonged.
“I’m an alpha.” The words sounded strange after so many years left unsaid. “The panthers have been led by my bloodline much like Inferna had been ruled by the Lunas.”
“When the curse happened, everything changed. My family was no longer respected or strong enough to lead our kind. Instead of training to become the leader that my soul knows I was born to be, I was trained to live my life with a curse and be an outsider.”
Nico nodded once; if anyone would understand the life of an outsider, it was him.
“Val was the first person who looked past my curse. He never saw me as a weapon or a burden. He looked at me with interest rather than pity. To him, I wasn’t the failed alpha whose bloodline was doomed. I was me. Amari. I’d forgotten what that felt like until him.”
We sat in silence, and I thought the conversation was over, but then he gestured to my arm. “And that’s worth your arm?”
“My loyalty isn’t conditional.” The truth of it resonated deep within my bones. “Even if he betrayed us, I need to know why before I withdraw it.”
A flicker of respect crossed his features. “I’d give anything and everything to Sammy, no matter what.”
“Then you understand why I can’t condemn him yet.”
He sighed as if it pained him, then nodded.
For the first time, I felt a connection with Nico that went beyond mutual distrust. We were both bound by loyalty to someone who mattered to us more than ourselves.