I took his vacated spot and let my head fall into my hands.
“Need to vent?” Nico asked me, eyes still glued to the TV as he shot his way through a horde of zombies.
“No,” I whispered. “Need to hide.”
He chuckled.
“Nico, what do you like? I don’t really know much about you.”
I felt terrible about it too. I barely knew them and yet they were already bound to me and protecting me.
“I like video games. I like learning new things and read a lot of books and magazines…”
“He likes science, a lot,” Rhys added.
“Really?” I asked, shocked that a mage would like science.
He nodded. “I love science.”
“Even though you can use magic?”
“Science explains a lot of things that we don’t understand.”
“Too bad science can’t explain males,” I mumbled and walked to get another bottle of cider.
“What about you?” I asked Rhys as I struggled to get the bottle cap off.
He took the bottle and opened it for me before handing it back. “I like video games. I like sports cars too.”
“What do you like to do?” I asked, leaning my hip against the counter while I faced him. He was sitting on a stool and it made us almost the same height.
“You,” he said with a wink.
I rolled my eyes and walked back to the couch with him laughing behind me.
“Is Deryn hiding?” I asked Nico softly.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
The doorbell rang and Rhys went to answer it, opening the door so the pizza guy could deliver the ten boxes they had ordered.
“Did you get pepperoni?” I asked, set my drink on the coffee table, and walked over to the pizza guy and Rhys.
Rhys nodded. “Yes.”
“Here’s your change,” the pizza guy said to him, but his eyes kept darting to me.
Rhys carried the pizzas to the counter and I went to shut the door, but the pizza guy grabbed my arm and jerked me out of the apartment. He slammed the door shut and ran with me down the hallway and down the stairs.
“Let me go!” I screamed at him.
“Shut the fuck up,” he ordered me with a growl.
I couldn’t believe that the guys hadn’t caught up to us. This guy wasn’t running that fast. Were they not even aware that he had grabbed me?
He threw open the door on the bottom floor and ran right into Rhys. Deryn grabbed me away from the guy while Rhys held him up by his throat with one arm.
Did it make me twisted to be turned on by seeing Rhys strangle someone with one arm? Most likely. Did it stop me? Nope.
“You okay?” Deryn asked me, blocking me with his body from the guy.
I nodded and smoothed down my clothes.
“Who sent you?” Deryn demanded.
The guy was turning purple and opened and closed his mouth with no sound.
“He can’t answer when you’re strangling him,” I reminded Rhys.
Rhys dropped the guy and he crashed to the ground in a heap, gasping in breaths. “I don’t know,” he said quickly. “I got the job by text and they wired the money.”
“What was your job?” Deryn asked.
“Grab the girl and take her outside,” he said and started to stand up.
“Nico!” Rhys yelled.
Nico appeared next to us. “You bellowed?”
“Can you create a protective shield around her if you can’t see her?” Rhys asked him.
He nodded. “I can create one that will last about five minutes, will that work?”
“Perfect,” Rhys said with a smile.
Nico leaned down to kiss me lightly on the lips and when he stepped back, a translucent shield was around me.
“Last kiss in case the shield doesn’t hold?” I asked with a smirk despite the fear I felt, knowing that Rhys was going to make me go outside.
Nico scowled at me. “That’s rude.”
“Alright, pizza boy. Go ahead and grab our girl and head outside.”
“What?” he asked and looked between us all.
“Go on,” Rhys ordered him. “Go finish your job.”
Pizza guy grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the exit, a scowl on his face. I had a feeling that whoever hired him hadn’t planned on him living past getting outside, and the guys likely assumed that as well.
“Rhys,” Deryn growled as I moved closer to the door.
“She’s protected,” Nico assured him.
“What if someone grabs her?” Deryn asked.
“Then I’ll grab her,” Rhys assured him.
“I don’t like this,” he growled.
I smiled and blew them a kiss. “At least if I die, you won’t have to worry about the bond anymore.”
“Not funny!” Deryn snapped, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of traffic and people as I stepped outside.
“Now what?” I asked pizza guy who had stopped as soon as we stepped outside.
His phone rang and he answered it. “Yes?”
The person said something and pizza guy nodded along and then started walking in the direction of the park.
“Got it,” he said and ended his call. “Looks like you’ll be going on a trip,” he informed me.
A blue dragon dropped out of the sky and landed in front of me. I screamed and tried to get away, but pizza guy was deceptively strong and held me. The dragon shifted into a female who grabbed me and tossed a sultry smile towards pizza guy.
“Pleasure doing business,” she told him. She shifted again and flew up into the sky with me in her claws.
I screamed again, hating heights and being dangled in a dragon’s claws was not the way to get over that fear.
A dragon roared below us and I recognized it instantly.
“Rhys!” I yelled.
The dragon carrying me growled and flapped her wings harder. She got up out of the city skyline and a red circle appeared in front of her nose. She blew red mist out of her nostrils and the circle changed into a weird symbol and then we were flying through a portal into a place with lush green grass and mountains.
The portal closed and I stared in disbelief at the land we were in. It reminded me of home, but it couldn’t be…
“Why are we here?” I asked loudly, hoping she could hear me.
She didn’t respond.
We flew towards the Arle River and I knew without a doubt that we were back in my hometown. Why did shit always happen here?
We flew past the small city where the diner, police station, post office, and city hall sat. We flew over Mr. Archer’s fields of corn, past Ms. Fritz’ strawberry patch, and straight to the place of nightmares, my childhood home.
She landed and shifted as she did, ending up carrying me in her arms, which was highly awkward since we were the same height.
“Why the fuck are we here?” I demanded and tried to get out of her arms.
She gripped me tighter and snarled, “Shut up and stay still.”
The front door opened and my pulse skyrocketed. A man of average stature with dazzling red eyes and a heart blacker than the midnight sky smiled at me. His jeans were streaked with what was most likely blood, his shirt the same, but his duster was clean. He loved that duster more than anything else in the world.
“Hello, daughter.”
“Why the fuck am I here?” I demanded.
The dragoness set me down and bowed to him. “I’ve done as you asked.”
He tossed a pouch to her and she left as soon as she caught it.
“You’re hard to get ahold of,” he told me as she walked down the steps of the house towards me. His cowboy hat was pushed up slightly, so he could look at me without tilting his head at all.
“I moved. Everyone knows I moved.”
“I don’t have your address,” he said.
I glared at him. “You have no right to fucking do this.”
He turned to mist and closed the distan
ce between us in less than a second. His hand gripped my jaw painfully and he glared into my eyes. “Watch how you talk to me, child.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped. It wasn’t smart to antagonize him. It would be better to bow to him, gravel at his feet. I had done it for twenty-three years. I wouldn’t do it any longer. I refused to bow to him.
He backhanded me hard enough to make me fly backwards four feet. I landed on my back and knew the entire right side of my face would be bruised tomorrow. “You disobedient, brat!” he yelled. “You think that just because you’re an adult that you can do as you please. That’s not how this works!”
Slowly, I pushed myself up to a standing position and wiped the blood from my mouth. He’d held back on that hit, which meant that he needed something from me.
“What do you want?” I asked him quietly.
He smiled. “You’re smart, despite being impudent.”
I didn’t rise to his bait.
“You ended a war that I’ve been working very hard to keep alive,” he told me. “I don’t know where you found the artifact, but obviously I need to learn to hide things better.”
Him? He was the one who had stolen the artifact?
“Why do you want the war?” I asked.
“The more those four factions fight, the more time I have to raise my army without them coming to look for me.”
“Army for what?” What the hell was he scheming now?
“You don’t need to worry about that,” he assured me. “What you do need to worry about is figuring out how you are going to help me.”
“I’m not,” I stated bluntly.
His jaw clenched and it took a minute for him to respond. “You’re going to use your connections with those four princes to restart the war.”
He’d gone insane. Even more insane than after he was turned into a vampire and gained his powers.
“No,” I stated firmly.
He was choking me just like Rhys had done to the pizza guy and I realized that it was definitely not sexy. It hurt. A lot! Especially when you didn’t have a chance to prepare for it since the other person moved faster than your eye could track.
“Do not tell me no!” he growled, the human façade he wore breaking as his true self came out. He wasn’t human any longer. No, he was a demon in human skin.
“Fuck. You,” I gasped out.
He tossed me into the gravel driveway and I screamed in pain as the rocks scraped my arms and hands and a few got stuck into my skin.
“You will do this,” he ordered me.
“Or what?” I asked with a gasp. “You’ll kill me? Do it. Just fucking put me out of my misery, because I won’t betray them.”
“Do you need incentive?” he asked with a smirk. “I heard your former werewolf lover moved to Jinla. I could pay his adorable family a visit and-”
“Touch them and I’ll kill you,” I threatened him.
I knew the blow was coming, but knowing it was coming didn’t stop it from hurting. I clutched my side, sure that he’d broken one of my ribs again, and took shallow breaths.
“You are suicidal, aren’t you?” he growled.
“I won’t do what you want,” I whispered. “I won’t betray my friends.”
“I’ll kill them all,” he threatened me.
“You can’t kill the princes. They’re too powerful. Plus, that would put your head right on the chopping block,” I reminded him smugly.
He growled and stalked away to pace across the porch.
I took the reprieve to pull out my cell phone and send a message with my location in the group text that Rhys had created.
Dad walked back towards me and I slid the phone back into my pocket while doubled over, so he wouldn’t see it before getting up to my knees. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me into the house. I cried out and tried to grab his arm to take some of the pressure off my hair, but couldn’t get a grip. My scalp was on fire and tears filled my eyes.
“Let’s see how some time in here treats you,” he snarled.
“No! No! No!” I screamed and struggled as hard as I could to get away from him and the closet under the stairs. It was the place of my nightmares. The place he had tortured me and punished me as a child and teenager.
He shoved me in, slammed the door closed and locked it, laughing the entire time.
“Let me out!” I screamed and slammed my body against the door. “Let me out!”
“You can come out when you’re ready to do what I ask,” he said, his voice fading as he walked away. The front door opened and closed and I knew I was alone.
I curled up into a ball and rocked myself back and forth. The cupboard was small, only big enough for me to be on my knees. It was pitch black.
“You’re alive, Jolie. You’re alive. He can’t hurt you when you’re in the closet. They’re coming. They’ll come for you.” I whispered.
It didn’t help. No matter what I tried to tell myself, I couldn’t stop the panic as it set in. My breathing became rapid and before long, I passed out.
Chapter 8
Let me out!” I screamed for the fiftieth time and kicked the door.
I thought the guys would have been here by now, but I was still locked in the closet. I checked my phone and the group message. My message had gone through, but I hadn’t gotten a response and now, I had no service. Figures that the place of my nightmares wouldn’t have reception. Even having the phone to brighten up the cupboard so it wasn’t pitch black didn’t help.
I wasn’t a child anymore, but I couldn’t convince myself not to be terrified.
I had texted the guys hours ago. Why weren’t they here? What were they doing?
The house door opened.
“Fuck you!” I screamed loudly. “I fucking hate you! I hope you die!”
Maybe if I provoked him, he would take me out and hit me or something. At least I would be out of the cupboard.
“That’s not very nice to say,” Fox whispered from outside the door.
“Fox!” I screamed and then lowered my voice. “Fox, please fucking open the door. Let me out. Let me out!”
“Easy, I’m working on it,” he assured me. “Deryn, a little help? There’s no key.”
The door creaked and then it was gone and light blinded me. Fox sat off to the side and Deryn held the door, which he had ripped out of the stairway.
I scrambled out and ran to hide behind Rhys who was furthest away from the cupboard, next to the door. My body was still trembling and I couldn’t get it to stop.
Deryn tossed the door off to the side and they all turned to face me.
“The fuck happened?” Nico asked.
Rhys pulled me in, and I sobbed into his chest. His arms wrapped around me. “What happened?”
“We need to go,” I sobbed. “He’ll come back.”
“Who?” Deryn asked. “Who took you?”
“Boys, this is incredibly rude,” Dad chastised them. “When you come to meet the father of the girl you want to date, you shouldn’t destroy his property. It makes a very bad first impression.”
“Who are you?” Fox demanded.
“Fuck you!” I screamed at him and stepped away from Rhys. “I’m done! Don’t ever fucking talk to me again. I’m not yours. I’m not going to do what you want. You can torture me all you want, but I won’t help you. I’d rather see you turn to ash.”
His smile wilted and he said, “You can leave tonight, but this isn’t over.”
“I won’t help you,” I told him. “I’d sooner die.”
He moved and I was across the room, pinned to the wall by his arm. The guys moved towards me, but Dad held up his hand to them and they stopped.
“You help me, or I kill them,” Dad whispered.
“You can’t defeat them all,” I gasped.
“No, I can’t defeat them all at once, but I can kill them one by one. Which should I start with? The wolf seems mighty fond of you. Perhaps I should start with him? Maybe after I break a few legs, you’ll be
more obedient.”
“Let her go,” Rhys ordered Dad.
“Boy, be quiet when family is talking,” Dad ordered him.
“Kill me,” I ordered him. “Kill me and get it over with.”
Dad sighed and shook his head sadly. “I had hoped it would never come to this. Very well, if that’s your wish.” He drew a blade from his back and I took one last look at the guys and awaited my death.
Death didn’t come. The princes attacked as one. Dad cursed, dropped me and then disappeared, tucking his tail between his legs as he ran away to stay alive.
I fell to the ground and screamed as my broken rib hit the hardwood floor.
“Jolie!” Fox yelled and rushed to me. He started to move me, but I held up my hand to stop him.
Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and took several breaths with my eyes closed.
“He won’t give up,” I whispered with tears in my eyes. “He’s going to try to use me. He’ll hurt you to force me.”
Rhys folded his arms across his chest. Deryn squatted down in front of me, next to Fox. Nico looked around the house.
“That was my dad,” I whispered.
All of their eyes widened and Nico focused on me.
“He was turned after I was born,” I explained. “He’s very powerful.”
“We know who he is. We just didn’t know you were related,” Nico said.
“Why did he kidnap you?” Fox asked.
“He wants the war to resume. He wanted me to use my connections with you to start the war again. He wanted me to betray you. I refused.”
“How badly are you injured?” Deryn asked.
“I think at least one of my ribs is broken. It hurts really bad to talk or breath. Or move.”
“Then shut up,” Fox ordered me with a scowl.
The normally happy elf was incredibly angry and it caught me off guard.
“Fox-” I started, but he looked up and glared at me, so I shut my mouth.
“We need to take her to the hospital,” Deryn said, despite the fact that all of them already knew that.
“There isn’t one for an hour,” I said quickly before Fox could tell me to be quiet again.
“I’ll heal her,” Fox whispered and put his hands on my sides.
Royally Entangled: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (Her Royal Harem Book 1) Page 10