“I’ll be fine, Alek.” Gretchen’s tone tore at my heart. She was healed on the outside, but he had ripped out her joy, and I didn’t know what to do to even begin to put it back.
“I don’t want to leave you. I never wanted to leave you.” She needed to know that, that I wouldn’t leave her. I’d thought I’d made it clear before, but she’d left my house hurt and betrayed by the discussion Jared and I had so stupidly had where she could overhear. It had been thoughtless, careless, and I’d nearly lost the only thing in this world I cared about.
She was right in front of me now, but I still felt the distance. The pain she’d incurred was life a knife to my gut. I knew what Bella was going to tell me.
Gretchen met my gaze and nodded.
Did she believe me? Did she still think I would choose going home over keeping her? I’d only considered sending her back temporarily, until we had the situation with Xerxes’ soldiers breathing down our necks under control.
That’s not going to happen. Ever. And now without Rose…I wasn’t sure how we’d be able to keep him at bay at all.
I rose from the bed and followed Bella and her long blue hair through the bedroom door. She closed it gently behind us, her face long and drawn and tired.
“Do you need food?” Her naturally blue eyes were duller than they should’ve been, and her skin didn’t glow like it always did. Instead of alabaster and healthy pink, she was white and gray and…flat. “What’s wrong?”
“I need light. It’s difficult to be down here for so long. I’ve been healing and patching up people with Bailey for hours. I’m nearly out of dust, and I need the sun like a meth addict needs their next fix.” She let a soft sigh slip between her lips. “That’s not why I need to talk to you.”
“I know.” My gut twisted again, and bile found its way into the back of my mouth.
“It was bad, Alek. She’s been…” Her tone dropped, the words cracking as she tried to get them out. “She’s been raped multiple times. Bailey said she scented both Lycan and Lamassu…on her.”
My Gryphon raged inside me. It was my fault. If I had been listening better, she would never have gotten out of my house. They would never have found her, never have taken her. “I had her. She was safe, and then…I lost her.”
Bella placed a gentle hand on my arm, and I jerked away. I didn’t deserve comfort. I deserved nothing.
“She chose to run, Alek. You can’t blame yourself any more than you can blame her.”
“It was my fault.”
Bella shook her head and lifted her hands to cup my face. Warmth. Peace. Love. Forgiveness. I couldn’t describe it, but she imparted all those through her hands, magick in a touch. I pulled her hand down.
“I don’t deserve any of your reserve magick, Bella. Save it for someone who really needs it.”
Her eyes brightened, and she pushed her hands back up to my face—apparently, she had a little more power left than she appeared to. “I give when I see fit, and you, Alek, are in desperate need of a little peace. You won’t be able to fix Gretchen. She will never be the same person she was before this happened. You need to be okay with that and support her as she learns to deal with the scars she carries.”
“I will always love her.”
“That was not what I said. I said support.”
“Anything, Bella, she is my mate…at least—”
“She is, Alek. You wear your kind’s marks. She is part of you now, but men typically try to fix. That’s not what she needs.”
“I will be what she needs. Rose called them mate marks, too. Do you know what they are? Or how—” I clammed up, not sure how to finish that question. The marks had appeared when Gretchen and I slept together. She’d been a virgin, but I hadn’t.
Bella sighed. “I know they are unique to Gryphons. I know that they appear when a Gryphon gives his heart, and I know they will link her to you for as long as you live. It’s a soul bond. That’s why you can feel things when the marks are activated.”
“Do you know how…”
“No. I’m afraid the intricacies of the marks were known specifically to your people.”
Of course they were.
“I used to think the prophecy was all that mattered.” My shoulders slumped. “Learning about my kind, taking revenge for the atrocities done to my family, but in the end, Rose sacrificed herself to save Gretchen. We can’t finish the prophecy without Rose to cast the spell to open the portal.” My chest tightened. The contradiction made my head pound. Why? “There are still two Protectors that need to be located.”
A frown darkened the pixie’s face, making my hands clench. There was so much about Rose no one had questioned. She took in all supernaturals who needed a home, and she gave them sanctuary. No one had ever thought to ask why…
“Above everything, even the prophecy, keeping the Sisters out of Xerxes’ hands was Rose’s first goal. She was truly afraid of what might happen if he succeeded in taking any of them. That is why she fought. That is why she traded herself for Gretchen.”
“What if she’s dead?”
“It is likely. Though I think she must’ve wounded him as well or our town would be overrun by now. Instead, we have quiet streets, and Calliope has said there are perhaps only two or three Djinn still hanging around.”
“What do you think they are they looking for?”
“Weakness.”
The Pixie’s words echoed in my mind, a haunting warning of what was coming. Our fight had just started.
Chapter 22
XERXES
I stood silently, grimacing as my girls bandaged my abdomen. The slash marks from Rose’s talons were an inch deep and stung like a bitch. Any other wound would’ve already healed, but these would take weeks. They would bleed and seep and burn. I could take the pain. I’d had worse.
What I couldn’t comprehend was Rose’s carelessness. She’d shown up to save that slip of a woman. In the overall scheme, one Sister wouldn’t have slowed her little prophecy down by more than a few decades. Instead, she’d thrown herself into the fray so that fucking Gryphon could steal my prize right out from under me, literally. Even if I did get the wench pregnant, it would be years before the child would be a threat to this precious world or any other, but Rose had always been a big-picture kind of girl.
Tension twisted in the back of my neck. I rubbed it and winced. Roshanna’s talented mouth on my dick was distracting me from most of the pain as Lily was taping over one of the especially deep gashes.
“Forgive me, Master,” Lily said, bowing her head. “I caused you discomfort. Should I fetch a whip?”
I caught her chin between my thumb and forefinger and raised her face until I could see her dilated eyes. My little half-masochistic-half-sadist wanted to be punished, needed it. She’d thumped my wound on purpose, hoping for some attention from my whip.
“Go to the play mat and kneel there until I return.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Do you want us to bandage her, too, Master?” Iris glanced up at me hesitantly from the floor at Rose’s side. My brother’s wife was equally carved. Her clothing hung in long, torn strips around her bloodied body. I’d gotten the upper hand in the compound, and Cal had teleported in and out, slicing up her legs with the dragon steel blade until she’d shifted back to her human form, unable to stand upright with so many wounds incapacitating her.
Plus, there was the poison. I hadn’t told Cal, but the dagger he’d been given was coated in a film of dragon fire. The chemicals or magick or whatever anyone wanted to call what happened inside a fire-breather Drakonae were deadly to Lamassu. Dragon steel—the hardest steel on earth or Veil—was melted and purified for the first time beneath the heat of a dragon’s breath, but during the later smelting and shaping, most of the residual poison was removed. To truly have a poisonous weapon, a finished steel sword had to be held in the fire of a Drakonae for a few seconds.
“No, don’t touch her.”
“What about the dagger in
her chest?”
I smiled and shook my head. “If you pull it out, she’ll bleed to death in a few minutes. I need her to last longer than that.” Rose’s heart still beat, slowly, but it continued to do my work for me— pumping the poison through her body. Every thump thump weakened her more. Finally I had the great Rose Hilah in the palm of my hand. She hadn’t told me where the portal dagger was. In fact, she’d seemed surprised that I thought it was in Sanctuary. Imagine that. Her good little soldiers weren’t sharing everything with their great leader. I’d stabbed her, slowly and carefully, making sure the tip of the knife nicked her heart before shoving it the rest of the way in at an angle I knew wouldn’t kill her right away, knowing the blade of the knife itself was slowing the leak inside her chest.
Lamassu were resilient. Her self-healing abilities would keep her alive long enough to give me the pleasure I’d been cheated out of so many thousands of years ago.
Iris bowed and backed away from Rose’s still body.
Then she helped me into a fresh shirt, and buttoned it, leaving the top one undone just the way I preferred.
I ran my hand through my damp-from-a-shower hair and shuddered, feeling my balls tighten as my body prepared to climax. I reached down and grabbed a handful of Roshanna’s long, silky black hair and pounded her mouth, shoving my dick halfway down her throat. She gagged softly, but continued to massage my balls with her talented fingers as I shot my cum straight down her well-trained throat.
Once I finished, she licked my dick clean and tucked it carefully behind the zipper of my slacks. She pulled the zipper up and fastened the buckle on my leather belt, all the while licking her lips. When she finished, she bowed her head.
“Thank you, Master.”
“You did well and pleased me. You’re dismissed, Iris, you too.”
Roshanna rose from her position on the floor at my feet, and she and Iris scurried through the side door of my suite into the small adjoining room they slept and lived in.
“Cal.” I spoke loudly, making sure the Djinn on the other side of my suite door heard me. “Enter.”
The tall Djinn appeared a moment later. He also had bathed and changed clothes. His cream colored tunic and pants were free from the bloodstains that’d covered us both from the fight outside Sanctuary.
“Report?”
“The camp was all but destroyed, Master. The remaining Djinn are patrolling the town, looking for an entrance to the vault you said would be within the city limits, but as of the last update I received, there has been no success locating it or the portal dagger.” Cal kept his voice even and calm. A difficult task when he knew the news he delivered was not what I wanted to hear. Rose hadn’t given me anything, regardless of the cutting and stabbing and torture. The bitch was tougher than she looked.
“Fetch Rahim to carry her. We’re going to the tomb.”
“Yes, Master.” His reply carried the slightest sigh of relief.
The dagger wasn’t going to walk out of Sanctuary on its own. There was time. Their barrier was down and many had died, for nothing. Their leader was bleeding to death on my floor. Soon the town would descend into chaos. It was only a matter of time before they revealed the location of the vault, and with it, the dagger she was determined to keep from my grasp.
Cal blinked away, returning a few seconds later with younger version of himself. Rahim was Cal’s brother. Both men stood at an intimidating six-and-a-half feet tall with dark hair and shoulders that could carry grown men without a second thought. They were strong and quick and loyal to a fault. Though that probably had everything to do with the fact that I had their sister and youngest brother locked away safely in a quppa box.
I did love a tightly knit family. Emotions made people weak. Family made them even weaker and easier to manipulate.
“Master.” Rahim bowed low.
“You take her, and be careful not to jostle the dagger next to her heart.” I waved at Rose’s body.
“Yes, Master.”
Cal stepped forward and extended his hand, waiting for me to clasp his wrist before we would teleport to the tomb where I kept my own brother chained and wasting away, one millennia at a time.
I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, and then we blinked. Space folded around us in a rush of color and speed that made my stomach jump. Then we were there, in the dark tomb beneath what used to be the grandest city on this fucking planet—Babylon.
It had truly been one of the greatest wonders of the world. I’d felt the smallest splinter of remorse when I’d betrayed the city to the Horde. The poison I’d provided them had killed my entire race, except for Rose and Naram. Those two crafty Sentinels had evaded the barbarian soldiers and stolen the Sisters out of the temple without a sound.
Cal lit several torches on the wall, pulling one down to light the way. I crossed to the half of the palatial room that housed my dying brother. Rahim followed silently, blinking with Rose closer and closer and closer, working hard to keep her body steady in its precarious position.
“There.” I spoke clearly, allowing my voice to carry through the large room. Walking to them, I knelt down and wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the dagger in her chest.
Rahim stepped back to stand next to Cal a few feet away.
“Naram, you should drag your decrepit body out here to say goodbye to your mate.”
“Fuck you, brother.” Naram’s shout was more forceful than I’d expected after seeing him last time. The food from my last visit must’ve really helped raise his energy level.
“She’s the one that’s fucked.” I pulled the dagger from her chest, and Rose moaned softly, opening her eyes to meet my gaze directly. “You will die beneath the city you loved so dearly and with the man you loved more than anyone else on the Earth, but he will live on, seeing you rot and decay until only your bones remain to remind him of what he lost. Of what he could not save.”
“You’re a bastard,” she whispered, fighting for breath, fighting against the blood that would slowly drown her. The poison from the dagger would hinder her natural healing abilities.
Chains scraped the floor across the room, and Naram’s beastly form advanced slowly, each step a painful effort. The shackles had long since created sores on his ankles and paws. His head hung low, also chaffed and bloody from the dragon steel collar around what used to be a well-muscled neck. Now, he was thin and weak, hollowed from malnutrition and atrophied from limited movement.
“Rose.” He strained against his chains, leaning into the shackles and re-opening old wounds. Desperation strained his gaunt face in his futile effort to reach his mate.
I’d had Rahim place her just out of reach. The need to touch her, comfort his mate, hold his wife—everything inside him was driving him further over the edge of madness.
“I couldn’t feel you.” Rose’s voice broke with emotion. “Why couldn’t I feel you? I felt the connection between us die thousands of years ago.” A sob tore through her chest, rattling through her liquid-filled lungs like a pinball in an arcade game. She coughed, spewing blood onto the floor. “I would’ve kept looking. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh, it doesn’t matter now.” Naram knelt on the floor, stretching his lion’s neck as far as he could. Not far enough. She still remained at least three feet from even feeling his breath on her face. He shifted to his bedraggled human form and stretched his arm toward her—still unable to breach the distance between them. “I love you, Rose. You are mine.”
“And you are mine.”
I rolled my neck back and forth, enjoying the show of pathetic emotion. The torture on both their faces had been well worth the wait and effort of keeping Naram chained and on the edge of life for all these years. He’d died on the inside the day I told him I’d killed Rose, and now he would die a little more each day. Every time he looked at her body, he would blame himself for not being enough.
My brother’s downfall had been hoping he could get through to me, but Rose…Rose had been a worthy adversary, and a
frustrating one. This was my reward, and I reveled in it. In the smell of her blood staining the floor. In the scent of death hanging over her like a shroud from Tartarus, waiting to carry her to the afterlife.
She would trouble me no longer. My vengeance was complete. What they’d taken from me was irreplaceable, and now Rose was balancing the scale with her death. Once Naram joined her in the underworld, I would focus solely on conquering the humans, one pathetic country at a time.
All would bow to me on Earth.
Then all would bow to me on Veil.
Even those fucking Drakonae pricks who thought they were invincible. Just because they’d taken down the Blackmoor dynasty didn’t mean they would have a shot in hell against me and my army.
Once the time arrived.
Once my children were born.
Chapter 23
GRETCHEN
Nothing hurt. My body was healed. Bailey’s blood and Bella’s pixie dust had done their work. I should be fine. I felt fine. I felt like I could jump off my bed at any moment and run from the room.
But I didn’t.
I just stared uncomfortably at Bailey and her mate Erick. Pulling the covers up to my neck, I shifted to my side and stared at the wall instead. Bailey looked like she wanted to talk. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to forget.
Forget the pain. Forget the terror. Forget how stupid I’d been for leaving Alek’s house. Forget how stupid I’d been for not listening to Rose’s warnings, to all of their warnings. Even Alek had said it was dangerous, but I hadn’t listened. I’d ignored them all, and I’d paid the price.
Those men, that man. Everyone who’d touched me had hacked a piece of my soul away. I didn’t hurt because I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
And I didn’t want to.
I’d pulled away from Alek like he was diseased. I’d seen the pain and hurt in his eyes, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. He couldn’t fix me. No one could fix me. No one could take away this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, this ball of blackness and guilt that twisted and rolled and threatened to overtake me.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 112