Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  I glance down at her as she laughs under her breath.

  “So this is it. Hannah’s really dead and we all sit around making jokes about the night?” I ask her, a little intimidated by how quickly they move on.

  “No. Tonight we make jokes, because it’s too soon to process,” she tells me, rubbing her hand over my chest. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day, Leah will have to face the fact she met and killed her father in the same night, and he wasn’t even a true man anymore. Zee will be mad at her later for not warning him of our plan, after she’s processed her fatherly issues, because he can’t be mad at her right now for being a hero. My parents will focus solely on my baby brother, because they’ve survived the end of the world before. It’s nothing new to them.”

  She peers up at me, and I brush her hair away from her face.

  “Everyone will deal with it in their own way. It’s called living. It’s what happens after you finish surviving,” she adds.

  My lips curve in a grin, and she stares as her own smile grows.

  “What happens today?”

  “Today we celebrate the surviving part, because it’s not as easy as we make it look,” she says, her lips brushing over my shoulder as she slowly starts tearing my shirt, ripping it from my left arm, up to my neck.

  “Tomorrow?” I ask as her lips toy with mine while she works her way across my chest, continuing to rip the shirt from shoulder to shoulder until it falls to the ground.

  “You spent centuries falling in love with a version of me that never existed, tomorrow we start on evening the score,” she says, eyes flicking up to mine.

  “Only when I open the journal do I experience that,” I tell her, watching as she cocks her head. “Without the memories, all I know is you on a loop from eighteen to now.” Reaching back, I pull out the journal, flipping it open. “But you also don’t get to know all of me.”

  She reaches down, running her hand over the journal, shutting it before my memories even start to form. “I didn’t ever really know this guy, but it’s hard not to fall in love with the guy who dedicated his life to writing our love story,” she states, her lips twitching. “It makes all those really gruesome deaths in my name weirdly romantic, especially since it’s cute how annoyed it makes you that I find it romantic.”

  My right eye twitches, and she smirks as she runs her finger over the firm line of my lips.

  “You’re trying to irritate me on a day where all I want to do is be inside you so that I know all this is real.”

  She runs a hand over my chest. “I tore your shirt off. You’re the one still talkin—”

  Her words die in my mouth when I kiss her, lifting her as she smiles against my lips, and we both frantically shred the other’s clothes that remain.

  Her nails are already digging into my back before her fangs even find my shoulder. It’s like a shot of seduction straight into the veins, and my already painful erection starts keeping time with my pulse before I push inside her, fucking her on a small patch of flowers as I kiss her like I can’t stop.

  It’s hard and fast for a while, then lazy and intense. The air grows colder as the night changes around us. And she’s here. She’s real. I didn’t fail.

  It wasn’t all for nothing.

  Now nothing can touch us.

  Not tonight.

  Hopefully not fucking tomorrow.

  Epilogue

  Ten years later…

  ELLA

  “Porcupine penis is called porcupeen,” Dice says in a tone that makes it sound like he’s arguing, but I have no idea where he’s going with that.

  “We’re arguing about you forgetting Kicera’s soccer game. Not about porcupine penises,” Karma says on a sigh.

  “I really fail to see why she loves him on days like this,” Kya says from beside me.

  “Just days like this?” Slade asks from my other side, already massaging his temples.

  Dice does that to him.

  “Fine. You can call it a spike. But porcupeen sounds better,” Dice prattles on, acting as though he’s effectively handled this argument.

  Then he nods off, falling asleep.

  A domestic incubus is actually oddly entertaining. Karma is smirking as his head falls to her shoulder.

  “I don’t think I want to know why he’s so sleepy if she’s smirking like that. It takes a lot for immortals to tire out,” Chaz grumbles, causing Karma’s smirk to spread.

  I glance over as Cole and Kicera spar, wooden swords in hand, laughing as they try to pretend-hack each other to pieces.

  “Any new developments?” Dad asks as he lowers himself to a chair, stretching out for our regular family meeting.

  “Nothing since the last raid a few days ago, but we’ve gotten a couple of promising tips about some of the ones in hiding. It’ll take a while to get them all,” I tell him.

  “I’m a patient man,” Slade says from my side, yawning like he’s tired too.

  I smirk this time, and sit a little taller as I shoot Karma a smug look.

  “Please. Mine’s full blooded incubus. You can’t compete,” she says with a snort.

  “I don’t know why I come to these things,” Slade says, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head as I grin.

  “You have an exhausting kid,” I point out.

  As if cued, lightbulbs burst around the patio, and everyone swings their gaze to Kicera and Cole, who are both pointing fingers of blame at each other.

  “I’ll get it,” Dice says as he jerks awake, blinking as he looks around.

  “Their powers are raw,” Mom says on a sigh. “But at least they have each other to lean on while accidentally wreaking havoc and causing mayhem.”

  “My queen baby and her momma’s boy squire,” Dice mutters under his breath, then heaves out a breath when Mom pops him with a crack of power like a punch in the gut.

  Karma snorts then chokes back a laugh. “Hashtag, traitor,” Dice groans.

  “I really don’t know why I come to these,” Slade goes on.

  “That raid we led last weekend got us some new tips,” Zee says from the wicker sofa, while Leah reads a book, her head in his lap.

  It’s one of those days where we’re not waiting on the inevitable apocalypse, because we’re the hunters for now.

  “I’ll take duck tips,” Dice says, peeking one eye open. “Oh, wrong kind of tips. Hashtag, insert clever quip here because I’m too tired to be on my game today.”

  Karma smirks again, and I roll my eyes.

  “I say it every time, because squirrels have bigger attention spans. There’s no point in coming. So why do I come?” Slade goes on as I lean against him and get more comfortable.

  His arm goes around me, drawing me to him, and I grin as his heartbeat drums in my ear.

  “What about the breaches?” Mom asks, trying not to laugh at Slade, since he really hates being laughed at.

  I personally enjoy it when they laugh at him, simply because of how annoyed it leaves him.

  I elbow him in the ribs when he sits up straighter, his attention already tuned in like the territorial predator he created himself to be. “This is why you come,” I remind him.

  He gives me an incredulous look as I grin, and he directs his attention to Mom as he answers.

  “Harmless things mostly. Had a few cross, hostile things, but they looked scarier than they were. We’re limited on what we can do, since the breach is over dragon territory.”

  “Have we dropped the ite?” Dice asks, rousing from his sleep. “Just finally calling them dragons? Because the ite just makes them sound like insects or parasites, and it’s hard to take them seriously after that. But if they spray fire, we should take them seriously, so I vote the ite be gone too, and they just be the dragons.”

  “Would you shut up for five bloody minutes so I can get all these damn facts in one, unbroken piece?” Slade snaps. “It’s why I come to these things, since you people are terrible with relaying important information any other way.”


  “Ten years and we’re still you people,” Dice says as though he’s genuinely putout by this. “Open your journal. Invite the nice guy back in.”

  “I’m going to murder him,” Slade tells me seriously, pointing at Dice before looking back over at Thad.

  I struggle to keep a straight face, because this is why I look forward to family meetings. I always envisioned a future where Slade and Dice were forced to spend loads of time together.

  “But the breaches are few and far between,” Thad says, picking up where Slade left off.

  He grins over at Slade when Slade makes a move like he’s going to kill Dice. Dice starts to open his mouth, then closes it, and opens it again, taunting the murderous guy I love.

  “The dragons are handling the breachers, turning them over to us at the edge of their territory, and they let us in after they handled the hostile attack situation to examine the evidence. But it’s tense between us at best,” Chaz adds, propping his feet up and putting his arm around Kya.

  “All because you didn’t send a message ten years ago when I told you to. Darius will impose his dominance at any chance he’s given, and so will that pompous prick for the red ones,” Slade growls.

  “Ten years ago. It was ten years ago. Let. It. Go,” Dad groans.

  “It’s not like we predicted when that portal blew up on a cosmically imbalanced night that it would rip an interdimensional hole in the sky,” Mom reasonably points out. “It wasn’t covered in our agreement with the dragonites when you originally created this alliance between us.”

  “So we’re back to using the ite? Because when you say dragonite, I feel like scratching my ear and head,” Dice interjects. “It doesn’t evoke the rational fear one should have.”

  Slade stands abruptly, and Dice leaps backwards like a cat, landing way behind where he was. “My fight or flight is so on point. I survived all one thousand and one times. Hashtag, can’t touch this.” He starts dancing. Of course. It’s Dice.

  This is why we keep him.

  It’s always funny as long as you’re not the one he’s annoying.

  Slade curses and drops back to his seat, as all of the rest of us struggle to keep a straight face. Zee really enjoys these moments, since he’s not allowed to kill Slade. Same for Thad. I think they pay Dice to be extra annoying on family meeting days.

  “But now the terms need to be renegotiated, and they’ve refused to even consider it for a full decade,” Slade growls, eyes back on my mother.

  “As long as the breachers continue to be so few, it’s a nonissue. They can take them in, vet them, and we can figure out what to do with them when they’re brought to us. They can also handle the threats that come through in such small numbers,” Dad says, waving him off.

  “We’ll wait until shit hits the fan before we step in and force the issue, won’t we?”

  “We’ll wait until it starts looking like shit could hit the fan before making it an issue,” Mom corrects, lips twitching. “Our main priority is finding a solution to sealing the breach. Hopefully one of the ones who comes through will have more answers than we’ve been able to find.”

  “Or one of them could be the next Hannah,” Slade is fast to point out.

  “Ten years ago,” Dice says. “Let. It. Go.”

  “That’s a terrible impression of me,” Dad says, not anymore amused with Dice than Slade.

  Mom likes it too.

  We’re cruel like that.

  “We can’t risk a war when there’s no reason because we look like the bad guys,” Zee says, gesturing around. “Not all of us can get away with that.”

  Slade doesn’t even glance his way before flipping him off. Zee’s less murderous. A decade of watching each other’s backs in raids where men are pumped full of survival instincts and desperate to stay alive leaves you in a few close scrapes.

  It helps mend the wounds that aren’t so fresh.

  “I’m older!” I hear Kicera shouting, distracting me.

  “I was conceived first!” I hear Cole yell at her.

  “Smack talk has certainly gotten tamer over the generations,” Thad states dryly.

  “It’s not my fault you’re such a momma’s boy you wouldn’t evacuate the womb without a cosmic burst of energy to force you out,” Kicera snaps.

  “Ooohhh,” a few of the guys all groan at once.

  “I don’t know why I come to these things,” Slade says on a huff, leaning over to kiss the top of my head before dragging me onto his lap.

  “I saved my dad’s life,” Cole points out.

  “I raised mine from the dead,” Kicera says before dropping a metaphorical microphone in front of Cole’s face.

  “Hashtag, that’s my baby,” Dice says, pointing at Kicera then at himself. Then stage whispers to us, “My only baby since now I’ve got zombie dick and shouldn’t make any more babies.”

  Karma groans with the rest of us.

  “It’s been ten years,” Slade tells Dice sourly. “Let it go.”

  “My pre-zombie dick helped save the world. You just hate that I’m more important in the grand scheme of things than you,” Dice tells Slade. “And I’m so much fucking prettier.”

  “If I cut his head off, would it grow back?” Slade asks me seriously.

  “At this point, I’d believe almost anything,” I say just as seriously.

  He curses while looking away.

  “Kicked your ass again,” Kicera says as she takes Cole to the ground, her wooden sword pointed at his throat.

  “Kicera, don’t say ass. You’re too young,” Karma shouts, then looks at us. “That goes for pre immortal children the same as mortal kids, right?”

  “Our parents were fake parents meant to mule us out to the slave rings, and set as an experimental device for uncovering all our powers.”

  “Already I’m winning at parenting by comparison,” Karma says with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “You got beat by a girl,” Dice says, singing the last word as he points at Cole and laughs.

  Dice’s pants spontaneously burst open, tripping him when he stumbles back from the spark at his waist. He yelps and crashes to the ground, sending Cole and Kicera into laughing hysterics.

  “Cole, that better not have been you,” Mom warns.

  “It wasn’t!”

  “Kicera,” Karma warns.

  “Not me!”

  Slade smirks, and I roll my eyes. “You’re supposed to be the oldest one here,” I remind him.

  “Tell me that incubus doesn’t deserve worse,” he says unapologetically.

  Thad burst into feathers suddenly, scaring the shit out of me with the abrupt shift, and flies over Dice, pecking him in the head a few times, before soaring into the air.

  Roslyn bursts into her wolf form, leaping over our heads as she takes off into the woods under his flight path. I guess they decided they were done with the meeting.

  “It’s like a circus. Now that I’ve seen one, that saying makes so much more sense, and it’s disturbingly accurate. If someone started juggling, it wouldn’t even seem surprising,” Slade says against my head, mock groaning.

  I laugh against him, kissing the side of his cheek.

  Leah bumps my fist on her way by me as she goes toward where the kids are playing, and Slade wraps his arm around my waist as he dematerializes us.

  We land in the small cabin in the woods on the land his crew took over ten years ago. The same crew who have been learning how to live in between raids.

  There are still a lot of names on that list to take care of, and it’s helped give them goals while they ease into a new way of life. A life where it’s not all about survival.

  Surviving is the easy part. We have instinct to guide us.

  It’s learning to have a life that is far more difficult when all you’ve known is survival.

  Slade’s arms come around me, and he rests his head atop mine as we watch a bonfire raise in the center of the training fields, everyone celebrating the full moon that will be
rising when the sun sets. They celebrate a lot of little things, since they were deprived of so many things I grew up taking advantage of.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask Slade, knowing he’s not letting his mind wander down the same paths as mine.

  We work so well because we think so differently. Eternity is a long time to spend with someone if you think just alike.

  “That the interdimensional rip is going to cause more problems than we realize if we don’t figure out a way to patch it soon.”

  “Fortunately the human eye can’t see it, and it’s high enough that planes don’t near it. But we have immortals in the human government placed perfectly to keep planes out of that area as much as possible, so as not to accidentally give a show of dragons shifting and flying around out there.”

  “I’m not worried about humans. Their narrow minds are far more easily manipulated these days than they once were,” he tells me absently.

  “You’re worried about a huge threat coming through, but the Lokies can’t breach. They’re still sealed off from us.”

  “Yes, but we have no idea how many other dimensions do exist. Lokies haven’t had restricted access from all other life. They could have created things just as deadly as us.”

  I shrug a shoulder.

  “You’re seriously that unconcerned?” he asks incredulously.

  My eyes come up to meet his, and I reach for him, letting my fingers trace down the scar that travels to his lip, interrupting what was once a flawless face.

  My gaze flashes silver to meet his, as my other hand traces the scars on his arms that he has clasped around my waist. “We always find a way to be the deadliest.”

  Apparently those are the magic words, because his lips come down on mine, and he lifts me, carrying me as I grin against his lips.

  “We’ll be deadly tomorrow,” he murmurs against my mouth.

  Echoing his words, I repeat, “Tomorrow.”

  #TheEnd

  From the author:

  I really, really hope you loved Ella and Slade, as well as all the Deadly Beauties as much as I have. I love them so much that eventually I plan to write another spinoff with the dragonites. Kicera and Cole will have a place in it, though I won’t tell you any more than that to stave off spoilers.