Chapter 15
Istared down at the Seer I’d hunted into the mountains, now collapsed at my feet. Drenched in rain and finally glaring at me with the defiance I’d been missing.
My mate.
My fucking mate.
The word slammed into me over and over, lashing me harder than the thunderstorm overhead. With each strike came an excruciating agony. A throb between my shoulder blades. A crackle in my magic.
Beneath it all, her hate hammered down our bond.
For the first time, she held my gaze, and I saw the truth. Her truth.
I fell to my knees beside this female who had consumed my every thought—awake and asleep—for weeks. I didn’t mean to; my body merely obeyed the pull.
I was reeling. Undone.
It all made sense; and nothing did.
The ache in my chest wasn’t only magic; it was the loss of what this moment should have been.
“You are my fated mate?” I rasped, again, because I needed to hear her say it.
I need it to be real.
The thought slapped me back into myself.
“Unfortunately,” she bit out, her stare hot enough to sear.
I scooted closer, my body brushing hers. She cried out, face contorting in raw distress. I jerked back like she’d sunk her teeth into my flesh. A sharp stab speared from her into me. “What’s wrong?”
“You. Go fuck yourself,” she gritted out, attempting to slide over the rocks and put space between us.
Another grunt fled her lips. With our new connection, I felt everything she did.
Mate bonds were mystique, their power transcending all other magics.
Now, everything between us was shared. And it gutted me.
Air choked in my throat as more pain flared.
“Stop moving, you’re only going to hurt yourself further,” I snapped, desperate to stem the emotion pouring from her into me.
I couldn’t bear the tumult of everything right now. I scarcely had a grasp over my own and I was so damn close to losing the last thread of my sanity.
She scoffed but stopped trying to wriggle away. “Like you’d care.”
Little did she know.
Some sick, twisted part of me wanted to. Wanted to hold her and take away all her pain. The thought terrified me.
She was supposed to be part of my obligation to the realm. Capture her, bring her to Iaoth, help the Angels win the war against the Demons.
But even before the moment the fabric of my being was rewritten, I’d let my control slip. I’d let desire leak into my duty.
Now that I’d caught her, now that I was mated to her, she looked at me like I was a curse from the Goddess.
And maybe I was.
Because I already knew I was a monster.
I was the Issaraeth, the Mindbreaker, after all.
Swallowing back the swell of thought, I focused on what was in front of me. Taking a quick survey of Sylaira, I noted that her bronze cuffs had disappeared. “Is your healing magic kicking in? Do you need further aid?”
I had potions in my pack for just this purpose. Couldn’t have myself or one of my hunters injured and unable to complete our mission.
“I don’t want your help,” she shot back, venom in each word.
Frustration crept across my neck and shoulders. I was raw, flayed open, by our fresh bond. I needed to stop fucking feeling and start fucking acting.
An irritated sigh slipped out before I could stop it. Sylaira lay there, rain pelting her frame, clothes soaked through and clinging to her lithe form, refusing to so much as look at me.
Again.
Something clicked in the back of my mind. All the times she’d kept her head down. Curled in on herself. Ignored me.
“Did you know?” I pressed, closing the space between us. Yet I did not touch her. Merely vibrated with violence held back by fraying restraint.
I’d hunted her into the lake country. Forced her to flee into the mountains. Risked everything because of the thrill—because of her.
And if she’d known the entire time? I didn’t even want to think about it.
Her long lashes trembled against her cheekbones as she closed her eyes. “I’m done talking to you. Leave me here to die.”
“You know I can’t do that. Especially not now.” Each word was hard, sharper than the blades strapped to my body.
“I’d rather be dead than be mated to you,” she said, her melodic voice so soft, so resigned.
Rage gripped me.
How could the Goddess have blessed me with a bond so deep, so pure, it transcended all other love, only for it to be with a fucking Elessarum Seer?
A scoff slipped out of her. “There is no blessing in this.”
I hadn’t realized I’d projected the thought to her. Yet her words cut deeper than any my sister had ever spoken to me.
After centuries, I was numb to it. But to feel this, now, after a moment that should have been one of the greatest of my life?
That urge to break her returned tenfold. My father’s cruelty flickered in the back of my mind. I shoved it down, along with the twinge of shame.
“Clearly not with your sour attitude,” I growled, shoving to my feet and stomping away. Splinters dug into my chest, a punishment from the magic chaining me to her. I pressed my hand over the well of light like that could stop this new entity inside me from writhing and fighting.
Gritting my teeth, I stared at the fast-flowing river, rising from the rainstorm that wouldn’t relent.
Ilae appeared in the mist, his wings slicing the air as he swooped low. Long talons gouged deep marks into a nearby boulder as he settled atop it. His head twitched between me and the Seer crumpled on the ground at my back.
He pressed an image of another auravane into my mind, Ysolthe. A question hovered beneath it, as if through our connection, he sensed my new one.
A muscle feathered in my jaw. I rubbed my hand along the beard that had grown out during our game in the mountains.
Another throb from her injury needled my attention.
I pivoted to face her again.
Her eyes still closed, arms wrapped around her middle, lying among the rocks and rain, she looked pitiful. The center of my chest tugged me forward, begging me to go to her. To comfort her. To hold her. To heal her.
I strangled it into submission. Shook it like I couldn’t shake her.
Ilae hopped along the bank until he was inches away from her crumpled form. Yet when he crouched and nudged her with his beak, a beast—feral and frothing—reared inside me. In a blink, I was beside her, and my bird was flapping away.
No one and nothing can touch what is mine.
Sylaira glared up at me as I took his place. Her pink lips pressed into a thin line. But it didn’t hide the tremble in her chin. Whether it was from pain or cold, I didn’t know, but I wanted it to stop.
I raked my hands through my wet hair, leaving it even more of a mess than it had been. The leather strip tying it back barely held more than a few strands. I tugged it free and wrapped it around my wrist for later instead.
“We need to seek shelter and wait out the storm. Can you stand or do you need help?” I asked her, trying to keep the exasperation out of my tone and utterly failing.
“Do not touch me again,” she threatened, teeth clenched.
The ache from her side of our connection had lessened, and as I brushed against it, I realized she’d erected some sort of barrier. Though it was cracked, and the trickles of thoughts and feelings she let through were a clear result of her struggle.
A low growl vibrated in my chest. “Just because you are my mate doesn’t mean you’re not also my prisoner. This changes nothing. I still have to deliver you to Sivy. So tell me, little fugitive, do you need my help to move again?”
“Fuck you,” she spit out immediately. Ethereal strands slipped from beneath her, and she shoved her hands into the sand, attempting to push off the ground. Thin and pale against the mist, her power failed to aid her. She collapsed again with a curse.
Sick satisfaction bloomed inside me. I waited for her to admit she needed my help.
“I think my knee is shattered.”
A tear leaked down her cheek. I resisted the urge to reach out and swipe it away.
I wanted her broken…right?
And yet her sorrow felt so wrong.
Desire and duty were at war inside me, unable to reconcile their differences.
Flexing my hands, white unfurled, slinking between the stones upon which she rested and wrapping around her. The moment the tendrils brushed against her body, a shiver wound its way down my spine. It was like touching something sacred, and yet I knew it would never be mine.
Something I’d wanted more than air, something I’d risked my position for, knowing the consequences should the Goddess reveal a flicker of the truth.
This female was something that would destroy me in the end.
A small cry slipped past her lips as I eased her upright. With tender care, I added more magic, lifting under her shoulders and around her thighs to keep her off the ground. Sweat rolled down my back and gathered beneath my hair from the focus.
Then, I crafted a canopy over us, preventing further drenching. When I stepped forward, I angled my body to capture the backside of hers. “Which knee?” I asked, moments away from sticking my arm beneath her legs.
“Left,” she replied, her voice hoarse and strained.
I dragged in a deep breath. In one swift movement, I snatched her from the air, redirecting my magic to encase her left leg and keep it straight. Agony still etched her features as she collapsed against me.
The force of it nearly stole my breath.
As did the feel of her lithe body pressed against mine.
“That Goddess damned bastard,” Sylaira cursed down our mental connection. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be injured like this. Everything wouldn’t hurt.”
My nostrils flared and I forced myself to ignore her internal monologue. Clearly, she was in too much pain to temper her thoughts.
Yet with the dampness of her skin, the closeness of her scent, the chain tying our fates together calmed immediately. As if all it had wanted since it burst into our lives was this proximity, and now that we had obeyed its pull, it was ready to slumber.
I took one step forward, testing for any discomfort in my mate. She said nothing, even as a throb cascaded between us. So I took another, then another, until our pace evened out and we scaled the embankment with ease.
We remained silent throughout our trek back to the hollowed out tree. Sylaira closed her eyes, face screwed up.
“Don’t you dare cry, Sylaira,” she continued, still unaware she was projecting her thoughts to me. “He doesn’t deserve your tears. He’s the monster who killed your friends and family.”
With each passing moment, fury twisted tighter and tighter in me.
She didn’t want to acknowledge me? Who I was to her? What I was doing for her? Not even a fucking thank you for considering her injuries as I carried her?
A part of me hated her for that. Hated her for cracking me open. Hated myself for forsaking my duty all this time.
I’d harden myself to her displeasure, as I was so great at doing. Even if I might have deserved it.
I’d hunted her and stolen her freedom. Apparently killed her parents too. And now I carried her like some lovesick fool, aching for the warmth of a bond that would never amount to anything.
No one had ever chosen me. Not truly.
Even being bound, soul to soul, with this female couldn’t change that. She would always look at me like I was the villain in her story, if the words and images leaking from her mind into my own was any indication.
Fine.
Fucking fine.
When we returned to Sivy, I’d hand her over to Iaoth. She could join her Seer friend and be tied to a chair and plied with drugs to force her visions out.
And I’d tell my sister that I was done hunting.
I’d go to the front and Command there. Slake my rage in Demon blood.
And maybe, just maybe, the Halálhívó, the leader of our enemy’s army, would find me on the battlefield and finish what the Goddess had started.