Chapter 9
Ash spun on his heel when he heard someone approaching. Only centuries’ worth of a soldier’s reflexes kept him from slamming into the little human female with her even smaller creature.
No. Not creature, he remembered. What had Callie told him it was called? Ah, yes. The little human female and her smaller dog.
The human had hair even whiter than Callie’s. Her wrinkly skin showed her age, though she was far younger than one of his kind. As she led her dog on a leash, her back was stopped, a slight frown on her face as she wagged a finger at the pulverized apple in his grip.
“Kids these days. Throwing a perfectly good apple on the ground after a few bites when there’s a garbage right there.”
So there was.
Before she realized that he’d smashed it with his hand, Ash walked over to the trash can, dropping the mangled ruins of the apple into the bin.
Turning back, he saw that she was watching him now. Though all of the humans seemed to look the same to Ash, he thought this one looked familiar. The creature certainly did.
And then she said, “I know you. You’re the one who’s just moved in with the pretty pregnant girl and her Mitch, aren’t you?”
The glamour showed the woman a friendly human face, though the fae scowled to hear her so easily refer to Mitch as Callie’s even as he said, “That’s me, yes.”
“Will you be leaving, too?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what Mitch told me. That they’re leaving at the end of the month. Moving out. Shame, though. Such a handsome family. I would’ve liked to have met the baby, but I understand. He wants what’s best for his wife.”
Ash nearly dropped his glamour.
It was one thing for this human neighbor to think of Mitch that way, as Callie’s. For better or worse, he couldn’t keep her from her friend unless he wanted to risk pushing her away again.
But Callie wasn’t Mitch’s wife.
She was his mate.
And leaving? She wasn’t going anywhere without him.
Though it was clear that the human female wanted to talk more, Ash had already been out of the building for longer than he wanted to. Especially now that he wanted to find out if there was any truth in what the female told him, he quickly made his excuses before striding toward the stairs again.
And if he wasn’t as pleasant as Callie would’ve liked him to be, oh well.
Because Callie still guessed that Ash had compelled Mitch to leave last summer—which, of course, he had—he’d made a point not to force the topic of her roommate moving out again.
Once the baby came, he’d find a way to explain to Callie that keeping Mitch around was only adding him to the danger, but he was doing everything he could to keep his mate happy with him.
When she finally let Ash come into the apartment to stay, the only thing she asked of him was to leave Mitch alone. So he had.
Now, humans have scents. Ash usually ignored them since most made his skin crawl.
Since living in the Iron, he’d grown accustomed to muting most of his senses so that he didn’t waste any of his lingering power.
He knew Callie’s instinctively, the way everything about her was imprinted on every inch of him; nothing else mattered.
But when Ash walked into the apartment, following his pull toward Callie to the kitchen, he paused.
With the human male looming over his mate while Callie exuded a combination of anger and fear, he couldn’t stop himself from opening up to her roommate.
He’d thought it was strange that, while Callie was careful to keep the two males apart, her roommate didn’t argue. He stayed out of sight of Ash, keeping to himself in his room when he was home. Since Ash didn’t want to face the other male, he was glad even if he thought it odd.
But now Ash knew why Mitch stayed human—because he wasn’t just a human.
He was touched by a fae.
And the brand on his skin? Ash was very familiar with it.
One look in the human’s crazed dark eyes and he knew. Add that to the whirl of fae magic cloaking him and the apple he found planted outside—right where he could easily leave it—and Ash was positive.
“Callie. Come to me.”
She spun at the sound of his voice, relief washing over her. “Ash. Thank God you’re here. Now, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but Mitch was just leaving.”
“Calliope.” As her bonded mate, he couldn’t compel her with her true name, but he poured as much urgency into those four syllables as he could. “To me. Now.”
Unaware of how much danger she was currently in, she held up her finger—a human signal for him to wait—before she glanced over at the touched human again.
“Right, Mitch?” she said again.
“Callie!”
She jolted at his shout, turning back to look at him again. “What?”
“That’s not Mitch.”
What?
So consumed with watching Ash, of trying to make sense of the insane thing he just said, she didn’t realize that her roommate had lashed out a hand, grabbing her around her upper arm, until her whole body rocked.
Callie gasped, her balance thrown.
Forever fast, Ash lunged for her. While Mitch tried to yank her toward him again, Ash did everything he could to steady her, to keep her from falling.
She stumbled, finally finding her feet as she panted heavily. Her heart was beating like a drum as she thought about how close she came to tumbling right over. What if she had fallen? Landed on her baby?
Frantic fear at the what-ifs made her angry. Once Ash took control, leading her away from an oddly smirking Mitch, she spun on him ready to let him have it. First the kiss, now this? What the hell was going on with him?
“Callie, no—”
Ash lunged for her again, grabbing her by both upper arms, dragging her against his chest just in time for her to miss the flat of the palm that had been streaking straight for her cheek.
Her jaw dropped as it dawned on her what had just happened.
Mitch had just tried to slap her!
Okay. Something really wrong was going on now, she thought wildly, leaning back into Ash. Her fae squeezed her arms gently before quickly maneuvering her behind him.
Mitch made a move to follow but, before he had taken a single step, Ash held up his hand.
Standing partly behind him, partly next to him, Callie watched as his eyes swirled, a menacing display of molten lava rolling over the gold.
“Stay, pet.”
Mitch went statue-still.
Literally.
He didn’t move. Didn’t even friggin’ breathe either. Even his eyes stopped moving without a single blink.
She tugged on Ash’s sleeve. “What’s going on here? Ash? Tell me!”
Reaching behind him, never taking his gaze off of Mitch, he patted her thigh. “Stay here. Don’t move. And don’t let him touch you.”
Before she could say another word, Ash surged forward. He held out his hand. “Give me yours,” he ordered. “Let me touch you.”
“Ash,” she hissed.
He ignored her as the Mitch statue jerkily picked up his hand before dropping it into Ash’s outstretched palm. A quick touch and then Ash dropped it.
“You wear my brand now,” he told Mitch. “You will answer me.”
“Yes.”
Callie gasped. Because that voice? It came out of Mitch, but it sure as hell wasn’t his.
That’s not Mitch...
Then who was it?
Ash seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Callie. “Who are you?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Fair enough. Do you know who owns you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Melisandre.”
“By touch?”
“Mitch” shook his head, pained. “Faerie fruit. She gave me an apple and now I’m a—”
“Slave.”
“Yes.”
Ash’s expression went chiseled, like he was carved from stone. “You’ll never be free.”
“She promised me freedom if I gained the trust of the human mate and brought her the halfling child. I set out a lure to get the fae out of the apartment and I made my move. By tonight, I would’ve been free.”
And the fae can’t lie.
Ash hefted his sword. “There’s only one way you’ll be free. Whether by one of her soldier’s blades or by mine, death comes for you.”
Callie gasped again.
But the man didn’t react the same way. In fact, she swore he looked almost… relieved as he said in Mitch’s voice, “I know.”
She was watching the fake Mitch now, searching for some clue that it wasn’t her roommate but, in fact, one of Melisandre’s humans. There was nothing. He looked exactly like Mitch, and though Callie’s sight wasn’t exactly foolproof, she was positive that this man wasn’t wearing any glamour.
But it wasn’t Mitch. It couldn’t be.
And she was still thinking that when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ash move.
Where had he pulled the gleaming, glittering diamond-edged sword from? She had no idea, but the instant she saw it, she knew exactly what he was going to do with it it. And, with one perfectly positioned thrust, he did.
Just like how he ran that kobold throw on the tip of his sword, he plunged it right through the center of her roommate’s chest.
“Ash! No!”
“It had to be this way,” her fae said softly, pulling the sword back out of the fake Mitch’s chest. “He knew it, too. There was nothing else to be done.”
She didn’t want to believe it. She started to argue, but stopped when she saw that the stabbed man had crumpled to the kitchen floor.
Immediately, she knew he was dying, if not already dead.
And she knew that Ash was right. That wasn’t Mitch.
Right in front of her eyes, he began to change. The blond hair darkened. The handsome face turned rounder, fuller, as the nose grew a little longer. He had a shadow of a goatee around his jaw, and blank black eyes staring up at the ceiling.
Around his neck, he wore a gold chain that Callie had never noticed on Mitch before. Following the length of it, she saw that it ended with a hunk of pale pink crystal that nestled in the hollow of his throat.
She couldn’t bring herself to look any further south. As Ash moved his blade out of her line of vision, she purposely kept her eyes on his throat before pointing a shaky finger at the crystal.
“What is that?”
More to himself than Callie, Ash said, “It’s not a Brinkburn.”
“A what?”
“Fae killer.”
Callie’s hand shot to her belly as her voice a couple of octaves. “What?”