Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  She props up beside me, staring down at me.

  “That’s actually a really good plan. But what happens when dragons start mixing things up with our immortals, and the secret gets uncovered.”

  I bat a dismissive hand. “Clearly you’d point out that dragons mate for life. The vast majority of immortals don’t want to literally live forever tethered to just one person. It’ll thin the flock, because only the ones who have any real interest in them will risk it, and besides, dragonites consider it shameful to give blood to any of our immortals.”

  “Why do they find it shameful?”

  “Because once upon a bloodthirsty time, their people likely dealt with immortals hunting them for their blood. So instead of risking widespread hysteria, the prideful dragonites decided it was ‘shameful’ when they returned, to keep history from repeating itself, without causing them to grow restless with paranoia or fear, in case they ever had to return.”

  “Because they might attack us just to keep it from happening,” Ella surmises. “But that would mean the kings know.”

  “Of course they know,” I state dismissively. “Darius knew and gave me his blood, because he knew I already knew and hadn’t told anyone else.”

  “It makes me wonder if it played a part in the war,” she goes on quietly, almost pensive.

  “For all we know, that’s why the war truly started. Don’t believe something just because a reliable source says it’s true. Recorded history is simply someone’s retelling of events, usually with a biased view or a personal agenda. Fiction has influenced history in both the human and immortal world.”

  Her eyes find mine and hold, almost like she wants to say something. She either decides against it, or she’s simply tired of the topic.

  “The way you think is actually fascinating,” she says softly, her lips dragging up my shoulder.

  A cynical snort escapes me. “Princess, I think the moon is still affecting you, considering I can recount a great number of times you’ve disagreed with me very vehemently.”

  I feel the trickle of succubus power in the room once again, smirking as she starts climbing on top of me, her bare body before me and tangible. It’s impossible not to touch her.

  Her hands smooth over my chest, sliding up some of the worst of the scars almost reverently as she lifts her hips and begins lowering herself onto me in the best possible way.

  My hands immediately move to her hips, gripping her as I thrust up and slam her down to me at once, pushing myself all the way inside. A sound escapes her, and her head falls back as she starts riding me.

  She puts her hands over mine, dragging them up her smooth flesh to her breasts, and a growl rips out of my throat when she leaves my hands there, like so many more of my fantasies.

  Things like this tell me she’s giving herself to me, and every instinct in me wants to hold on for eternity, to disappear and hope we’re never found. But it’d never happen.

  Disappearing doesn’t work.

  My family tried to disappear once, and it resulted in centuries of torture and imprisonment. I remember that much.

  Hooded silver eyes meet mine again, her fangs elongating, but before we can even exchange bites, she’s crying out, clenching around me so hard with the power of her orgasm that it starts my own before I’m ready.

  I come so hard that I sit straight up, kissing her just so my sounds don’t escape, and I hold her to me as her body quakes. She kisses me like she’s waited as long as I have for moments like these, even though she’ll never truly know how often I needed this.

  Fantasies of her were made with my eyes wide open, and now they’re finally real, dangerous as they may be. So long as I remember the plan, it’ll be okay…

  She breaks the kiss, her forehead touching mine, then I spin her to be under me so I can kiss her more thoroughly.

  Something clambers to the ground, and we both dart a look over as Kya materializes, blood dripping from her arms and gashes over her middle as she struggles to stop herself from falling.

  I’m on my feet, my jeans appearing on me as I dart to her.

  “What the hell happened?” I snap.

  “Safe house. Go help,” she strains out, then disappears again.

  Immediately, I dematerialize, landing just outside the pregnant fucking safe house just as another one of those monsters like before charges straight at me. Remembering the fact they drink in power, I shift, tearing through my clothing as my lycan roars free.

  Shaking my head to stave off some of the moon’s effects in shifted form, I charge, tackling it to the ground, my widow venom pumping through my claws as I tear into its gut.

  I hear a familiar roar just as I roll to my feet, watching the monster I’ve mauled as it tries to stand. Ella’s lycan is crashing into another, and she’s savagely ripping into it with her claws, not holding back as she unleashes hell.

  It’s a thing of fucking beauty.

  Four more monsters are on the porch, and they all turn their attention on the two of us as if we were the targets all along.

  I crouch down, a deadly rumble coming out of me when their eyes linger on Ella’s back. With one strategic slash, I decapitate the monster in front of me, and I dart into the fray, bowling into all four of them just before they reach Ella.

  Chapter 31

  DICE

  (Yes, #IncubusesRockWhenScaryMonstersAreNotAround)

  “It’s okay. Zee’s out there now too, along with Ella and Slade. I think. Why the hell are they out there on a red moon? I don’t know, but that means I don’t have to release Kane from his cell,” I tell the two pregnant women, sword clutched in my hand as I watch the scarred menace try to take down four on his own.

  Kane’s beast is crazed tonight, since Alyssa is up here and he can smell her, knowing she’s in distress from the stubborn little power sucker in her womb. Fucking babies are evil these days.

  Zee narrows his eyes in the direction of Slade, then smirks as he turns his back. Shit. The scarred menace will die with that many on him.

  Zee and Leah slice through a new monster, and I prepare to unleash the king beast so he can save Ella’s freak of nature. Or kill him. Hopefully, he’ll go with option number one.

  “What are you doing?” Karma shouts, panting before crying out in pain, the very frustrating baby inside her deciding tonight of all nights is the best time to come out.

  “Releasing the motherfucking king to remind everyone why he is the motherfucking king!”

  “I would really love to remind everyone why I’m queen! I’d love to be affected by the red moon right now. Come out, damn it. Come out,” Alyssa shouts to her stomach as I race by.

  “I’m having your baby!” Karma shouts to my back.

  “Just close your legs until I get back,” I call over my shoulder, racing down the stairs and hoping I don’t accidentally die while being a hero.

  After all, Karma would hate for that string of profanity she’s currently spewing to be the last thing she ever said to me on the night I saved her and my baby’s lives by being so selfless.

  Kane slams into the bars when I end up downstairs, his monstrous lycan shifting into a tiger, then into a wolf, then back to a lycan before he throws himself into the cage again.

  Thad and Roslyn are at a separate house, and the others are fighting the harbingers on the other side of the house. Because they hit us when we’re weakest.

  We thought we were hiding a lot better than this.

  “If you kill me, you will hate yourself,” I tell Kane hopefully, but it’s like he doesn’t even see me.

  His jaws are snapping, he’s howling, and there’s a lot of foam and drool spitting from his mouth as he savagely tries to tear his cage down, possibly sensing a much bigger threat than my sexy self in leather.

  Quickly, I pop the lock, then I turn and start racing up the stairs. When I hear that cage door practically explode open, I run even harder, but a body leaps over mine, and I duck.

  He starts heading toward the ro
om where the girls are, and my stomach sinks to my toes, even though I know he’d never hurt Alyssa, and Alyssa would protect Karma.

  Fortunately, Kane’s beast crashes through the side of the house, so I don’t even have to deal with the mild heart attack I have going on. He smashes into the fray, a roar vibrating the ground so fiercely that I feel it quake the house.

  I slide back into the room with the girls and lock the door.

  “Like that’s going to keep one of those things out,” Alyssa snaps, sitting on her heels in a crouch as she tries to jiggle the baby out.

  “Stop doing that, you damn woman! You’re going to hurt something!” I snap, rushing back to where Karma’s legs are not closed, as I told her to do, and something very fucking scary is happening to her vagina.

  Very scary.

  Very, very scary.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever fit in there again, and I had a lot of confidence in my cock before right now,” I say flatly, staring in horror at…at…at…

  “I’m crowning, you dick!” she seethes through clenched teeth. “Get ready to catch.”

  “Catch what?! The baby? I can’t catch the baby! I’m not Dray!”

  “Dray is outside fighting the harbingers,” Alyssa growls. “Deliver your fucking baby!”

  “Both of you stop shouting at me,” I say, panicking.

  I don’t know how to deliver a baby. Hell, I didn’t even know I was capable of creating a baby until recently.

  Karma releases a long groan, and I panic even more when she tries to push.

  “She’s coming,” Karma whimpers.

  “Well, make her stop! I don’t want you two depending on me, when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” I say, darting to the window again to see if anyone is done killing monsters yet so they can come deliver my baby.

  “Dice, damn it, get back over there,” Alyssa growls, sounding slightly feral.

  “You do it!” I say like the genius I truly am.

  They both stop seething long enough to stare at me like I’m an idiot, but Alyssa manages to waddle off the bed, though it seems difficult.

  I rush to help her, and she moves to the end of Karma’s bed, but her huge belly is in the way.

  “Maybe you should have your baby already so you won’t be too fat to reach mine,” I snap, then immediately regret it when a whip crack of power slings me across the room.

  “Damn it. Just why?” I groan from the ground.

  Alyssa gives me a little snarl.

  “You’re supposed to be too drained to do that,” I point out as I heave myself off the floor, then scream a little when a beast batters at the house’s barrier right in front of the window.

  “Not cool,” I bite out, pointing at it.

  “Our barrier didn’t keep Adam out,” Alyssa says, causing me to take a huge step back as I continue to point at the beast ramming itself into the house over and over and ov—

  Leah tackles it from behind, repeatedly stabbing it in the back with her sword like a psychotic little jack-the-ripper jack rabbit. It bats her away, then turns its attention on her, just as Zee crashes into it with his own sword.

  I whirl around, jogging back to the end of the bed, where Karma is crying out, and I avoid her hand. I’ve seen what human females do to their men’s hands during labor. No way am I handing mine over to an immortal half demon.

  “Oh, holy fuck,” I say, eyes wide in horror as the head starts pushing through.

  “Come on, Karma. You have to push harder,” Alyssa coaches.

  “I am pushing harder!” Karma says, then releases an ear-piercing cry that shatters the windows in the room. And my eardrums.

  “I’m officially traumatized, and I never thought I’d see the day where a vagina could make me this scared,” I state absently, staring as more of the head starts to—

  I dart to the head of the bed and take Karma’s hand, deciding I’ll heal from a hand injury more than I will watching her vagina be savagely ripped apart from whatever little demon we’ve created.

  “It’s too soon,” I tell Alyssa, trying not to panic as much as I’d—

  My inner thoughts are cut short when I’m screaming like a little bitch, because Karma breaks every bone in my hand when she pushes again, crying out with the effort.

  “Wow, that hurt just as much as I thought it would,” I say on a pained whimper.

  Swapping hands, I brace for the next bone-crushing squeeze.

  But suddenly one of those monsters rips off the door to the room, and I stare, frozen for a brief second before I launch myself at it with what we’ll call a battle cry and not a girly shriek.

  It slings me across the hall like I’m a gnat, but I leap to my feet, keeping its attention on me.

  “Someone must have really hated you to make you so ugly. Hell, you make Slade look pretty, and that’s not easy to do,” I tell the deformed humanoid creature lumbering toward me with a mouthful of fangs.

  “Here, kitty, kitty. Come and get me,” I tell him, then take off running down the hall.

  The ominous crashing behind me that seems to be closing in on me leaves me with no doubt I’m suicidal and that the beast is chasing me. So glad my plan is working. Just wish I had a phase 2 in mind, because clearly I can’t outrun it.

  Phase 2 turns into me screaming like a banshee for help.

  Just as I turn another hallway, Slade suddenly bursts through the wall. Naked, bloody, gashed, scarred flesh slides in front of my eyes, as he rams a sword right between the monster’s eyes so fast that it happens within a blink.

  The monster drops to the ground, and Slade shoves the sword in a little harder as I try to keep my knees from buckling. He wipes blood away from his face like that was no big deal, and turns to walk out.

  “Next time you burst through a wall like that, say hashtag, oh yeah!”

  He just looks at me like I’m an insect, per the usual, before walking away. “That one was actually funny!” I call to his back. “Like the Kool-Aid man?! Get it?”

  I don’t think he gets it.

  I race back to the girls, just as Karma cries out so loud that the lights flicker and the house starts to shake like we’re on an active fault line.

  Kya’s in the room this time, holding Karma’s hand.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Kya snaps at me.

  “With Beauty and the Beast, and you’ll never guess who Beauty was this time,” I tell her quickly before going to Karma’s other side and giving her my one good hand I have left until the other heals.

  “If one broke through the barrier, another can,” Alyssa says, hissing out a breath as she does something—that I fortunately can’t fully witness—between Karma’s legs.

  “Slade also broke in,” I point out, even as Karma breaks my other hand.

  I’ve prepared for the excruciating pain this time, so I just whimper a little instead of screaming alongside her as the bulbs around the room explode.

  At least my other hand is already healing. I’ll credit the adrenaline.

  “Slade doesn’t count,” Kya bites out, glaring over at me.

  “Why is everyone pissed at me?” I grumble.

  With a long groan of pain, Karma says, “Because you have a magical orgasm-inducing penis and you did this to me!”

  I grin and wink at Kya. “Hear that? Hashtag, magical orgasm-inducing penis. Dragon boy ain’t got shit on me.”

  “I said nothing about magical or orgasm inducing,” Karma argues through a pained cry, though she’s clearly lying. I know I heard her right the first time.

  I think I hear her mutter something about evil zombie dick, but I don’t get the chance to ask.

  Suddenly, there’s a loud cry, and the bulbs throughout the rest of the house explode as Alyssa’s eyes light up and she leans back, a small, really icky baby in her hands.

  “Is she normal?” I ask, my heart hitting my chest so hard as I continue to stare in awe, slowly finding the baby less icky as I shake out my broken hands, begging them
to hurry and heal so I can hold my baby even if she’s evil and kills me.

  “She’s perfectly normal,” Alyssa says so softly, and Karma starts sobbing loudly.

  My eyes dart to hers, and I relax when I find her smiling, even as she sobs harder. “I take it back. Your penis is magical,” she says through a hiccup/sob.

  “I know,” I tell her seriously, eyes back on my baby.

  Kya groans.

  Something loud crashes outside, and a few feral roars rattle the ground.

  Then a thunder of roars respond as more beasts apparently join the party.

  Alyssa’s eyes meet mine as she hands Karma our daughter, and as the last bone in one hand pops into place, I lift a sword from the ground, going to the window.

  Instead of the dread I was anticipating, my body almost goes limp with relief.

  Kane howls into the air, then turns and crashes through three monsters, guiding the beasts who follow their king, despite the red moon.

  “A Calvary has arrived,” Kya says, sagging against me as she joins me at the window.

  We watch as the feral soldiers act as a unit, despite the moon that should make them unable to do so. I guess we learn something new every day. Or maybe my beautifully powerful little girl did this.

  “My daughter is a miracle worker,” I point out.

  “I don’t really think your daughter—”

  “She’s like a beast whisperer,” I go on, interrupting Kya’s invalid response.

  “Or they felt their queen’s distress,” Kya states, causing my heart to beat even faster.

  “My daughter’s their queen?” I ask in awe.

  “No. No, your daughter is not their—”

  Another beast is tackled to the ground, savagely ripped apart by Ella as she digs out its innards. Fortunately, she spares us the pissing episode. Which is great, because it’s hard to feed on arousal when that smell halts anyone from getting turned on.

  “Even Ella is commanded by my baby,” I go on.

  “I give up,” Kya says from beside me.