Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Creed’s eyes flash white for a second, then red with effort.
His hands slam at my wrists but they’re useless, blunted by a panic I can’t deny.
Behind me, Knight’s voice is a strangled roar; Sinner curses and lunges; and I feel them like weights trying to drag me back from the ledge I’m teetering on.
Knight’s forearms wrap around my shoulders as Sinner’s grip catches at my belt.
“Let him go!” Knight snaps, but my fingers only close tighter, a promise of breaking.
Creed’s face goes pale, eyes searching mine for the flicker of the brother he’s always known.
“Legend,” he starts, but I don’t want his words.
I snarl at Creed, struggling, every muscle trembling but refusing to give. “You don’t get to stand there with your dead eyes and tell me she isn’t mine. I—I feel her.” Don’t I? “I taste her in my fucking blood.” Can’t I? “Every moment I’m with her, the bond grows stronger.”
“Which is why you need to stay away!”
“Never!”
Silver rushes in, hands lifted, panicked. “Stop this! Shackling him in this state will rip him apart, it won’t heal him, it will—”
“Shut up, Silver,” we all bite out together, the words lashing like whips, silencing him when he stumbles back.
“You can’t take her,” I hiss, voice scraping like stone. “You can’t have her—”
He coughs, a laugh-rasp. “I’m not trying to have her, Legend. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Liar,” I growl, and the mad white thing behind my eyes flares.
“Knight,” Silver warns. “You have to do something—”
“Damn it, Legend!” Knight screams, and then his Ethos, born of his mating bond, rises. Claws break through his flesh and dig into my palms until sharp talons are seen through the other side of my arm.
Whiter blond hair slips into my view, and I snap my teeth at London.
She signs. “Sorry about this, Ledge.”
Her hands swipe before my face, and with each movement it’s like a fist to the fucking face, her power slamming into me like a sledgehammer.
It connects with the back of my head, then another blow lands across my temple, a thud that knocks the oxygen out of me. I try to jerk, but the room closes in like a fist, taking all the fight I had left until I’m just a bag of bones.
Creed’s face is the last thing I see, close and small and terrible. He watches me with an odd, almost tender amusement, as black spots begin to claim my vision.
“We will find the answer, brother,” he whispers, hand finding my shoulder as he bends in front of me. “We will erase her from your mind, I swear it.”
Over my dead body…
…
“Legend.”
My eyes snap open, my heart slamming into my ribs. I drag my head toward the door, catching the black painted fingernails curling along the frame, and vanishing around the corner.
Haide.
Fucking finally.
I stagger to my feet, swaying, the sedation pulling harder at my veins, dragging me toward that false horizon where she waits.
The hall blurs around me as I stumble forward, bare feet dragging across stone.
Sconces flicker dim along the walls, smoke curling like shadows that reach for me as I pass.
My hands scrape the plaster, leaving smears of blood where glass had cut me earlier, and I don’t care.
All I care about is her. Finding her. Holding her.
A flash of movement catches my eye, and my pulse pounds in my temples at the sight. Long black hair my fingers ache to tug on. Leather clinging to her body like armor I want to tear at with teeth. My breath rushes out of me in a broken gasp, and I lurch forward.
“Haide!”
She vanishes, and I chase. Down the stairwell, deeper into the belly of the house, toward the smoking room. My treacherous mother’s favorite chamber, once upon a time.
A place where the air tastes of sugared wine and smoldering resin. Warm and intoxicating, but too sweet, too deliberate, as if meant to disguise something darker underneath. Smoke curls in lazy ribbons, coiling around carved beams and golden fucking spears, clinging to my skin like a lover’s hands.
The light in here isn’t natural, pouring from lanterns that drip with wax, each flame caged in crystal as if even fire bows to the opulence of this house.
Velvet drapes sag heavily over the windows, hiding the demonic smoke that protects the outer walls, and trapping the perfume of the space, sealing it until the air itself feels drugged.
Shadows pool in the corners like they’re waiting for commands, slick and eager, their silence louder than sound, vibrating with excitement as one of their kings enters the space.
As I enter the space.
And in the middle of it all, framed by that suffocating wealth, stands a chair carved from obsidian. Its back rises high, etched in runes that catch the lantern glow and flare like veins of flame. The cushions are blood-red, stuffed so thick they mean to swallow whoever dares sit on them.
That’s where I find her.
“Haide.” Her name scratches up my throat, and I grip the doorframe to keep from falling to my knees and crawling to my queen.
She sits like she was created for that very spot, draped in leather that clings to every line of her body, black as midnight and twice as dangerous. Tight cloth winds across her curves, and she has one leg hooked over the other.
Her hair spills down her back and over her shoulders, long and black, silk threaded with shadow, glinting where the lantern light dares touch it. It hides half her face until she flicks her head, and eyes like pools of ink stare at me as if they’d cut me open before they’d ever soften.
She doesn’t look out of place here. No, it’s like the throne was carved for her spine, like the smoke was meant to crown her, like every shadow in this cursed room has bent down in reverence without realizing it.
Because it, too, feels this.
It knows that the fates gifted her to them. That she will be the next Queen to join their Kings.
Blood pounds heavy in my ears, surging through my veins and straight to my cock, swelling painfully in my jeans.
The closer I get, the faster the smoke curls around her body, tracing the line of her throat and making me ache to do the same. Her eyes glint through the haze, hard and defiant, and yet my chest caves like a child’s at the sight.
My legs barely hold me, but I stumble forward, my hand reaching before I’ve even thought it. I touch her face. My thumb drags across her cheekbone, trembling, and her skin quivers beneath the contact.
The world tilts, narrows, until there’s only her.
All I want is to close the inch between us, to take her mouth with mine, to taste what my dreams have promised me a thousand times.
To give her all of me, every rune, every fire, every goddamn piece until there’s nothing left to take.
My body aches with it, my chest splitting open with the need to claim her, to be claimed back.
But the moment I think it, the moment I envision sinking my teeth into that long, perfect fucking neck, my palm burns with betrayal. Because my body knows, my fucking soul knows, what I’m being blinded to see.
My brows snap together, and my grip on her tightens.
She whimpers, a pretty little sound, and tears spark in the corners of her eyes. The sight rips straight through me, but my fingers tighten anyway, cruel, desperate.
My own eyes sting and I clench my teeth. My eyes and my soul war with each other, but still I push through.
I lean closer, so close her breath shudders against my mouth, and then I do the unthinkable.
I snap her fucking neck.
The sound cracks through the smoke like thunder. Her body falls limp, sliding from the chair to the floor, her head lolling at an angle. No living thing could survive. She hits the ground with a heavy thud, hair fanning across the stone. Blond fucking hair and a face that isn’t hers.
A heavy sigh sounds behind me. “Told you it wouldn’t work.”
“It did enough. We just needed to stall him. Won’t be much longer now.”
Stall me? Longer for what?
I spin, rage bursting through my chest, my claws threatening to tear through my own skin. My brothers stand in the doorway, arms crossed and expressions irritated. “What is this? Where is Haide?!”
Before they can respond, the door creaks, and all of us turn. London slips inside, her dark eyes sweeping the wreckage of the room, landing steadily on her mate.
“What is it?” he asks.
“The mage.” She looks to Creed, unease pouring off her in waves. “She’s here.”
They stiffen and slowly, everyone in the room looks at me.
“Then it’s time.” Creed mumbles, a crease between his brows.
A chill runs down my spine and I tense.
“Time for fucking what?”