Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Exclamations and protests from my friends followed Shemyaza’s declaration. My pulse thudded painfully in my throat as I replayed his offer, the wording, the tone. He straightened behind me, never letting go of me.
The price, little human, is you.
My mouth was suddenly dry. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant…surely not. I had to know. “What do you mean?”
A low, rough chuckle ruffled the hair at the top of my head. “You will belong to me.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, struggling to keep my breathing even, to stay calm and keep my shit together. “Like a…a pet?”
Please say yes, please say yes.
“Like anything I please.” His grip on me tightened almost painfully and his body grew tense behind me. A rush of heat washed over me—heat emanating from his body—and something hard and thick pressed to my back.
Oh, God, was that his…What the fuck? I clenched my teeth as the full meaning of his claim became clear.
My stomach rolled with nausea as I resisted the impulse to pull away from him.
I closed my eyes, reining in my terror and disgust because I couldn’t let the others see it.
I couldn’t let them know what I was about to agree to.
“Do we have a deal?” Shemyaza asked again coolly, as if his cock wasn’t at that moment rubbing against me.
“No! Fuck that. No,” Jamie yelled.
“No deal,” Bastian said.
“Don’t do it,” Javier added.
I forced my eyes open, looking past the monsters standing between me and my people, at their frightened, exhausted faces, at my father propped on the ground, unconscious from the pain.
It was my life for theirs. I could be a plaything for this monster or dead, along with the people I cared about.
There was really no choice. “You have a deal.”
“No!” the guys cried.
Shemyaza exhaled sharply, almost as if he was relieved. As if he’d been holding his breath waiting for my response, as if…as if I mattered.
He turned me to face him, tucking his chin in to look down on me. “Your word sealed in blood.”
“What?”
“Give me your word that if I deliver your people to the gates of the golden city, you will give yourself to me.”
My mouth was dry, tongue sticking to the roof. I licked my dry lips to moisten them, and he latched on to the movement, his slitted pupils dilating in a telling manner along with other parts of him.
Don’t look down. “I give you my word if you deliver my people to the gates of the golden city, then I’ll… I’ll give myself to you.”
He let out a growl and jerked me forward, sudden and rough, so that my head fell back. He leaned in quick, the brush of his lips a shiver across my skin before needles of fire drove into my neck. I cried out and grabbed his shoulders, panic exploding in my belly.
“Stop!” I shoved at him. “Sto—”
My limbs were suddenly heavy, and the hands that had wanted to push him away held on to him now, afraid I would fall. His arm wound around my waist, taking my weight in a grip that was secure and unrelenting. Heat spread through me, pushing out to my breasts and then down to the apex of my thighs.
No.
I didn’t want to feel that. Not with this monster.
A bellow ripped through the air behind me. Jamie? Bastian? Maybe both of them in unison.
But my senses were focused on Shemyaza’s lips as they moved over my skin, tongue lapping at me, and despite my best efforts, a soft moan slipped from my lips.
He broke the bloody kiss and raised his head, swiping errant droplets of blood from his cruel lips before peering down his nose at me with a knowing, hooded expression.
“Mine soon, little human.”
A shiver ran through me, followed by the cold bite of anger. “Get off.” I shoved at him, and to my surprise he released me with a wicked chuckle.
“Come,” he said. “We take cover for the night. The razor beaks hunt in the dark but sleep in the day.”
“Shem, there is a broken human here,” the squat creature with horns said.
Shem? A nickname?
“Kill him,” Shem said.
“NO!” I ran toward the bus and fell to the ground beside my unconscious dad. “Don’t touch him.”
“He is dying,” the monster with the horns said. “I can smell it. It is better to end his pain now.”
I looked up into this monster’s whiskey eyes and flinched at the softness in them. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was compassion, but that was ridiculous.
“I can’t. I won’t. He’s my father. I have to save him. If I can get him to the golden city, then they can heal him.”
The horned monster sighed and said something to Shem in a language I didn’t understand.
Shem made a sound of exasperation. “It’s up to you, Sarq. What do you think?”
The horned creature, Sarq, nodded. He retracted his talons and lightly touched my father’s cheek, then the pulse at his neck. “There is a slim chance he might live.”
“I’ll carry him,” Bastian said, stepping forward.
“Very well. He lives, for now.” Shem looked down at me. “Place the sword on the ground.”
In that moment there was no doubt in my mind that this sword could wound him. But if I attacked, what then? How would we get to safety without these monsters to protect us?
Right now, we needed these creatures.
I crouched and laid the sword on the ground before backing away from it.
“Tumiel,” Shem said.
Another monster, this one with a lithe build and an inky black mohawk, stepped forward.
He looked the most human of them all, even with the batlike wings clinging to his back and his copper-colored skin.
His face was chiseled, with high cheekbones and heavy dark brows, and lashes that set off his piercing emerald eyes.
He carried a pack around his waist, and he reached into it, drawing out a thick roll of fabric that he laid over the weapon before carefully picking it up and wrapping it.
He tied it down with rough twine and then fastened the whole thing to his waist.
Shem nodded, satisfied. “Stay close. If you wander off and die, I will not be held responsible.” He fixed his fierce gaze on me. “The deal will not be voided by your companions’ stupidity. Am I clear, little human?”
I lifted my chin. “Crystal.”
He strode off toward the bushes. “Hurry or die.”
We followed, huddling together with the monsters flanking us.
“Rue…” Jamie took my hand in his. “You can’t do this. You can’t give yourself to him.”
But it was too late. I already had, and my gut told me there was no way out of it.