Fated Bonds (Angel's Fate Book 1)

by Tessa Cole

  “So, given everyone’s injuries and the fact that we can’t lose a drop of blood, we’re going to be here for a while.” I took the rest of the shirt from Titus and folded it into a makeshift dressing and pressed it against Sebastian’s wound. “Hold this here. I’ll need at least eight hours of rest.”

  Which meant eight more hours magically bound to Titus.

  No. I can handle this. I’m strong. Just a little longer.

  Sebastian held the dressing in place and I secured it with the bandage Titus had cut.

  “I’ll need less if I can fall asleep, but given that we’ve just run for our lives and have people hunting us, I doubt I’d be able to relax enough to get a deep enough sleep. Unless…” Sebastian had a sleep glyph. But was I comfortable enough around these men to be magically put to sleep?

  And did it really matter? We couldn’t hide there forever. We needed to get back to Sebastian’s apartment, and the sooner the better. Having to wait six hours was bad enough. What I was and wasn’t comfortable with was nothing compared to the danger we were in.

  “If you use your sleep glyph,” I said to Sebastian, “we can take two hours off the time I need. Do you have enough power for that?” Technically, because he was a sorcerer he had all the power in Faerie, but the more exhausted he was, the harder it would be to control the flow into his body and avoid burning up.

  “Six is better than eight,” Sebastian said. “Get comfortable.”

  “Is it even safe to be here for that long?” Hawk asked.

  Cassius wiped away the blood from the gash over his eye. “It’ll have to be.”

  I settled against the pillar beside Sebastian so he wouldn’t have to move to put me to sleep. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to sleep, and I didn’t know how I felt about passing out beside him, but I didn’t really have much of an option since I didn’t want to make him move and make the laceration in his thigh worse.

  With a soft word, Sebastian activated his sleep glyph, pressed his hand over my heart, and a cool thread of his magic slipped into me, bringing with it a frustrating shiver of desire.

  I bit back a groan. I shouldn’t be thinking about sex. Even if I was pretty sure Sebastian wasn’t my soul mate, we were running for our lives. That, and he’d already made it clear he wasn’t interested.

  Why did my desire keep going back to him? If I really wanted my first time to be with someone experienced, Hawk was the one to go to. He at least, was interested. Of course, he was an incubus, he was always interested. But that also meant he wouldn’t fall in love — well, it was rare if an incubus did — which meant the odds of Hawk being my soul mate were even less than Sebastian’s.

  Hmm. Maybe when all of this was done I would seek out Hawk.

  Chapter 15

  Sebastian

  Amiah’s eyes closed as my sleep spell took her, and she sagged against me, her head on my shoulder. Just that little touch made my already hard cock harder.

  I was going to fucking kill Hawk. It was bad enough his magic made me hard as hell, but then to make Amiah come twice right in front of me—

  I bit back a groan. She’d come in front of all of us. The show hadn’t just been for me… which wasn’t really a problem for me, either.

  And man, when her guard was down and that bitchy ice queen act was gone, she was so fucking sexy. The sounds she’d made and the look on her face when she came… and that had just been a taste. It was obvious she’d tried to hide her reaction to Hawk’s magic, and that he’d only given her a small amount of it — full power, and she would have come screaming then passed out. What would she be like if she truly let go?

  And why the fuck did I want to make that happen? I wasn’t interested in her. I didn’t even like her.

  Except the image of her lying on the ground suffocating flashed through my mind’s eye and a whisper of the panic I’d felt trembled through me… because she was a valuable healer and leashed to Titus. That was all.

  She sighed, turned into me, and wrapped her arm across my waist. Her warm breath feathered across my bare chest which brought back the memory of Hawk kissing her, his hand shoved down the front of her dress, and the mewling gasp she’d made.

  Fuck. I couldn’t do this.

  I raised my gaze to Cassius sitting across from me. Wisps of smoke curled from his hands, a precursor to his fire reigniting, which would be bad for Amiah. Titus, to my left, was tense. Holding Amiah would be good for him, but he, too, probably had a raging hard on from Hawk’s magic and the man had been imprisoned for half a millennium. Letting him be her pillow right now would be cruel.

  Which left Hawk, who I wasn’t handing her to, and me.

  Swell.

  “So,” Hawk said with smirk that said he knew exactly what his magic and Amiah had done to me. Asshole. “I’m not going to be able to return to my business even after our blood samples degrade, am I?”

  “Not until things with Titus are cleared up,” I replied, struggling to keep my tone even and not show how much I needed my own release not to mention the agony of the demonic magic screaming through my body from the fight. He already knew I was infected with power from the Realm of Celestial Darkness. I couldn’t let him see how badly it affected me.

  Except every inch of me burned like I’d been dipped in acid, and the pain wasn’t letting up because I had to keep pushing power into my group concealment glyph. I couldn’t even feel my injuries. The only reason I’d known the cut in my leg had been bad was because of the growing pool of blood on the floor beside me.

  I shouldn’t have cast that last force-wave. I shouldn’t have woven in sleep, which meant I’d needed to weave in an exclusion for Titus, Cassius, and Hawk. I’d needed to channel too much raw magic to do all that and I was paying for it now.

  But Amiah had been dying, and as much as I hated to admit it, I’d panicked.

  Cassius sat forward. “What exactly are things?” He frowned. “And why did Amiah nearly die but Titus could keep fighting?”

  “His leash has to be longer. I must have stretched it when I first tried to break the spell.” And I really didn’t want to think about that because that meant the spell was completely warped and was going to be challenging to rip apart even with a perfectly attuned resonance charm.

  “I don’t think my end is as strong, either,” Titus said. “I felt a pressure and there were moments when it was hard to breathe, but it didn’t come close to suffocating me. I thought she was okay.” He clenched his hands and stared at Amiah, his gaze so intense it hurt to watch. “Things are only going to get worse. You have to separate us.”

  “One problem at a time.” The demonic magic swelled. I bit back a groan and Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “We can’t risk another mess like that. We need to get a proper concealment spell and glamour on you first.”

  If I could get a concealment spell on Titus along with a glamour that changed his appearance as well as his essence, we could run and hide until this mess blew over.

  But the Spring Court was now involved and unlike the Shadow Court, they’d go after everyone who’d had contact with Titus. Amiah, Cassius, and Hawk were now in the middle of it, and it was going to be hard to convince the angels to abandon their lives until Faerie’s Heart went back to sleep.

  Except they were going to have to if they wanted to live… or until one of us could come up with a better plan to defend ourselves against all of the courts in Faerie.

  “I thought you said breaking the leash spell was our first priority.” Fire sparked from Cassius’s hands even though his expression remained hard. “Amiah almost died. We’ve set the resonance charm, what more do you need?”

  “To recover all the magic I spent saving her ass. Just like she needs sleep, so do I.” The demonic magic swelled again, stealing my breath. Fuck. “Breaking the leash spell will use a lot of magic which will leave me vulnerable.”

  “And you think the original caster will be able to sense the spell when you pull it apart and use that to track you?” Hawk aske
d.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Cassius asked. “To lure those men to us so I can arrest them.”

  “That was before the Spring Court showed up a hell of a lot sooner than I anticipated.” Plus, despite my confidence earlier, a part of me feared that shadow fae had somehow seen through my glamour and recognized me, which was why he’d come after me again and let his friends go after Titus.

  I’d hoped after all these years Deaglan had given up on trying to kill me. And maybe he had. No one had come looking for me for over a century. Running into me was probably just a bonus to his hunt for Titus.

  “So that’s why those men from the park ring were killing the other guys coming after us,” Cassius said.

  “Is that also why half of those guys who looked like humans were glamoured?” Hawk asked. “They weren’t really human, were they?”

  “No. They were spring fae. Their seneschal, Balwyrdan, is a sorcerer with a particular talent for glamour.” Only those with a high magic sensitivity were able to sense his glamour, and even then, you had to be on guard to catch it. Just one of the many reasons I’d gotten out of Faerie.

  Balwyrdan also had a vicious streak. I’d been surprised to see him commanding the spring fae assault team, and even more surprised he hadn’t joined the fight.

  “The fae might not be members of the Joined Parliament, but they do recognize the mortal realm as a sovereign realm,” Cassius said. “They can’t just come here and kill people, just like we can’t go there and kill people.”

  Hawk snorted. “I’m pretty sure they don’t care.”

  “Because Faerie’s Heart has awakened,” Titus said, shifting. The movement inched him closer to Amiah and I didn’t know if he’d done that on purpose or not. “You have the Heart, you control Faerie.”

  “And by control Faerie he means the very essence of the realm. You can remake it as you see fit, eliminate whole courts, kill thousands with a thought, and lock away the magic of the realm from others until they wither and die.” It was a fucking nightmare and all the courts should have banded together to destroy it the first time it had manifested over two millennia ago.

  But the court monarchs had been greedy. They still were. And only the dragons had had the wherewithal to lock it away.

  Except that was all they’d been able to do. It would have taken the combined effort of half a dozen full sorcerers to destroy it, and even locking it away had backfired, linking all of dragonkind to the Heart, making them compasses to the keys that could release it.

  “So how are you involved in this?” Cassius asked, turning his hard glare on Titus, who didn’t notice because he was still staring at Amiah.

  “Dragons have an innate connection to the Heart,” I said. “They—”

  Titus’s gaze jumped to me and for a second he had the same look he’d had when he’d realized he was the last dragon.

  God. I was the worst friend ever. I’d let him suffer in captivity and now I’d reminded him he was alone.

  “Titus can find the keys to unlock the Heart. No one else can.” The demonic magic inside me surged, making me gasp, and Amiah’s hand slid from my waist up to my heart, her palm warm against my skin, as if even in sleep she was trying to heal me. Except all she’d done was remind me of how much I needed to fuck someone. “The courts won’t stop coming after Titus until the Heart goes back to sleep.”

  “And when will that be?” Cassius asked.

  “I don’t know,” Titus replied. “No one does.”

  “That’s not the worst of it.” I set Amiah’s hands back in her lap and turned her slightly away from me. With luck, she’d keep her hands to herself until Hawk’s magic had left my system — hopefully by finding someone to sleep with and not having to wait it out for the long fucking hours it would take to work its way out of my system. “The Shadow Court will only come after me and Titus. I’m not familiar with this team, but so far, they’ve behaved like the other Shadow Court teams I’ve seen. They stay in the shadows and strike quickly and efficiently.”

  “There was nothing about staying in the shadows in Lincoln,” Hawk said.

  “Because those other guys forced their hand,” Cassius said, showing his combat experience by seeing through the chaos of that fight. “They couldn’t afford for the spring fae’s greater numbers to overwhelm Titus. In fact, it looked like they were willing to let Titus get away to ensure the spring fae didn’t get him.”

  “The spring fae’s team isn’t as powerful as the Shadow Court’s, but they have greater numbers and they don’t care who sees them,” I continued. “They’ll also go after everyone involved with Titus even if Titus is no longer around.”

  Hawk rubbed his face, his expression growing more concerned. “Why the hell would they do that?”

  “Information. Leverage,” Cassius said, his voice low. “Possibly to cover Titus’s tracks. If the others going after him don’t know or can’t find who he’s been in contact with that could give the Spring Court an advantage.”

  “Two more points for the angel,” I said.

  “Jeez. Fuck this.” Hawk sat forward. “I’m not just up and leaving my life. There has to be something we can do that’s better than waiting for who-knows-how-long for this to blow over.”

  “I agree.” Cassius glanced at Amiah and his angel glow flared.

  I had no idea how she hadn’t figured out he was in love with her. It was painfully obvious. Honest-to-goodness in love, not just wanting to sleep with her. Of course, there were times it seemed that she wasn’t even aware of — or perhaps didn’t want to acknowledge — her own sexuality, so the fact that she was oblivious to Cassius’s desires shouldn’t have surprised me. And while almost every angel I’d come across was uptight, Amiah took that to a whole other level… which was why it was so much fun to keep pushing that particular button.

  “We can’t take on all the courts,” Cassius continued. “What are our other options?”

  “You should kill me,” Titus said. “That will solve everything. That will keep everyone safe.”

  “Really? Have you forgotten what Balwyrdan is like?” No one was sacrificing themselves to this ridiculous cause. “Even if you’re dead, he’ll come after us out of spite so your death would be a waste, and that doesn’t account for the other monarchs and their seneschals or warlords. We hide until the Heart goes back to sleep.”

  “And what about in five hundred years or a thousand or whenever it reawakens and I go through this again?” Titus asked, his voice low, still not looking away from Amiah. Jeez.

  Maybe I should have told him to be her pillow. And maybe he was just as horny as I was and was staring at her because she was the only woman in the room.

  “The last time I lost my kin and then I lost my freedom,” he said. “What will I lose this time or the next?”

  “No one is killing you.” The light in Cassius’s eyes flared. “Amiah would kill herself trying to save you and I won’t let that happen. If it’s a race to get the Heart then we have to win.”

  “You want to go after it?” I couldn’t have heard that correctly. That was crazy and everything I knew about Cassius said he didn’t do crazy. “Going after the Heart would make us bigger targets. The minute the courts figure out what we’re doing it won’t just be the Spring Court coming after all of us, it’ll be all of the courts, and Amiah will be in the middle of it.”

  “Amiah is in danger regardless,” he said his voice hard and icy. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to hide until the Heart goes back to sleep. It needs to be destroyed or locked away for good or we need it for leverage. Whatever we do, it means we have to get it. What other option do we have?”

  “I vote for the option that doesn’t get me killed,” Hawk said.

  Cassius’s eyes narrowed. “And which one would that be?”

  Hawk glared back at Cassius, his hands clenched as if he wanted to punch the angel. “Not the one where we join a treasure hunt where the competitors are trying to kill each other.
”

  “You’re welcome to sit around and hope someone doesn’t come after you.” Cassius turned his attention to me. “If we can get the Heart, we can redirect the courts’ attentions away from Amiah and Titus. What are the possibilities that you can destroy or permanently locked away this thing? No one should ever have absolute control over anyone let alone a whole realm.”

  I had to agree with that… and fuck, I also had to agree with his assessment of the situation. “I don’t have the power to destroy it or permanently lock it away.” Even if I wasn’t infected with demonic magic, I doubted I’d be able to channel enough raw magic to destroy it or lock it away without burning up. “But you’re right. The only play we have is to get the Heart.”

  And then pray it would actually be enough to protect us.

  Chapter 16

  Amiah

  I woke to someone brushing my hair out of my face, the caress cool and gentle, and a hot throbbing ache in my hip from my mating brand. I knew I had to get up and heal the guys, but I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to face the reality of my situation, leashed to Titus and with a worse fate coming my way. I wanted to just savor this touch, this closeness. I missed it so much, felt so unsteady without it, and I had no idea if I’d ever get anything like what I had with Marcus with someone else.

  “Time to get up,” Sebastian said, and I looked up into his pale, almost colorless gaze. There wasn’t a hint of mischief or flirtation in his eyes. This was the man who’d tried to reassure me when I’d first been panicking about the leash spell and offered me something to sleep in. His complexion was still gray, but not nearly as bad as before which meant he must have recovered a little magic as well even though he was still powering the concealment glyph.

  “If you stay there much longer,” Hawk drawled, “he’s going to expect you to do more than just lie there.”