Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Damn bastards never listened, did they?
Race nailed the males from his past with an icy stare. It seemed Koal’s failed attempt at persuasion was to be backed by two more shifters, whom he never thought to see again.
Koal straightened, his muscular frame tense, positioned just behind the other two. Attor, that crafty old bastard—his late sire’s former head enforcer—waited with the patience of a predator after prey.
Yeah, not happening.
And the real gut-punch was the flame-haired shifter. Skaldr.
His old friend, whom he’d thought dead for millennia, watched him with eyes that held none of their former brotherhood.
Race didn’t bother speaking, but seeing them brought back memories of a world torn apart, of carnage and betrayal. His dragon thrashed furiously beneath his skin at the sight of these males from their shared past.
“Race, what’s going on?” Ash asked from behind him.
Dammit, he didn’t want her there amid danger.
“Bloodshed.” He didn’t raise his voice, but power threaded through his tone. “Go inside, Ash.”
Her footsteps crunched on the snow-covered courtyard as she beat a hasty retreat back into the abbey. The air grew thick with tension, the warriors shifting their stances.
His gaze locked with Skaldr’s. While he was glad his old friend lived, the past could never be erased. “You survived?”
Nothing showed in Skaldr’s amber eyes, but the nerve in his jaw pounded.
“It took him a long time to heal,” Koal jumped in, trying to ease the animosity.
“Good for you,” Race retorted. “Now get out. I have no interest in Lemuria.”
Not when he had been betrayed, captured, and incarcerated in Tartarus, trapped in a torture that had broken him. Even now, the rattling of chains clawed his mind, bringing back the horror, the endless agony of spikes nailed into his bones—
Teeth gritted, he shut out the past that would start the screams inside his skull again.
“Eracier?” Attor stepped forward. “I know you have a different life now. But circumstances—”
“Am I not speaking clearly enough for you?” he snapped, bloodlust surging through his veins. “Get out. I’m done.”
Skaldr took a step forward, hands fisted, amber eyes flashing, looking ready to tear into Race.
“Skaldr,” Attor warned.
Enough of this shit. Race summoned his Gaian sword. It ripped free from his biceps, the agony nearly dropping him to his knees—the price he paid for using it without cause.
He launched himself at them, blade winging through the frigid air. Snarls erupted, and they unsheathed their own weapons with practiced speed and countered. They fought, fast and furiously, steel clashing with steel in a thunderous clang. Growls erupted as blood spilled.
He wasn’t just a Guardian, but a fucking predator. He went for gore and death.
“Dammit, Eracier, listen—” Attor ducked a deathly swing to his carotid. “Caelvyrn—all of Lemuria is falling. Malcarion—”
“I don’t care.” He struck hard. Attor leaped back, and Race’s obsidian sword sliced across the male’s chest, blood drenching his gray shirt.
“Then you leave us no choice!” Skaldr roared. Sword sheathed, he ducked Race’s blow and sprinted for the abbey.
Ash’s startled cry pierced the air, triggering both man and dragon’s protective instincts.
Race spun as Skaldr strode outside, Ash tossed over his shoulder. She yelled, pounding at his back.
“Let her go!” he snarled, his dragon’s rage merging with his own.
Attor and Koal moved as one, blocking his path, their huge swords a blur of steel. With a roar that shook the abbey walls, he countered their lethal dance. Millennia of battle with demoniis and demons blurred his blade as his desperation to reach Ash grew.
Power crackled, and the air split open in the courtyard, revealing a portal. Skaldr leaped through the gateway with a shrieking, fighting Ash.
Koal and Attor fell back in a practiced formation in front of the whirling gateway, blades countering his attack.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Your Highness,” Attor said, regret heavy in his voice. The formal title scraped Race’s nerves raw. “But you left us no choice. You’re needed back in Lemuria.”
Both warriors leaped through the portal as its edges began to collapse, the air crackling with fading power.
No! His dragon thrashed beneath his skin. Bring her back.
Fuuuuck!
Race summoned his obsidian dagger, slipped it into the back waist of his leathers, and leaped through the shrinking gateway, his mind thick with blood rage.
He put Ash in danger.
Now he had to go back to the one place he swore he never would.
He would incinerate the bastards for forcing his hand!
Ash stirred awake in sweltering heat, rubble biting into her arms and face. A faint, sweet scent lingered in her nose, and bitterness coated her tongue. Her stomach churned, and she groaned, desperately trying not to heave.
She blinked her blurry eyes, trying to make sense of the gloom. She’d been in the snow-covered abbey with Race—
Oh, shit. She jackknifed upward, memories swamping her. Race facing those three men, one of them grabbing her, slamming something in her nose.
He’d bloody chloroformed her! Bastard.
Her heart in her throat, her gaze darted about, taking in her surroundings, and she blinked at the rough, dark walls and the twilight at the entrance.
A bloody cave?
With her captor nowhere in sight, Ash pushed to her feet. If there was a way in, there had to be a way out.
A scuff of boots on granite echoed, and she froze. Her captor stood shirtless in a dark passage leading deeper into the cave, looking as if he’d climbed out of a bloody Viking comic, with his harsh expression and wild red hair. Steam rose from his bare skin—how odd—as he pulled on a shirt.
“Going somewhere?” he asked mildly.
“You absolute prick—” She slapped her palm against the rough, surprisingly warm wall as another wave of dizziness made her head swim. “I demand you take me back!”
“Keep your voice down,” he growled, sounding more beast-like than human.
“Don’t you shush me.” She scowled, refusing to cower even though his amber eyes glittered with animalistic intensity in the gloom. “You drugged me!”
“No, I just let you smell a somnara pod—a dream bane. You were too loud.”
“Too loud—too loud? No one asked you to abduct me, you arrogant jerk. You had no right. I demand you take me back!”
“No.” He stalked for the cave mouth.
She gritted her teeth, anger racing through her veins like a lit fuse.
Calm down, Ash. Think.
She inhaled a shaky breath and nearly gagged at the hot, acrid air burning her nose and stinging her eyes. She dashed away the tears, determined to find a way to escape this God-cursed place.
Granite walls surrounded her, and a ceiling soared high above, worn symbols etched deep into its surface.
The ground beneath her boots hummed with a faint energy she could feel through the soles, and her unease grew.
Ahead, the vast entrance, like a gaping maw, led to a platform jutting into empty space.
She’d never been one to panic easily, but her instincts were practically screeching the national bloody anthem. Ash swiped her sweaty face with the back of her hand, trying to stifle her dread. “Where the hell did you bring me?”
He ignored her, crouching on the platform’s ledge.
Perspiration beaded her brow and dripped down her spine. Dammit. She stripped off her parka and tied it around her waist.
The sudden hiss of steam venting from fissures in the veined wall next to her had her stumbling back, her heart careening in her chest. “Shit!”
Ash covered her nose, groaning at the god-awful stench of sulfur, and something else…something wild and ancient thrumming in the air.
Wild and ancient?
Hysterical laughter choked her, and she clenched her hands, her own abilities tingling beneath her skin. Every instinct within her screamed that something was wrong.
Ash stomped over to the red-haired jerk and nearly tripped on her own feet when she reached the massive, railless platform. She grabbed the rugged edges of the wall and gaped.
Holy bloody crap! She was so high up that clouds billowed past! In the distance, through the violet-edged vapors, she caught glimpses of golden spires glinting in the twilight.
“This isn’t Romania,” she breathed. “Russia? They have buildings with gold domes and…” her voice trailed off as the clouds sailed past and more of the city came into view.
Her mouth fell open as the world unfurled before her like a hallucination—an eerie, fairy-tale-like realm no earthly architect could have imagined. The sprawling city seemed carved into the foothills and the mountain itself, with towering, monolithic buildings and enormous archways big enough to—
What?
To fly through?
Ugh. She shook her head at the foolish thought.
Glittering domes and towers rose impossibly high, bridges threading between the mountain peaks. Beyond the city, her gaze fixed on a soaring, shimmering palace built into the mountain itself, rising into the sky, its spires half swallowed by thick clouds.
It isn’t Russia.
“What is this place?” she whispered.
Her abductor shifted on his haunches, his attention fixed outside.
Something was off with him as well. He wasn’t like those clueless idiots who tried to burn her on that bloody pyre.
Like Race, he carried a similar undercurrent of danger—wild and barely restrained.
He lacked charm or softness, exuding only cold intensity.
The kind that made her anxiety tighten like a noose.
“Look, if this is some war-torn sanctuary of yours, just say so. Otherwise, I’m going to assume I’ve been kidnapped by a bloody cult.”
That got him to blink. “You’re safe.”
“Oh, yes, I sooo believe you!” she retorted. “You not only abducted me, you bloody knocked me out!”
He exhaled through his nose. Not quite a huff of irritation, then he resorted to silence again, his attention on the view.