by Alisa Woods
“I really miss him.” Arabella sighed. Lucian Junior in her belly gave her a good poke of agreement. She rubbed that part to soothe him.
Rachel snapped her fingers in front of Arabella’s face. “Pay attention! I’m complaining about weaponry in your nursery.”
Arabella grinned. “It’s not a sword, it’s just a short blade. And it’s supposed to be protective or something. It’s not like the baby’s going to climb the wall and grab it.” Arabella had managed to find a couple of nails for the wall. The blade rested on them, balanced just right so it wouldn’t fall. In truth, it wasn’t very secure.
“But you’re right—when Lucian gets back, I’ll ask him to find a better way to secure the blade. In case we have an earthquake or some wall-shaking sex.”
Rachel shook her head. “You two are still going at it, aren’t you?”
Arabella’s smile grew. “Every chance we get.”
Rachel scowled. “Well, that’ll have to come to an end after the baby’s born. Everything I’ve read says that the sex just is over once there’s a baby on the scene.”
Arabella cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe for normal humans,” she said with a smirk. “But we’re talking dragon shifter mated sex, Rach. I really do recommend it.” She waggled her eyebrows.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Don’t start on that again. I’m not saying Cinaed isn’t hot—”
A crash came from outside the nursery. There was a moment of silence, then it sounded like a hundred feet stomping at once.
Rachel’s eyes went wide. “What the fuck is that?”
Arabella shook her head fast and backed away from the door, which was closed. “I don’t like this—” The door flew open. Two men in black with very large guns burst through. They whipped the barrels up to point at them.
A thwick sound pierced the air. Something smacked into Arabella’s chest.
Rachel screamed, and Arabella staggered backward, one hand on her belly, the other reaching back to the wall. There was a dart sticking out of her chest! She held herself up by gripping the wall and managed to yank the dart out. The yelling and stomping and screaming men—big and hulking and dressed in black armor—flooded into the nursery. Darkness crowded her vision, and a sudden anger came over her. They were after her baby. She shoved away the darkness and reached above her to grab the angel blade off the wall. The men were holding back, watching them, waiting… then one rushed toward her, reaching for the blade. She evaded his grasp and stabbed for his neck. She missed, but the blade cut through his body armor like it was butter, sinking to the hilt in the man’s chest. He screamed, and the unholy sound reverberated throughout the room. Arabella jerked away at the sight of a black, vaporous spirit writhing at the edges of the man’s body. He slumped to the floor, and the black spirit-monster disappeared.
Everyone came to a halt.
Arabella braced against the wall and knelt down as best she could to snatch the angel blade back out of the man’s chest.
She held it high as she crouched. “Stay back! All of you!”
Rachel struggled against the man-monster holding her. Arabella could see the black vapor leaking at the edges of him as well.
“You fucking heard her—stay back!” Rachel screamed.
He wasn’t paying attention to her. He just stared slack-jawed at the fallen man.
Rachel wriggled free and edged along the wall to Arabella’s side. Then Rachel held out her fists as if she would punch anyone who dared come close. The dart was still lodged in her shoulder.
The blackness of whatever the dart had injected into Arabella still squirmed around inside her. The baby kicked and fought against it, and that set off a huge cramp that made Arabella gasp and double over. She tried to keep the angel blade up, but she was barely staying off the floor. Rachel grabbed the blade and held it high, brandishing it at the men.
They stepped backed with freaked-out looks on their faces, glancing at one another.
“You okay?” Rachel asked in a hoarse whisper, one hand on Arabella’s shoulder to keep her upright.
The cramp passed as Arabella felt glowing white magic rally and swirl a protective blanket around her baby, warding off the black tendrils, whatever they were.
“Yeah,” she gasped. “I’m okay.” She said it as much for the men’s benefit as for Rachel’s. The fact that she and Rachel were fighting back and hadn’t been taken out by their darts seemed to have completely thrown them.
Arabella struggled up to standing.
Only then could she see between the men and out through the doorway. Cinaed was on the ground, writhing back and forth in some kind of torment.
It suddenly clicked in Arabella’s brain. “Poison.”
Rachel dashed a look to her. “What?”
Arabella plucked the dart barrel from Rachel’s shoulder and threw it back at the men in black armor. They cringed away.
“Fucking dragon poison.” She ran a quick look over Rachel, who didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. “Must not work on humans.” But Rachel sent a worried look to Arabella’s belly. “Baby’s okay,” Arabella said quietly. “I think that angel blessing was worth something after all.”
Rachel nodded and held the blade out, but then she caught sight of Cinaed, and her face twisted with anger and pure hatred. She brandished the angel blade again. “You motherfuckers! Which one of you fuckers wants to die next!”
But Arabella could hear the hiked-up fear in her voice, and she knew just what Rachel was thinking—if these assholes could get past Cinaed, then what was happening with the rest of the House? If they had reached the nursery—did that mean Lucian was already dead? Arabella shoved those thoughts aside. She had to focus on staying alive and protecting her baby—everything else came last.
The men in black were muttering amongst themselves, eyeing the two women, but not actually making a move. Keeping their distance.
Another one came tromping down the hall. He tapped one of the men inside the nursery on the shoulder. He leaned back, and the first one whispered something in his ear.
Then that one turned to Rachel and Arabella. “You two. You’re coming with us.”
“Just try and take us, asshole!” Rachel said, holding out the blade. The one who seemed to be in charge gave a short nod to the guy standing in front of him, who was still training his long dart gun on them. He slung the gun around to his back and advanced slowly.
“You want to end up like your buddy on the floor?” Rachel screeched, brandishing the angel weapon, but with a lot of panic in her voice.
The man watched her warily, edging closer, hands out—then he made his move. He lurched forward and grabbed hold of her, his beefy arms going around to capture Rachel’s. She struggled and then managed to twist the knife and shove it up into his body armor. As far as Arabella could see, it sunk in deep. The man went down, but he took Rachel with him. The rest suddenly surged forward, with a half dozen more coming in through the door, all coordinated in some kind of synchronous attack. They swarmed over Arabella. A dozen hands were on her, gripping her arms and legs and hoisting her up into the air, belly to the ceiling. She wanted to struggle, but there was no way she could escape them.
“Rachel!” she screamed.
“Let go of me, you asshole!” There was a lot of grunting, and Rachel’s voice shouting and cursing… and then a sudden silence.
Arabella twisted her head back as they carried her out of the nursery, but she couldn’t see anything over the sea of black bodies that had piled on Rachel.
“No, no, no,” she whispered. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes, but there was nothing she could do. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as the men carried her out of Lucian’s lair.
He was too late.
As Lucian stumbled into his lair, he didn’t even have to reach the nursery or call out for Arabella to know she was already gone. The front door had been torn off its hinges. A trample of boot marks scuffed the entryway. His heart was frozen in his chest as he lumbere
d around the corner to the great room, following the moaning sound.
It was Cinaed on the floor, clenched up and frozen. More destruction lay a path toward the nursery where the door stood open. The ancient cradle passed down through generations of his family was smashed. He hesitated only briefly then trudged on wooden legs toward the nursery room itself. He fully expected to find Arabella’s body torn to shreds. He staggered up to the doorway and gripped the edge of it, bracing himself.
But the room was empty.
Well, not entirely empty.
Two of Tytus’s demon-thugs lay sprawled on the floor. One had the angel blade sticking out of his vest. They were moaning and weakened, but they weren’t dead—Lucian’s fae senses told him the demons who had possessed them were gone. He gave a silent, heartbreaking thanks to Erelah for giving Arabella a fighting chance. It looked like she had gotten one of the attackers, but after the second one, they must’ve overwhelmed her.
They’ve taken her. As that thought beat past the panic and the grief to sink into his brain, he realized that she must still be alive. Or at least, there was a strong possibility of it.
His chest loosened enough so he could breathe again. She had fought them, but for some reason, they hadn’t killed her. Instead, they had taken her—and probably Rachel too, given that Arabella’s friend was missing from the lair as well. Now that his worst fears hadn’t yet come true, his brain started functioning again. He turned and stumbled back to Cinaed, who was still writhing on the ground, suffering from the poison. How many dragons had already died from this very thing? Lucian couldn’t think about that right now. His only priority was to find Arabella and the baby, and for that, he needed Cinaed.
He hurried to kneel by his best friend’s side. The poison had locked him up so badly, he couldn’t speak. Lucian knew exactly how that felt. He pressed his hands to Cinaed’s face and chest and focused his healing fae magic to reach inside to the demon-sourced poison. It was curling around Cinaed’s body and killing him. A long moment later, Cinaed gasped in a breath as his lungs opened up again.
His first gasping words were, “They took her.”
“I know,” Lucian ground out. “Breathe for a moment, my friend. Let me heal you. I’ll need your strength to help go after them.” Then Lucian closed his eyes and focused again on banishing the curling black sickness that was still worming through his best friend’s body. Lucian didn’t open his eyes again until most of it was gone. In the process, he recognized there were still traces weakening his own body. He didn’t have time to worry about that—he was functional enough.
“Was Tytus here?” Lucian asked as he gave a hand to Cinaed and helped him up from the floor. His friend almost toppled over but managed to stay upright, blinking and shaking his head.
“Tytus?” Cinaed coughed out. “This is his doing? No, he wasn’t here. At least, I didn’t see him.” He paused to pull in another deep breath, then gestured for Lucian to follow him toward the front door. “They were human, mercenaries, with some kind of poison darts. They tried to kill the girls, but my Rachel fought them. Arabella too.”
“I surmised as much. Do you know where they went?”
Cinaed was still shaking his head free of the poison’s effects. “No, but I think the poison did not work on Rachel and Arabella. There was some kind of hushed discussion, but I couldn’t hear it. The attackers were communicating with someone else, remotely.”
Lucian narrowed his eyes. “If the poison didn’t work… they must be bringing them to Tytus. Even with the protections that Arabella has, she has no defense against dragon talons.”
Cinaed nodded, then his eyes went wide with realization. “Tytus has infiltrated the rest of the keep?”
“Yes. Many are down. My brothers and I managed to fight back, and Tytus fled like the coward he is.” Anger clouded his brain, and he forced it away—he had to remain levelheaded. “Where would Tytus go?”
“The question, my lord, is how did the mercenaries breach the keep?”
“What does that matter now?” Lucian growled. “They’ve already broken through—”
“It matters because they will likely leave the same way.”
Lucian pounded a fist into his forehead. “Of course, you’re right.”
How could he not have thought of that? His mind was compromised by pain and grief and fear and worry. He struggled to push all that aside.
“My lord, they may have had an armory of poison darts with them, but they were human.”
“No, they were demons.”
Cinaed scowled at that. “Nonetheless, they did not shift and fly in.”
“The garage.” Lucian finally caught his meaning.
“Just so.”
The two of them made a dash for the elevators of Lucian’s private entrance down to the garage. There was no evidence of the mercenaries’ passing, but they may have been able to simply walk in—the keep was proofed against immortal creatures not humans who somehow could see past the glamour that hid it from human eyes. Tytus’s troops likely simply walked in.
Lucian growled in frustration, then patted his pockets, searching for a phone to call his brothers, but he had lost his in the fight. Cinaed pulled one from his pocket instead.
Lucian tapped in the number and prayed to all that was magic that Leksander had already managed to capture Tytus and kill the bastard.
After two rings it picked up. “Cinaed, is the princess secure?” Leksander asked.
“It’s me,” Lucian said. “Arabella is gone. Did you stop Tytus from escaping?”
His brother swore brightly in dragontongue. “No. There were more hordes coming in through the royal gate, and he slipped away outside. Many dragons were down, and I was still suffering from the poison…” A horrible weariness came over the line in Leksander’s voice.
“Leonidas?” Lucian asked, his heart clenched.
“Alive. I’ve been healing him. He was healing the others and was almost gone…” There was more, but Leksander wasn’t speaking it.
Lucian’s heart stuttered. “The king and queen.” He couldn’t bear to make it a question. They were already on in years…
“The queen lives.” There was heartbreak that reached through the line and threatened to choke Lucian.
The elevator down to the garage came to a stop, and Lucian and Cinaed stumbled out into the glare of the underground parking lot lights. Black skidmarks crisscrossed the concrete, telling the tale of the assault vehicles that had been here not long ago. Those black lines tore like a laser through Lucian’s grief and focused his mind.
“The demons have taken Arabella,” he said. “I’m sure they mean to bring her to Tytus so he can finish the job with his talons.”
“You go after them,” Leksander said, a rumbling growl in his voice. “Leonidas and I will gather those who are still standing and follow.”
“The demons can’t have gotten far,” Lucian said, partly to reassure himself, but partly because it had to be true.
“Fly, my brother,” Leksander said. “Avenge our father. I’ll see what other forces I can muster.”
Lucian hung up the phone. “Let’s go,” he said to Cinaed.
His best friend eyed the single black sedan left in the underground parking lot. “Flying is faster,” he said.
They shifted and headed out of the garage into the bright afternoon sun.
The demons finally put Arabella down.
Then they shoved her into one of several Humvees, and the entire group took off like they thought Lucian and a horde of angry dragons would be after them in a heartbeat. At least, Arabella hoped that would be true. The demon-men had knocked out Rachel, but they’d also brought her along. Her best friend lay limp on the seat next to her, her head lolled to the side and resting on Arabella’s shoulder. The angel blade was gone, left behind at Lucian’s lair during the fight.
Rachel and Arabella were hemmed in on either side by hulking mercenaries in black body armor. They were silent and stoic, but Arabella
could see the demons inside them, black essences of anger and hatred. There were three more in the front seat of the Humvee, the driver and two others. They were all demon-infected. That first night that Lucian saved her from a half-demon, half-human in the alleyway outside her office, she hadn’t known anything about the immortal world. The guy who attacked her just seemed like one more asshole in a world filled with assholes, only Arabella had the bad luck of ending up in a dark alley alone with one. Now she could literally see the evil in these men. Her life seemed irrevocably different now… but once again, it seemed perilously close to ending in the next few minutes. Lucian had rescued her before—she had to have faith he would do it again.
She hugged the baby in her belly with one hand and braced Rachel against the jostling of the Humvee with the other. Then Arabella prayed desperately to whatever gods and guardian angels might be out there that all three of them would make it through this.
The demons first attempt at killing her had failed… so they had to be taking her somewhere they could try again. As the Humvee wound through the curvy mountain roads that led up to the keep, she couldn’t help but wonder how everything had gone so wrong so fast. How her love could be True, how she could have rescued Lucian from the mire of his doubts and fears, how she could’ve survived the sealing and the pregnancy and made it to the cusp of bringing her precious baby boy into the world… only to have it all unravel.
All because someone wanted her dead. Or more specifically, her baby.
She was convinced Zephan was behind it, in spite of Lucian’s assurances that it was impossible. Whoever these men were—these demon-infected humans that she could now see because she was filled with her own dragon magic—they were just minions for someone else.
And wherever they were going, that someone else was going to kill her baby.
The baby rolled over in response to all the crazy anxiety that was rocketing through her body. As he did, that white burning force of the blessing that she felt protecting him in the womb turned with him. The inky blackness of the poison was still in her system—she could feel it weakening her arms and gripping her stomach tight. And as the Humvee bumped along the road and jostled her, and one minute stretched into another, it felt like that shield was weakening.