Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  When my eyes open this time, I hear echoes of shouting in the far distance.

  Kya appears beside me as an agonized bellow follows it, and I dematerialize, covering the distance. It takes Kya a second to catch up with me, but she sucks in a breath when she sees what I see.

  Down the hill, Ella’s eyes are solid black as she levitates off the ground, her sole focus on Alton as more and more slashes appear on him, an exact replica of my front.

  He rolls over, and I see it’s also on his back, because he’s launched down when many more painful marks join the ones there.

  His face is split open, and he cries out in pain as he curls in on himself.

  Ella staggers back when her feet collide with the ground, her hands shaking as her eyes fade down to silver.

  Alton looks frustrated that she’s not trying to slash him open again. Kya starts forward, but I hold her back, watching this play out instead.

  “It’s so brutal to have your body ripped wide open, that even most immortals die. But not Slade,” Alton says to Ella, causing my jaw to grind. “He survived to endure it all over again. All because of me.”

  Kya’s breath stutters, but I ignore her as my eyes narrow on the scene, taking in the way Ella is shaking her head and rocking.

  “Stop!” she screams, just before her eyes turn black again.

  He’s forcing her to punish him, that selfish son of a bitch.

  I dematerialize and land right in front of her, watching as her black eyes widen, and her hand pauses in the air.

  I look away from her, my gaze settling on my wide-eyed brother who looks damn surprised to see me.

  “You’re having her punish you?!” I snap, watching as another lash appears on him.

  He cries out, startled by it, and I growl as I lunge, kicking him out of the familiar flaming circle, and coming down on top of him, my fists raining punches that connect, one after another.

  He lies there, not fighting back.

  “Hit me!” I shout. “You let them do it for you, now it’s your turn to do it yourself!”

  “No,” he growls, then goes limp in my hands, closing his eyes like he’s already given up and wants this to happen.

  Shaking him, I stand and drag him to his feet, shouting at him again. “Do something! “Fight me!” I shout again. “Fucking give me this!”

  He starts sobbing.

  Sobbing.

  Tears roll down his cheeks, as he sobs and leans against me. “Do it. Hit me more, brother. Do what they did to you to me. Do whatever you need to do,” he goes on, his voice breaking on every word.

  “You don’t get to do this to her after all you’ve already done to me,” I growl, dropping him to the ground.

  He collapses in a heap, and I step back through the flames to where Ella is watching me silently, still on her knees, but her silver eyes are back. I don’t know how much of that she just saw or heard.

  “How lucid are you?” I ask as I kneel, my jaw ticking as I leave my back to my brother, ignoring his sobs.

  Kya stands at a distance, like she’s waiting to be instructed, as Ella starts to stand.

  “As long as he’s not provoking me, I’m lucid. My instincts won’t let me go completely because I know I can’t kill him,” she says quietly, though her voice is shaky.

  I start to turn and beat on the broken shell behind me some more, but Ella grabs my hand, and I go rigid, looking down at the contact.

  “I think he’s suffered enough for the night, don’t you? Putting him in that prison you designed will simply give him what he wants at this point. It’s clear he wants to be punished, and at this particularly low moment, he’ll forget he’s trying not to be selfish.”

  A muscle jumps in my jaw this time as I resist doing it anyway. I know she’s telling the truth. I can see it with my own eyes, and the last thing I want his for him to get anything he wants.

  Doesn’t matter how much he does or doesn’t know. He’s too broken to trust. He could lead us right into a trap, because his mind has been shattered as effectively as my body.

  My eyes turn back to Ella, and I lean over, putting one arm under her legs and one around her back. Her arms go to my neck, holding on as I lift her and straighten back up.

  Kya comes to us as I walk through the flames with Ella in my arms, and she darts a nervous glance toward Alton.

  “Do you want me to—”

  “Leave him,” I tell her, feeling the first sense of justice in too many centuries to count, and finding the taste bitterer than anticipated. Almost hollow.

  He couldn’t even let me enjoy my revenge.

  “Leave him?” Kya asks incredulously.

  Alton continues sobbing on the ground, his entire body shaking as he releases centuries of his own pain.

  I’ve lived with rage.

  He’s lived with guilt.

  “He’s too weak to be of any use, and we need to focus on the threat,” I say under my breath. “I can siphon the power from the prison I made and use it against Hannah. It might be enough to knock her out of that body, and then Gavin will tell us whatever in the hell we want to know about their operation if I dangle that over his head.”

  Ella is quiet, but I know she’s listening.

  “Saving his witch is pointless. She’ll be as broken as…” She lets her words trail off, looking back at Alton.

  I don’t look.

  Instead, I dematerialize, taking Ella back to my cabin and lowering her to my bed, still feeling my muscles too tight.

  “I should go home—”

  “You’re going to sit right there until I don’t feel like I’m fighting to keep every beast in me on a leash,” I interrupt, causing her to swallow the rest of her words as her eyes widen in surprise. “Whatever Alton does to block my line of vision to you, you will never do again, do you understand?”

  She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again when Kya shows up in the room with us. I look over as she takes a seat, then I arch an eyebrow at her.

  “Oh. I guess I should go,” Kya says, taking the hint. “But um…what do I tell them?”

  Her eyes move to Ella, who simply arches an unimpressed eyebrow at her. “You’re going to tell Chaz where I am anyway. Tell them whatever you want,” Ella says, turning away from her and drawing her knees up to her chest.

  “Ella, that’s not fair,” Kya starts. “I told you I had to tell Chaz. I can’t keep stuff like that from him.”

  Ella groans while dropping her head back, and blows out a frustrated breath. “Tell them not to come here and that I’ll be home later.”

  Kya looks to me as if asking if that’s okay. I just nod once before turning my attention back to Ella as I feel Kya leave the room.

  “You do realize she’s telling them absolutely everything of importance you guys discover, right?” Ella asks me dryly, and I lower myself to a chair.

  “She hasn’t told them about Alton,” I point out. “Even though I told her about your involvement with him before she saw it.”

  She looks over at me, and I keep my gaze on her and her blood-stained clothing.

  “The scent of my brother’s blood all over you isn’t going to help me calm down any time soon.”

  “Your blood is on me too,” she points out dryly. “I never changed earlier. I immediately rushed into a stupid decision. But I feel like everything in me is trying to come out at once. There are constant—”

  “Constantly little nerve-endings that feel like they’re on fire and desperate to light something up?” I interrupt bitterly, meeting her gaze. “And you feel trapped and desperate to do something—anything—to end this war before someone else goes through hell?”

  She sits up, eyes on me curiously, and I wait on her to piece it together.

  “It’s driving you crazy, because you feel trapped inside your own body, unable to get your head above water before you’re being dragged under again because you feel the deadline breathing down your neck?”

  She bristles, then frowns. “H
ow do you—”

  “You’re feeling me, Ella. I can see you, and you can sense my strongest emotions. If you had a few centuries to figure it out and let it grow stronger, you’d be able to sense exactly what’s causing it, I’d bet.”

  Her lips press to a thin line, and she looks away.

  “Is it true? That your darkness is my darkness? It would make sense if I really am feeling you.”

  I should have tossed him in that prison for telling her that. He had no fucking right.

  “You knew this and tried to blame L—”

  “Say his name, and I’ll lose my mind right now, Ella. Careful,” I growl.

  Her tongue clicks against the roof of her mouth. “You tried to blame him,” she goes on, her eyes coming up. “Instead of helping me figure it out before I hurt someone I care about, you lied and made me feel even worse about that mistake.”

  “You don’t have the time it’ll take to fix it. Like I said, it could take a long time to link those feelings to points of reference to give you clarity. It’s why I know you won’t be ready for any fight.”

  “Guess we’ll never know if I could be better, since you’re as broken as he is.”

  She stands angrily, and I blur to be in front of her, my hand coming up to her throat and squeezing just tight enough to keep her from dematerializing.

  Her eyes meet mine and hold, absent of any fear even as I growl. “I’m not broken like him, Ella. Make no mistake.”

  “Aren’t you? The ultimate reward to both of you is death, and you’re fighting over who gets to die for a stupid prophecy that might not even be true.”

  I step closer, my growl growing. “It’s certainly true. I don’t know all the details, but I do know it is true.”

  “You missed the entire point of that statement,” she says, her eyes flashing back to silver and burning brighter. “The ultimate reward is death. You’re both already equally dead, so there’s really no point in standing here and torturing me. I’ve had enough of that from your brother tonight.”

  When I growl this time, she slams her knee up, and it collides with my groin before I can stop it, and I go down harder than anyone has put me down since I got out of the rings.

  “There’s the pain you love so much,” she says as she steps over me, leaving me curled in a motherfucking fetal position as I groan and try to resist the urge to retch. “Have fun holding onto it,” she adds as she disappears from the room.

  The fucking princess just kneed me in the balls and stepped over me on her way out, a major lycan show of disrespect. It’s been ages since anyone disrespected me without fear in their eyes.

  I killed plenty of people in the rings for trying, and I had on the heaviest chains.

  Snorting out a laugh turns out to be a miserable idea, since she’s left my balls in agony. Letting off another groan, I get up a little slowly, and feel the sensation of my body healing itself.

  I dematerialize, landing just outside her house and look through the window as she appears in their living room, slower than me to get here. I pull my journal from my back pocket, then put it back, not ready to read it yet, even though I feel like I should.

  Leaning up against a tree, I exhale heavily, feeling the breeze kicking off the lake. She pauses in front of the incubus, who is lounging on the couch. I’m only able to hear her because of the door that is propped open.

  “Why do you still look ridiculous?” she asks him as he startles, dropping his cup of tea that shatters on the ground.

  “Why do you look like you just hitchhiked your way across the country and ate the truck drivers who tried to cop a feel as payment?” he volleys, eyes incredulous as he scans her. “Hashtag—bloodthirsty feminist serial killer,” he adds.

  Dice twirls one of his pigtails as he looks over her, shaking his head.

  “Where’s everyone else?” she asks, going to shut the door.

  I step into the shadows, not drawing her attention as she does so.

  It seals their conversation in with the soundproofing spell I hate. I constantly break through their barrier spells so I can raise a window. She doesn’t even realize how much worse this bond is on me than her.

  “I guess immortal vision keeps you from carrying around conspicuous binoculars,” comes a smooth voice from my right.

  My eyes close as my jaw grinds, because I can’t believe I just let Kane sneak up on me. Trying not to react too rashly, I simply cut my eyes to find him leaning against another tree, hands in his pockets.

  “It occurred to me today that Alyssa and I have spent so much time panicking about our upcoming defenseless child’s birth, that we’ve both completely missed everything Ella’s been struggling through on her own. We sure as hell haven’t made it any easier on her either, and it’s the simple-mindedness we swore we’d never fall prey to.”

  “Didn’t know you were expecting,” I lie, not touching all that other shit he just rambled on about.

  He gives me a dubious look. “Kya is loyal to you in so many ways, but she’s loyal to Chaz too. And he’s loyal to Alyssa. I know you know.”

  “Sounds like everyone is more loyal to someone else.”

  “No. We just have a long history of trusting each other, though I imagine Chaz has kept some things from me just as Kya has kept some from you.”

  I say nothing, letting my eyes go back to track Ella’s movements through the house. She closes the curtains to her bedroom, sealing herself off from me, probably to block out what little light is left in the day.

  “You trust Ella so much you let her fall into the hands of a Type A incubus yesterday, all to distract me while you went after Gavin, and she was just your pawn,” I say as I turn and give him all my attention, a subtle, unbidden growl escaping me.

  He looks down and clears his throat.

  “If I’d known any such was residing there, I would have eradicated him myself. Dice said you killed him already.”

  I’d rather not sit here with idle chitchat. He’ll always defend his actions, just as I’ll always defend mine. Instead, I cut to the valid point I need to make.

  “I can knock Hannah out of Gavin’s witch, but it’s one shot and that’s it. If I miss, I won’t have the extra juice to do it again. Tell him that if he hasn’t already escaped again,” I say with a fuck-off smile before turning and starting to dematerialize.

  “Ella is more loyal to you than she realizes, and she would have inevitably have either told you we were distracting you, or she’d have tried to make you see it our way. Or maybe she’d have said nothing and dealt with—”

  “Ella would have done whatever you asked her too because her loyalties aren’t split,” I tell him. “She’s fighting battles for everyone, while dealing with a darkness that will take her centuries to truly master and control. That’s what you’re not seeing.”

  My words turn into a growl on the last sentence, and I have to clear my throat.

  He looks confused, so I face him again, taking a threatening step toward him. “Ella can think for herself. She knows exactly where to find Alton right now.”

  The surprise on his face lets me know Kya hasn’t betrayed me. They had no clue she was hiding him.

  “She was with him tonight while he used her to punish himself. Forced her to do it. Used her link and emotions that tether her to me against her, as she strained not to accidentally kill him and me in the process.”

  He seems to visibly pale, and I take another step toward him.

  “You treat her like she’s not part of your circle, and she’ll continue to act alone, because she’s not meant to be sidelined. She knows what you keep pretending not to know. Her instincts are screaming for her to take over. She’s alpha. You’re all betas. And every dominant animal is pacing inside of her, ripping her apart as she forces herself to be a subservient daughter, adding to the maddening shit she has to battle because of her connection to me.”

  He narrows his eyes on me.

  “She’s not ready.”

  “That’
s your fault. You forgot she wasn’t human, and you all try so hard to emulate humans that you forget there are primal creatures inside us that don’t have the same instincts. She’s trying to emulate you, and she’ll never be like you because she’s tethered to me.”

  He grabs my arm before I can leave, and I growl down at the contact. He lowers his hand, releasing me slowly, heaving out a frustrated breath.

  “We thought we’d faced the end of the world and won,” he says quietly. “We didn’t realize there’d be another reckoning so close to the last.”

  My eyes find his, lighting up silver. “It’s never-ending.”

  Before I leave, I turn to face him. “We have less than two months to prepare for the next portal opening, and one last shot to take Hannah out. Be ready.”

  With that, I dematerialize.

  Chapter 15

  ELLA

  “There has to be some way to make this stop,” Dice says, cutting off a pigtail that simply reforms.

  My head bobs with the music that’s playing, as I flip the page in one of the books Kya dropped off yesterday after she and Chaz raided an old, underground council chamber.

  We’re all avoiding discussing the drama and focusing on the fact we finally have a deadline.

  I’m not sure why Slade shared that with my father or when he shared it, but since my Dad and I are acting awkward any time we’re in a room together, both of us avoiding our own confessions of wrongdoings, I haven’t exactly asked questions.

  I am focusing on what the portal might open to, and all signs point to Lokies. The council had an entire book on Hannah that I read already, and it lines up with what I’m reading about here.

  There are an undetermined number of dimensions with their own versions of immortals or humans, but the Lokies seem the most likely she’d access.

  “Why Lokies?” Kya asks from beside me, startling me.

  I guess I’ve been musing all this aloud.

  “Who cares about Lokies? I’m going to spend my last days looking like the woman who gives me nightmares!” Dice shouts, but we both ignore him.