Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  Some of the pressure quickly releases, and I feel one presence desert me as I focus only on the female fighting to get out of me.

  I’ll kill you. The hissing voice in my head grows louder, and my eyes are unseeing as I stay in the darkness, only focusing on her. The pressure in my chest grows stronger, but I lock onto her, keeping her inside me just like I’ve practiced with Kya over the past few days.

  The pressure decreases, even as I struggle to lock her down. But a smirk tugs my lips when I feel it working, feel her trapped in here with me.

  Her magic bounces around inside me, being absorbed instead of tearing me apart. It’s the same magic Gavin forced on Zee. The same magic that runs through my veins now because of Zee.

  And it works the same way for me as it does for her.

  She’s the perfect, unnatural anomaly to counter Ella.

  The first burst of power blasts into me, burning me uncomfortably, but I channel it all into the soul I’m clinging to. The demonic soul that never planned for this.

  Because I was never supposed to exist.

  Because Slade turned himself into a monster, I turned into the perfect, unnatural anomaly to counter Hannah.

  And that demon is screaming in agony inside my mind.

  Chapter 39

  ELLA

  Heartbeats. So many heartbeats. All of them going off at once, quickening, descending, flat-lining. I keep trying to trace all the heartbeats I’m protecting, and I blink.

  The darkness clears for a second, and I see fire flashing in front of me, cutting down the line of harbingers as more and more deserters start returning.

  I blink again.

  My eyes open, and I see Slade unleashing all the power he has, his eyes very literally glowing as that colorful prison gets turned into white hot energy.

  Leah’s head tips back as she screams, and I blink, listening to the heartbeats, hearing them evaporating all around me, saving me the trouble of killing those heartbeats myself.

  The lighter thuds are theirs. Their hearts don’t beat as hard or as heavy. It helps to have that guiding knowledge.

  My vision clears on the next blink, and I see Morgana standing at last. See her throw Gavin away from her as she runs straight toward Leah, feral rage in her eyes just as power flies forth.

  But I send my own shot of power behind Slade, guarding his back, as Gavin works on defending Morgana’s, unable to steal her and disappear the way I’m sure the psychotic man would like.

  But just as we predicted, that beautiful, lethal, primal instinct works no matter how broken the mind is, because Hannah has spent centuries making Morgana powerful while she used her to grow stronger herself.

  Hannah’s ex-vessel hosts more power than all of the others combined as that instinct demands revenge. Demands to kill the one thing that has left it captive. Demands blood on the hands and freedom of the soul.

  My vision dims as the blinding light from Leah explodes, and her body limply falls to the ground. She jolts awake when I blink again, resuming the heartbeat listening as my own instinct takes over, and I let it.

  I blink again, finding Mom and Dad on either side of me as a monstrous Zee unleashes hell on the world. Barely do I notice Leah being helped to her feet, and my heart beats faster, praying it’s worked, but too scared to look around.

  Blinking again, I resume focusing on the heartbeats, hearing one so familiar that I know even the primal being in control of my body is crying right now, and I’m desperate to open my eyes as that heartbeat grows faster.

  With every ounce of strength I have, I force myself back into control, and my eyes land on Slade’s briefly just before we’re both flying to the ground. Dirt slings up all around us, and I glance over in time to see Zee has just hit us in the crosshairs, sending my ears ringing.

  Slade lifts me, throwing us out of the way of the next blast of power as it cuts through the line of Hannah’s loyal dark users, the last of the ones standing.

  My breathing catches as ashes fall all around us, and Leah launches herself at Zee, stopping him from blowing us the rest of the way to hell, before they disappear from sight.

  Dragon shadows soar over us, passing by as they leave behind a finished battle.

  I blink again, but it’s just a simple blink, as my breaths and my heart slowly calms down. The tears run from my eyes as two arms wrap around my middle, hauling me up Slade’s body.

  Because…he’s still alive.

  I’m still alive.

  We survived.

  My eyes lock onto his, and I feel my tears streaking down as I laugh and hiccup out a sob at the same time, but he just looks so…lost. Panic tries to seize me, because of that look.

  “It worked. Did it work?” I ask, still not fully in control when I feel myself slipping, and barely managing to force my vision back when it tries to dim.

  His hands seem to absently cup my face, his eyes so blank, as if he’s in shock. Suddenly, he’s throwing me to the ground and covering my body as sounds of celebration start in the background. I hear the sound of mindless drones dropping, the demon queen’s influence over her hive now gone.

  Short-circuiting minds cause bodies to drop, even as the stragglers get picked off by the fires blazing all around us. I don’t have to see it to know. I can hear all the sounds right now. Not just the heartbeats.

  I kiss Slade harder, and he kisses me like there’s going to be a tomorrow. It’s far better than the kiss we had when he was convinced there’d be no tomorrow.

  My hands slide into his soft, thick hair, pulling him even closer, even though it’s hard, because I’ve started laughing hysterically.

  He breaks the kiss and rolls off me, falling to his back to stare up at the sky. Then he starts laughing just as manically as I am, as though the hysteria is contagious.

  Something tickles my neck, and I reach back, even as my body shakes from the uncontrollable laughter as I pluck the flower that’s tickling me.

  The Mirenas. It’s a flower the dragonites apparently brought with them, and though it’s not the same as our daisies, it does look a hell of a lot like them.

  I glance around, only distracted by how insane Slade looks as he continues to shake with the same laughter I am, and I realize we’re lying on a massive bed of these daisy-like flowers.

  I guess we’ve laughed on a bed of daisies after all. Just the details changed.

  Chapter 40

  SLADE

  The rubble of the sickeningly familiar prison around me has every beast in me stirring as a continuous growl rumbles in my chest. It’s haunted with screams I’ve forced myself to forget, and memories I’ve subtracted from my mind.

  I move over the spot where my brother’s cell once was…so far away from mine, since separating us was one of their many experiments. His mind tapped to mine in desperation when he sought solace through our link.

  He screamed my pain when they tortured me.

  I let him betray me first before I betrayed him in return, taking away that precious link he loved so much by making us both believe it didn’t exist, until I opened that journal. I siphoned it myself, truly weakening it, betraying him all the more.

  He still shielded himself from me, somehow knowing the link was stronger than I wanted him to think it was, his subconscious guiding him after brief moments of clarity.

  My mind discreetly stayed open to his, and his was just fragile enough to believe all the lies I did.

  My fingers still on the journal pages, I allow myself to remember everything as I spread my brother’s ashes in the same place where his mate and his unborn child took their last breaths.

  I can’t even hate him anymore. He lost so much more than me, and he suffered all the guilt I faced a thousand and one times, only twice as hard.

  And I allow myself to hope he finds peace while the journal is open, because I know I won’t really be able to care all that much once the book is shut.

  Kneeling, I stare at Alton’s ashes as they settle in the absence of wi
nd.

  “I wish I hadn’t had to make us forget how close we once were, but I knew I’d never be able to let you die by my hand if I remembered too much. It’s always the details, brother, that destroyed our futures. I really hope you find your mate and child now, while I try to figure out what in the bloody hell I do in a time where I was never supposed to survive.”

  Massaging my temples, I dematerialize away from that place, unable to stand being there a second longer. The open journal allows for too many memories to flood back too quickly, memories I had to forget in order to survive.

  Propping up, I stare through the windows of a house I’ve never seen. In a town I’ve never heard of. In a time I have no memories of, not even in my journal.

  I’ve never seen this. I have no idea what happens next. And I can’t have my visions back because I made it a point to ensure it was irreversible in a desperate time where hope was no longer an option.

  Now there’s hope, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with it just yet. I’m just sort of staring at it from the corner of my mind like it’s a box marked “Open the Hope.”

  Ella calls out my name from the front door, but her eyes pass over me as I stand camouflaged by the world around me. It takes every ounce of strength I have not to go to her, especially when her gaze hovers over me like she senses me here.

  Exhaling heavily, she turns and goes back in, and I swallow thickly while watching her through the window.

  “We’ve been looking for you,” Kya says from behind me, and I close my eyes and work on calming as I drop the camouflage.

  “The dragonites were late,” I tell her.

  “Better late than never.”

  “It was a message from Darius that he wasn’t a pet. Alyssa should send him a message in return or he’ll think he’s more dominant. It’s how he thinks,” I go on.

  “Is that really what you’re standing out here in the dark thinking about?” she asks as she moves to my side.

  I stand quietly for a minute, opening and closing the journal over and over before finally leaving it open. “I took painstaking precautions to ensure I was nothing like the man I was in this journal. The man I am now is the same Slade they all hate,” I point out a little angrily. “I didn’t plan for a future, Kya. The second I close this journal, I’m going to be livid with you for seeing this moment of weakness.”

  “And probably say some things that would be hurtful to normal people, but I sort of grew up with you. I can handle it.”

  “Unbelievable,” I mutter under my breath. “I still don’t know what happened. Why Leah?” I ask. “Are you sure it’s her and not Hannah?”

  “Hannah’s dead,” she says softly. “We survived. Now we move forward and start planning for tomorrow.”

  For a few long minutes, we say nothing.

  “I don’t have a plan for right bloody now,” I finally confess, angrily snapping the journal shut. “Just tell me how Morgana not only survived, but also managed to fight.”

  “My niece can raise the dead,” she says quickly, giving me a look when I glare at her like she’s insane.

  “Long story short, I thought Karma and I raised Dice from the dead when we fused together, but in no other timeline did we raise the dead. It was Kicera—never us. There’s a five minute window where it works. You don’t want to know what happens after five minutes. Even I’ll have nightmares about that poor deer for a while.”

  No idea what to even say to that. My mind is processing too slowly right now. It’s all just information, no matter the tone. I’ll decipher it all later.

  “What happened to Morgana?”

  “I’m sure Gavin whisked her off to try and fix her or maybe give her Stockholm’s Syndrome so they can have their happy ending. And Alton?” The question is tacked on quickly, almost as though she’s scared to ask.

  I shake my head, not wanting to discuss that right now.

  “Ella delivered a Trout to my brother, didn’t she?” I ask in deflection, remembering how mauled the corpse was.

  “If someone as broken as Alton could find the urge to shred a man so fiercely…then there was a good chance Morgana—who’d been trapped with dormant powers festering for centuries—would react the same, given the opportunity.”

  “Fucking stupid risk to rely on luck.”

  “Instinct,” she argues. “Far more reliable than luck.”

  She hides her smug, self-satisfied smile as she starts walking toward the house.

  I dematerialize and land just inside the room, staying off the back corner where no one notices me.

  “So Cole was the reason for the portal exploding all those times?” Kane is asking, cradling his newborn son to his chest.

  “Every time the portal exploded, it saved your life. Ella figured that out, and pieced together that her brother was always born on the night of the Gemini,” Kimber states as she lazily lies across her dark user’s lap, a few bruises on her face that haven’t healed yet.

  “I don’t understand why the hell my newborn fucking baby had to come to the battlefield!” the incubus shouts, then looks down at his baby. “Some immortals are going to die and feed you their souls if they ever do that again. Oh, yes they are,” he adds in a very annoying voice as he talks to her.

  She’s able to raise the dead, but facial expressions seem to be beyond her capabilities yet. There’s no possible way could she stop from grimacing if she were able.

  “Because wake-up times varied. It could be immediate or it might take longer,” Karma tells him, taking their daughter from his hands as she kisses her head. “We needed Morgana to be right in front of Hannah when she woke up. She was only alive because she’s spent so many years not actually fighting her. She was overdue.”

  “Never again,” the incubus warns, holding a finger up. “But let’s remember my sperm helped create this child, so when credit is given about how this day was won, give credit where credit is due,” he adds, then makes a rather disturbing thrusting motion with his hips.

  “Gavin would have never let anything happen to your baby because your baby was the key to waking Morgana from the dead. He’s Slade’s mini me without scars,” Thad states as he props up next to the wolf hybrid who’s spotted me.

  Roslyn’s eyes hold mine for a brief second before she looks away, not even seeming surprised to see me lurking in the corner.

  “I had a private meeting with him and we gave him a demonstration with the deer and the baby,” Kimber says, then shudders. “Never pass the five minute mark.”

  “I warned you,” Kya tells her as she moves into Chaz’s side, already adjusted to the prospect of a future, since she dared to dream of one long before me.

  Chaz’s eyes catch mine just as he kisses the top of Kya’s head, and he studies me for a long second before looking over at Ella. Her eyes come up, finding his, and he glances back at me like the infuriating tattling gnat he apparently wants to be.

  Ella’s eyes find mine, and she gives me a small smile as she walks toward me, tugging at her sleeves.

  “Ella literally mowed down line after line of people, clearing the path for us to get it all done. I can’t believe the heartbeats thing really worked,” I hear Kimber saying, and I smirk at Ella.

  She didn’t really have control out there like I thought. She was backseat driving the entire time, and I had no idea. I saw the black eyes, but assumed she was still in control when she never veered from the targets.

  “I spent the night clinging to a psychotic demon while magic punched metaphorical holes in me to kill said demon quite literally inside me. I win,” Leah tells them all.

  “No demon bashing in front of my hashtag hell spawn,” the infuriatingly absurd incubus says from somewhere in the room as Ella finally reaches me.

  “I was starting to worry you’d disappeared,” she tells me quietly.

  I start to reach for the journal, then change my mind. “I have no plan. I have no idea if this is really even happening. I have no clue what tomorrow will bri
ng. But I do know I don’t plan to disappear, Princess,” I tell her, watching as her lips tug into a grin on one side of her mouth.

  Her fingers thread with mine, and I pull her to me, brushing my lips with hers as I dematerialize us from the house. Her arms go around my neck, and I hold her even tighter.

  I break the kiss, and she looks around, seeing us high atop a mountain with the rest of the world far below our feet. Today, this is how the world looks from my eyes.

  “I’m not the guy in this journal,” I tell her quietly, handing it to her.

  She clears her throat as she takes it, then stares at me. “I know.”

  “There’s nothing I can do to be him again, and that’s who you deserve to have love you,” I go on, frustrated as I roughly run a hand through my hair. “I became this man to save you. Not to be the man who loves you. I can’t do anything to change who the fuck I—”

  My words end when she’s suddenly dragging me down and kissing me, grinning against my lips as I pull her closer. She’s the one to break the kiss after a few minutes of making me forget what the hell I was saying.

  “I don’t want the man in the journal. I want the man who changed the world so he could write an epic love story,” she murmurs against my lips, and I groan as her grin grows.

  “You can’t tell people that,” I point out.

  “Oh, I’m telling everyone who will listen,” she argues, as she nips my lips, distracting me with that devilish mouth that I can finally enjoy without a deadline looming over my head.

  It’s freeing and unnerving and exhilarating and…fuck. It’s everything right now.

  She leans against me, turning in my arms to look down at the world below us.

  My eyes move up to the sky, and I frown when I see a flicker of light. It almost looks like a sliver of the sky is torn. “What the hell is that?” I ask on an exasperated exhale.

  “Something to worry about tomorrow,” she tells me, staring up at it. “It happened after my overachieving baby brother blew into the world with a blast of power strong enough to save my dad’s life.”