Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Theo
“ I swear I’m going to kill you,” I tell Nic as we teleport into the dungeons of Shadowvale.
“At least you’ve quit ignoring your mate. Besides, she’s handling herself.” My baby sister doesn’t bother looking at me which means she has zero concerns I’ll actually follow through on my death threat.
I’ve already lost my other sister until I can figure out who I need to beat into telling me they either stole our father’s blood or forced him to open a portal that kidnapped his own daughter. I can’t believe he would have willingly done such a thing. He must have been in one of his recent fugue states when they got to him. Gods, how am I to keep the kingdom together and our family from falling apart with my father going into psychotic breakdowns when I’ve been disowned as his heir?
I’ll solve that enormous problem as soon as I yank my mate out of the warded cell with Reginald, my shadow demon cousin. I should’ve killed him instead of throwing him in here for later public torture.
Cold snakes down my spine, a shiver having nothing to do with the chill from the damp walls of this abyss.
Hurrying through the narrow hallways, I seriously question my no-teleportation rules inside these restricted areas of Shadowvale. The wards had been meant to keep those seeking sanctuary safe, the prisoners in, and any would-be rescuers out. Since when had my wards worked against me as much as they have recently? Never.
I hadn’t imagined I would be running through the twisting corridors, fueled by fear for someone inside the dungeon. For my reckless, impulsive, has more science smarts than common sense mate.
To push down the terror quickening my heartbeat with each turn, I concentrate on my anger. “Who besides you helped Val break into the cell? I need to know the names of everyone who requires punishment for endangering her.” Without waiting for an answer, which seems unlikely given Nic’s smug and sullen expression, I ask the more important question, “What madness had her going in there with him?”
“She’s taking back her power,” Nic says, a slight snarl to her voice. “Power you made her question by ditching her as though you blame her for our family’s problems, for the portals, for the monsters snatching Gilly, even for your little temper tantrum that almost burned down Shadowvale.”
“I don’t blame Val.” I force the words out. Do I blame her? No. I can’t. Logically, it doesn’t make sense, and reason and order are all that stands between me as a former crown prince and my psycho shadow demon cousin who could be tormenting my mate this very moment. Except it started with her , an awful, twisted memory of my last argument with Gilly whispers through my mind. No. I can’t go there. “Val didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then tell her that,” Nic snaps. “She thinks you’ve abandoned her because of something she’s done. Not because you’re a fool who can’t recognize the miracle she is. She has brought the Brimstone Bells back, she carries magic we’ve never seen, and she puts up with your stupid ass.”
“Careful,” I warn. “If you weren’t my sister?—”
“But I am, and that blessed creature is your mate.” She waves an arm, and the wall of the cell becomes transparent, revealing Val in high-heeled boots, the lab coat I’ve come to fantasize about, and full-glam glory tossing blades of light as though she’d been born to wield them. “So treat her like it,” Nic demands on a huff. “Start by worshipping her and maybe, just maybe, she’ll forgive you for the way you’ve acted the last few days.”
Her accusations weigh heavy on me. I’d kept away from Val so I wouldn’t poison her again or set something on fire. Winning back my crown and keeping her safe had seemed more important, but what if that’s not what she’d wanted?
“I gave her space because…” I swallow, trying to push past the instinctive desire to appear in charge and in control, to radiate confidence that I have all the answers when I obviously don’t. “Because Gilly suggested I forced Val into the mating bond. She insinuated I’m the worst thing to ever happen to my mate, and I shouldn’t be able to live with myself if that’s true.”
“And you believed her? What’s the actual truth, Theo? Not what you think you should say or what anyone else has told you.”
A glance at Val, and I answer from instinct. “Honestly, I don’t give a fuck if I’m the villain of this story. I won’t let Val go. No matter how much of a monster that makes me.”
My mate stands in the center of the cell, casting light in my awful cousin’s direction. Most miss, but some hit, scattering his shadows into nothing. Montejanus flies in his dragon form at Val’s back, watching her six and blowing fire anytime the asshole tries to sneak up on her. She holds her own, but by the tightness in her shoulders and the quick movements of her hands, she’s either tired or angry or both. Sure, I commissioned the wards to keep my shadow disaster of a cousin from escaping or causing real physical harm. Yet I hadn’t planned to test the latter on my mate.
“I should get in there,” I tell Nic, still waiting for an apology that will likely never come.
Nic heads toward the corridors leading out of the dungeon. “I’ve done all I can,” she calls over her shoulder. “If she can’t stand you, that’s your own problem.”
Yep, no apology for putting my mate in danger will be coming from my baby sister. Between unraveling a deal I didn’t know my mother had made, losing Gilly, leaving Val, and pissing off Nic, I’m not doing so well with the women in my life.
Maybe my sister overestimated how badly my mate has taken the distance between us. With her attention split between magic and science and everything else, Val probably thought of my absence as a minor inconvenience.
I open the door to the cell and stride inside.
My mate spins my direction, glaring at me with as much contempt as she’s dishing out my cousin’s way. “You.”
“Me?” I ask. From the cruelty in her voice, she must mean Reginald.
She shoots a ray of light at my head, one honed with an edge so sharp it could be an energetic blade.
Yeah, she means me. Her gaze shines with anger, her cheeks are flushed, and her breasts heave with her breathing as if she has run a mile. Gods, I almost forgot just how gorgeous my mate is. There’s a reason the cameras in her realm adore her. Except now a cut bleeds above her left eye, and four long red marks on her arm suggest she’s been clawed.
Reginald will suffer.
She sends another razor of light hurtling toward me, and I jump to the side to avoid getting my cocks fried.
“Miss me?” I ask.
“Hardly.” She lobs more magic my way.
Reginald’s laughter slithers through my brain. It seems she saved the worst of her temper for you, cousin.
“Get out of my head,” Val and I demand at the same time.
It appears you two might be mates after all, he drawls .
“Shut it, Reggie.” Val throws magic toward the shadow in the corner, but her aim’s off, and she zaps the overhead light. It sizzles and, with a crack of electricity, showers the cell in sparks before blinking out and leaving us in complete darkness. “ Shit .”
Claws rake over my shoulder, and I hiss as pain radiates along my arm.
You failed to ward the cell to protect yourself, cousin, Reginald taunts.
“Theo?” Val asks.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” she says.
I call on my magic, and a purple flame flares to life in my palm before I remember what happened the last time I summoned Brimstone fire around Val. I extinguish it the next instant.
“Do it again,” Val tells me. “But brighter so we can see.”
“Need I remind you what being poisoned felt like?” My voice comes out harsher than intended.
“Hardly,” she snaps. “I woke up with a hell of a hangover. Not that you would’ve known since you disappeared.”
Ooh, a lover’s quarrel? Reginald sounds delighted.
It has me clenching my jaw so hard my fangs grind together. “Care to use your magic now that we actually need some light?” I ask Val.
“I can’t.” She sounds as though she’s gritting her teeth too.
I’m not telling her that now is not the time for a tantrum. Not with Reginald in the room. “Try,” I suggest. “You were flipping it at me only seconds ago.”
“Short bursts,” she says. “Not a continuous glow.”
Reginald drags his claws along my wing.
“Fuck,” I say on a snarl.
“Hey, not my fault,” she says. “It’s not like I was meant to have magic in the first place.”
Frustration roils through me. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the shadow asshole who keeps clawing me.”
“Well, you should’ve said that.” Her voice lashes through me as viciously as Reginald’s claws. “Close your eyes.”
“Why? It’s already dark in here.” Yeah, I’m talking too fast and too cranky when I should be directing my fury at my cousin instead of my mate.
“Dear heavens and baby mongooses,” she says. “Mongeese. Mon-goo-ses. Whatever. Just shut your eyes. Take cover, Monty.”
A blinding burst of light flashes through the room, making me wish I’d listened to her warning. Reginald’s shadows scatter, leaving his scrawny, shriveled demon form behind. He’s more claws than anything else, with stumpy wings and a crooked tail that’s been broken in at least a half-dozen places.
Seizing on the opportunity, I grab his one horn and toss him into the far wall. He slides down the stone with an awful squeaky, squelching sound. His head slumps forward, and all four of his eyes close, but his chest still rises and falls so I didn’t kill the bastard. Not that I would’ve cared much if I had. Except I need to add punishment to his already extensive debt for this little display against my mate.
I don’t care that she came here.
I don’t care if she provoked him.
No one touches my mate but me.
Speaking of my mate, she rubs her sternum like someone sucker punched her in the chest, and I’m tempted to pity her until she says, “Now who am I supposed to practice on? I didn’t see anyone in the other cells, and it’s not like I can ask the people you offered sanctuary to let me blast at them as target training.”
The short leash on my temper breaks. I cross the room in two strides and haul her over my shoulder so she’s tucked behind my wing, ass in the air and hair hanging down.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks.
“What I should’ve done the moment I finished fucking you. Locking you in our room, chaining you to the gods-damned bed, and burning all these fancy clothes so you’re stranded with nowhere to go, nothing to wear, and absolutely no way to escape.” I’m waiting for her to scream or hell, go limp in my hold. Instead, I get a kick of a stiletto heel precariously close to my eye. Guess I should feel lucky she didn’t stab me. I catch her ankle, and she squirms.
“Touch my wardrobe and I’ll cut both your dicks off.”
“And deprive yourself of the pleasure only I can give you? I doubt it.”
“Asshole.”
“Besides, did you miss the part where you’ll be chained to my bed?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Before I saw you tossing sloppy magic shots at Cousin Reginald, probably not. But now? Vicious, I can’t wait.”
“ Sloppy ? I had him on the run until you showed up, waving your smugger than smug tail around like you had any right to be there.”
“In my dungeon, with my prisoner roughing up my mate—I had every right.”
“Whatever. It’s not as if you’ve stuck around to treat me as your mate. Dump me in your dungeon. Take off again. Like you always do.”
The hurt in her voice? It cuts worse than the damn claw marks. She’s as light as a pixie hanging over my shoulder. One wrong move in that cell, and she could’ve fried herself, she’s so damn delicate. “I’m not leaving you.”
She snorts a very un-delicate snuffle worthy of a nickering gnome. “I’ve heard that before.”
I climb the stairs out of the dungeon, cursing the wards again as I slowly pass through them so I can teleport us back to the suite. With a glance at the soul guardian and a dodge of another kick by Val, I say, “Feel free to follow, Montejanus, but don’t come between me and my mate until we’ve worked this out between us.”
What this is, I’m still not sure.
The little dragon shimmers, a flicker of bronze and gold over his chest and scales. In a flash of light, he and the toy unicorn I made sure Val won from the slot machines vanish, leaving me alone to deal with the hellcat I’ve set off.
I teleport to our bedroom and dump her outraged ass on the bed. Val tries to scramble off, but I circle my tail around her throat to pin her down, being careful of the bruises quickly blooming on her face. Not that she shows any sign of letting a few injuries stop her.
She thrashes against the sheets, only hiking her skirt higher to reveal those smooth thighs I’ve missed burying my horns between. “Let me up, you dickless bastard.”
“We both know you’ve proven that to be doubly untrue.”
“I hate you.”
“And yet you’re still mated to me.”
“A mistake I’ll undo as soon as I figure out how.”
“You won’t,” I seethe. “I realize I have a long way to go to earn your trust with kidnapping you, dragging you into a hell dimension, and forcing you to be my mate, but you’re mine. My bride. My destiny. Mate.”
She scowls at me. “You didn’t force me to do anything. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you have that kind of power over me.”
What? Some of my rage fades. How had I been so wrong to believe I made Val Bonetti do anything she didn’t want to do? “Let’s see exactly what kind of power I hold over you.”
She scratches at me, snarling and snapping so fiercely she might outdo any she-demon. “Zero. Zilch. You have exactly no power over me.”
“Is that right? Then why is your pretty cunt wet for me?”
Her eyes flare, and she curls her lip. But I don’t miss the flush crawling across her face, down her neck, and disappearing into the neckline of the black, shapeless blouse hiding those perfect breasts from me.
I lean over her, snaking my tail up to pin her hands above her head. With my claws, I rip into the silky top but not the lab coat. No, that I leave. The damn thing has plagued my filthiest fantasies. The scent of her desire and the feel of her writhing beneath me has my pulse quickening.
She lifts her knee, going for one or both of my cocks, but I avoid the blow easily.
“You arrogant, despicable?—”
“Demon, darling.” I chuckle. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”
Val glares, and the sheen of angry tears glisten in her eyes.
Just like that, my amusement slips from me like the frayed threads of a life I have to leave behind. One where I knew my path. One where I put my family before all others. One where Val wasn’t the center of my existence.
I’ll love my mate until she’s forced to love me back. I’ll accept nothing less. And it starts now, in this bed.
This time, neither of us will be walking away.
Not until I remind her that she is my mate.