Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Selena
What the hell was that thing?
I craned my neck, peering past Rocco’s shoulder as the bayou shrank beneath us.
The dark shape hadn’t moved. It stood at the edge of the clearing, those burning red eyes locked on us like two embers refusing to die.
I waited for it to transform—to sprout wings, shift into a bat, launch itself into the sky after us.
It didn’t. It just stared.
A sick, crawling sensation slithered down my spine. I could have sworn the thing was smiling.
Maybe it was a wolf shifter. Someone working for Angelo or Costin—a scout sent to track our movements and report back. It wasn’t Trystan. He was a white wolf, unmistakable even at a distance. This creature was something else. Something that wanted us to know it was there.
I tore my gaze away. Staring at it any longer felt like giving it exactly what it wanted.
Wind rushed over me in a roaring wall, nothing like the gentle currents I’d felt when I was in bat form.
This was raw and relentless—tearing at my clothes, stinging my eyes, stealing the breath from my lungs before I could catch it.
My hair whipped behind me in the wind. I winced, knowing damn well it was slapping Rocco square in the face. He didn’t complain.
He tightened his arms around my waist, solid and unwavering, pressing my back against his hard chest as if he was afraid I would fall. I smiled at his protectiveness. Something I never thought would happen. I was his mate. Not his rejected mate.
I pressed my knees hard against Raven’s broad back, gripping the ridge of scales in front of me.
Beneath my thighs, I could feel the immense power of her—every muscle rolling and contracting with each beat of her wings.
She was enormous. Mac truck enormous. Her wingspan stretched so wide I couldn’t see the tips from where I sat, and every downstroke sent a shockwave of air rushing past us that rattled my teeth.
She was a fortress with wings. I didn’t know if Costin or Angelo—or whatever that thing in the bayou had been—could keep up with her. I hoped to God they couldn’t.
Lucien and Darius flanked us on either side, two dark figures cutting through the sky.
Lucien's body was angled forward like a blade slicing through the wind, whatever was in that vial Anton gave him keeping him locked in pace with Raven's wingbeats.
Darius flew beside him with an effortless grace that made it look easy.
Good. We needed them close. If something came at us from any direction, they were our first line of defense. Splitting up, even by a few hundred yards, was how people got picked off.
Rocco’s lips brushed my ear, his voice low enough that the wind nearly swallowed it. “Are you okay?”
The warmth of his breath against my skin steadied something inside me. I leaned back into him, letting his chest absorb the tension knotted between my shoulder blades.
“What do you think that creature was?” I kept my voice quiet, not wanting the others to hear the unease threading through it. “A wolf?”
His thumb traced an absent line along my hip—a gesture I didn’t think he was even aware of. It sent shivers down my spine. All I could think about was how his lips and hands had awakened my passion.
When he spoke, his mouth stayed close to my ear, his tone careful. Measured.
“Definitely a wolf. But I couldn’t tell if it was a vampire who’d shifted or one of Trystan’s.” His chest expanded against my back as he drew a slow breath. “Trystan’s home is in the bayou. That wolf could’ve been out on patrol—nothing more than a sentry doing its rounds.”
I wanted to believe that. I really did. But that wolf had been bigger than Trystan’s wolf. What if it had been Costin?
“But?” I pressed, because there was always a but with Rocco. He didn’t sugarcoat things, and right now I needed the truth more than comfort.
A long pause. “One thing’s for sure—Angelo and Costin are going to find out Raven’s helping us. She’s the only silver dragon that I know of.” A grim edge crept into his voice. “Our only saving grace is they don’t know where we’re going.”
Yet.
But Balthazar said we had to go to one of Costin’s castles. He wouldn’t tell us which one. Supposedly, we’d know it by scent.
Right now, Angelo and Costin didn’t know where we were headed—unless that wolf had been Costin.
If it was, he would only know that we were flying on Raven.
He and Angelo were a lot of things—ruthless, relentless, ancient—but stupid wasn’t one of them.
The moment they realized we’d fled New Orleans on the back of a silver dragon, they’d tear the city apart looking for answers.
And they’d start with Tinkerbell.
My stomach clenched. They’d badger her. Threaten her.
Push every leverage point they had until she cracked or caved.
Tinkerbell was a powerful witch—powerful enough that Angelo kept her close—and that power cut both ways.
If she decided to find us, really find us, could she?
A locator spell, a tracking enchantment, something pulled from that arsenal of magic she kept tucked behind that deceptively sweet smile?
I didn’t know. And not knowing terrified me more than any wolf with burning red eyes.
I stared at the horizon where the blue of the sky bled into the darker blue of the Gulf stretching out below us.
Thousands of miles of open water between us and Dracula’s castle.
No cover. No allies waiting along the way.
Just wind and speed and the desperate hope that we’d get there before anyone figured out our destination.
I leaned back into Rocco’s chest, letting his warmth seep into me. His fingers curled around mine immediately—no hesitation, no question.
This wasn’t going to be easy. And who knew what waited for us when we arrived in Transylvania.
Vex.
Just the name made my skin crawl. He was pure evil—not the calculated, political kind of evil that Angelo wielded like a scalpel, but something darker.
Deeper. The kind of evil that enjoyed suffering.
Fed on it. Especially children. Vex didn’t want power for what it would buy him.
He wanted it for what it let him do to people.
My gaze drifted to where Rocco’s hands rested against my stomach, his fingers still laced through mine. Strong hands. Steady hands. Hands that had once wrapped around his own mother’s throat while something else wore his skin.
I’d been there. I’d watched it happen.
The memory clawed its way to the surface no matter how hard I tried to keep it buried.
Rocco’s face twisted into something unrecognizable—his eyes wrong, his voice wrong, everything wrong.
The way his mother had gasped, her feet leaving the floor.
The sheer horror of watching the man I cared about become a weapon against the person he loved most. And the worst part—the part that still woke me in cold sweats—was that Rocco had been in there somewhere.
Trapped inside his own body, screaming behind eyes that weren’t his anymore.
What if it happened again?
The question sank through me like a stone dropped into black water.
What if he turned? Not evil—Rocco didn’t have evil in him—but twisted. Hijacked. His body used like a puppet while the real him beat against the walls of his own mind. What if he turned on one of us?
On me.
My throat tightened. I didn’t know what I would do. Fight him? I couldn’t hurt him. Run? I’d never leave him. He was my mate.
Sometimes mates could break through madness. Did this include possession? Would I have the power to reach him through whatever demon was pulling his strings?
But his mother had called his name. Begged. And his hands had only squeezed tighter.
He’d almost killed her. And I knew—knew with the kind of certainty that lives in your bones—that he’d never forgiven himself for it.
Maybe never would. The guilt was a living thing inside him, coiled around his heart like barbed wire.
He carried it every single day, and he’d carry it until the day he turned to dust.
If Vex ordered a demon to possess him again, it wouldn’t just be his body they’d destroy.
It would be everything he’d fought to rebuild.
Every scrap of trust he’d clawed back, every moment of peace he’d scraped together from the wreckage of what they’d done to him.
The possession wouldn’t kill him—not physically.
But the aftermath? Knowing he’d hurt someone else while trapped inside his own skin?
That would kill him. Slowly and completely.
I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.
Rocco’s thumb traced a slow circle against my stomach, absent and gentle, and the contrast between that tender gesture and the violence of my thoughts nearly broke me.
I pressed my back harder against his chest, felt his heartbeat steady and sure against my spine, and made a silent vow to whatever god or fate or cosmic force was listening.
No one was taking him from me.
I’d die before I let them take him again.