Chapter 32 #2
The akadim’s eyes widened. He was about to fall off the cliff. He hissed, trying to pry Rhyan’s hand away.
“MINE,” Rhyan growled. “She’s mine. Now move.” He tossed him to the side, and the akadim scrambled for the wall—just barely escaping with his life.
He bared his teeth, his eyes drawing my body as his nostrils flared, sniffing out my scent. But finally, he lowered his head, and turned, walking toward the dark of the tunnel.
“Our turn,” Rhyan said, and tugged on the rope, pulling me closer.
“There’s no other way?” I asked, my heart thumping.
“What do you think?” he asked, leading us around the bend.
“It doesn’t look safe.”
“Safe enough.” Rhyan walked up to the cliff’s edge and stepped forward, his boot landing on the first wooden board. The entire structure swayed.
I stood in place. If that bridge broke and we fell—we were both dead.
“Rhyan, wait—wait!”
“Lyr, I said come.” He tugged violently on the rope, forcing me forward.
“I’m just—I’m scared.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t have all day.”
I shook my head. “Is that how you got me here before? You carried me across this?” Gods, I didn’t want to think about that. The idea that I could have plunged to my death unconscious.
But Rhyan shook his head. “No. We were on this side already.”
My eyes widened. He had no idea what he’d just revealed. There was a way out, located past his alcove. And if I wanted to escape, that was where I had to go. I had to go back down the tunnel we’d climbed, get back to his alcove.
“You could take me back to your room,” I said. “Leave me there.”
“I said, let’s go!” And suddenly he was in front of me, his eyes flashing with violence as he grabbed my waist, and hauled me over his shoulder.
“Rhyan!” I was bent over him, my ass in the air, and my face up close with the red shard, sheathed to his back.
He stepped onto the bridge and it swayed again, just as there was another wall-shuddering groan from the mines.
My stomach lurched. I had nothing to hold onto, nothing I could do like this, with my arms behind my back, my body bent. I was completely at the mercy of the bridge’s structural integrity, and Rhyan.
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying I didn’t hyperventilate. Praying more we didn’t fall. Every sway, every groan, had my stomach tightening more painfully.
There was another shudder from the walls and the bridge shook. Rhyan paused. I dared open my eyes, praying we were at the other side. I nearly vomited. We were only in the middle, and Rhyan had just loosened another floorboard.
I watched it fall, spinning in midair until it thunked onto the head of an akadim with short red hair.
Rhyan continued forward as the bridge swayed again. I started holding my breath out of fear, gasping when we finally reached the other side.
I practically moaned in relief when he set me down. He just shook his head, like I was being completely ridiculous. Then he tugged me past half a dozen daywalkers, waiting to cross the bridge. Each one leered, sniffing and baring their teeth.
Suddenly I felt the claws of one of the akadim scratch down my back before grabbing my ass, hard. I yelled out in pain.
Rhyan turned. “Who touched her?”
None of the akadim confessed. Rhyan stepped forward, keeping a firm grasp on my leash.
And I realized that whoever had touched me, had done me a favor.
His claw had clipped the part of the rope near my hands.
I could feel a loose thread. I quickly tucked it into my palm, drawing on it before anyone noticed.
Another tug, and it started to give, unraveling even further.
When Rhyan finished berating them—allowing them to live this time—my fingernails dug into my palm, holding onto the loose threads.
Rhyan led me down the path, taking me to another bridge. Though this one was made of stone, it wasn’t much better. The path was thin, and unlike the rope bridge, this one lacked railings. There was nothing to hold onto or grab if you lost your step.
I was careful to keep one foot in front of the other, keeping a steady pace behind Rhyan, before we descended into another tunnel, and then another, that sloped down and down and down and smelled even worse than the first one had.
After what felt like forever, we were back out in the open on leveled ground. We’d reached the floor with the carts. Looking up, I could see just how high the rope bridge was.
Way too fucking high. And to get out of here, I was going to have to cross it again.
Rhyan pulled me close, before addressing the akadim before him. There were dozens upon dozens, all at attention, all noticing me.
“We’re nearing the end of our work,” he said. “Our sacred work for Maraak Moriel, and our queen,” he tapped his collar, “Maraaka Ereshya. I have ordered a feast for you all tonight. You shall be fed in reward. Your dinner is being hunted for you now.”
“Why can’t we hunt for ourselves?” one asked.
“You know why,” Rhyan shouted. “Our secrecy is important. Now back to work. All of you.”
“Why’s he get one?” someone whispered nearby.
“He almost got that other one,” came a hiss. I frowned. What other one?
“He’s the queen’s favorite.”
An akadim, with an arm covered in tattoos, stopped pushing his cart and bared his fangs at the speaker. “He is Arkturion. You will obey him, get back to work.” Rhyan glared and nodded at the akadim defending him.
When the wheels started to creak again, he moved on, and led me further into the cave—toward the mines, through an underpass of stone.
More akadim slogged through, pushing carts full of rock, while others ran back carts which had been emptied.
It was darker here, and the ground seemed to rumble and vibrate as we reached the edge of a pit.
My heart began to warm, a sudden heat inside my chest.
“Ah,” I gasped out loud and bit my lip.
Rhyan snapped his head in my direction, his eyes narrowed, then they moved down to my chest, where a small golden light was bursting through my tunic. He grinned, tugging the rope and forcing me closer.
“I forgot,” he said. “Your heart can sense these things.” He drew a claw down my collarbone, slipping it beneath the top of my tunic, the material already torn.
I sucked in a breath as the sharp edge of his claw scraped against my bare skin. It caught on the fabric, and he tugged, making a ripping sound.
“Rhyan,” I pleaded.
But he’d cut my tunic down, letting the remaining flaps fall open just above my breasts.
The golden light grew brighter. More than one akadim stopped working, taking notice.
“We truly are close,” he said, almost in wonder. Then his eyes fixed, not to my heart, but to my chest. The tops of my breasts were on full display, and his tongue darted out, sliding against a fang, his eyes hooded. His chest heaved and I could see him straining against his pants.
“What happens after the shard is found?” I asked, hoping to put his attention elsewhere. “Does Maraaka Ereshya return?”
He stepped closer. “She’s already on her way. She’ll be here within a few days. And I’ll present the shard to her upon her arrival.”
Suddenly, the red shard on Rhyan’s back began to glow as an akadim called out a request for an empty cart.
I stilled, praying Rhyan didn’t notice the light, or that no one else did.
It was bad enough he had the shard across his back.
I didn’t think he knew what it was. Maybe in his akadim form he couldn’t feel the power of it.
And I knew he wouldn’t recognize the form—neither of us had remembered it was a sword.
But still, knowingly or not, he had the one thing I couldn’t leave without and I had no idea how to get it back from him.
“Hmmm.” He let his hand fall on my shoulder again, then lightly let his claws slide across my bare skin.
I tugged at the rope in my hand, furiously working to unravel it further.
“Don’t you need to focus on them?” I asked. “On keeping them in order?”
“My presence is enough to keep them working as hard as I want them to be.”
And from the way that they did continue working—with only momentary pauses toward me—I believed him.
I swallowed roughly. The front of my tunic was hanging in two separate pieces and he pushed them both aside, revealing the full expanse of my upper torso, everything above my breasts.
I could see it in his eyes. He was growing impatient.
His energy had changed. The lust was consuming him, and he was starting to remind me more of the others—of the akadim that couldn’t think, couldn’t use reason.
“Rhyan,” I said, my voice pleading. “What about the rules? What about what Morgana said. No rape.”
He made a noise low in his throat and slowly shook his head. “It wouldn’t be like that between us. It never has been.”
“It would if I said no,” I gritted, working the thread more quickly.
“Then don’t say no. Say yes. You think I don’t remember our last night together? How many times I plunged inside you, how many times I made you come.” Shit. Shit. More threads snapped.
“But the others,” I said, looking behind him. “They can see us.”
“Let them watch,” he said, his fangs skittering across my collarbone.
“Let them see me take you. Let them all know you belong to me. I could never claim you before publicly, and I hated it. I hated that I had to stay in the shadows, and keep our love a secret. And then I had to watch as Tristan and Viktor and Kane put their paws all over you, put their claims on you while I had to hide. Well, I’m not hiding anymore. ”
I tugged on the rope behind me, loosening another thread, and then another. He bent his head down toward me. Fuck. His tongue was on my collarbone.
I was breathing heavily in a way I hadn’t expected. My body had been starving for his, desperate, and dying for his touch. But this wasn’t it. This wasn’t him. Wasn’t Rhyan. It wasn’t even really his body—but a distortion of it. A mangled twisted joke of what he was.