by Mina Carter
“Work for what?”
Her voice cut the darkness, the question slipping loose before she could stop it. Margarite would have reached Veyr by now, which meant they’d already be looking for her. And Veyr wasn’t an idiot. He wouldn’t come down here, following her trail, on his own.
“Veyr’s going to rip your throat out, you know?” she offered, conversationally, trying to sidle sideways in the darkness. If she couldn’t see, neither could they.
She made it less than three steps before there was a strange rustling behind her. Stopping dead, her heart pounded in her throat. That was a wrong sound. A very wrong sound. Without turning, she knew someone was behind her.
“Going somewhere?” a feminine voice inquired.
Cyan bit back her yelp and jumped nearer to the dubious safety of the other shifters as she turned. One of Jacob’s men clicked a torch on, the bright light blinding her for a moment. But when she could see, sure enough, the strange woman was behind her, a smile playing over her face. She stepped forward, lips parted as the tip of her tongue flickered out. The tip of her forked tongue.
“Mia!” Jacob barked. “Patience… you’ll get all the time you want to play late—” They all paused as the sounds of pursuit rang out behind them. “Everyone ready. We have a master to welcome.”
Two shifters grabbed Cyan’s arms and dragged her out of the way. Mia nodded and with a soft exhale, changed. At first, Cyan held her breath, thinking that she’d been wrong and Mia was some sort of ‘thrope after all. There were so many types it would be impossible to know them all, and some were so rare they didn’t even have official names like lycanthropes and ursanthropes—bear shifters—did.
But Mia didn’t shift like a ‘thrope. There was no cracking of bone and fur washing over her skin. Instead, darkness rolled up behind her, billowing out in a black cloud behind her so she seemed to merge with the shadows around her.
Something uncoiled in the darkness, the raspy sound sending cold chills over Cyan’s skin. Movement caught the edge of her vision but her gaze was riveted on Mia’s face as it changed, the features flattening out and becoming more alien. No, not alien… serpentine.
As soon as the thought took root in Cyan’s mind, Mia moved. Her legs merged together under the short skirt so at odds with the clothing the rest of the group wore, a strong column covered in scales supporting her as she slithered forward. Vicious nails topped her fingers and she hissed, something in the darkness behind her rattling.
Cyan gasped as the creature threw herself backward into the darkness, disappearing with a rattle of her long, scaled tail. Turning around, Cyan looked at Jacob, realizing how he would beat Veyr.
“You aren’t even going to fight him, are you?” she demanded, contempt sharpening her voice as she realized just how far the former alpha had fallen. “You’re going to use that…where the fuck did you even find a lamia anyway?”
Lamia weren’t shapeshifters, not really. Sure, they had a human form, but their shifts weren’t subject to the pull of the moon, nor did they have two sides to their natures—human and beast—like ‘thropes did. Instead, their human form was merely a mask to hide the monster within. There was nothing even remotely human about them… she’d trust even a wyvern, the unstable bulldogs of the dragon world, over a lamia or any of their ilk.
Jacob shrugged. “You can find anything… if you’re willing to pay the price.”
There was something about the way he said price, an odd note and something about the expression in his eyes, and suddenly she was sure that price wasn’t monetary, and that Jacob hadn’t paid it himself. She wondered how many men his group had contained originally. Some of the less well-known stories, the ones told by the night races rather than the cleaned up human versions, had lamia as kin to the succubi… and hunted males of any species in their prime.
She swallowed, trying to ease the lump of fear that had settled in her throat. Lamia were dangerous killers, capable of taking on anything, and more than a match for even a powerful werewolf, especially when fighting in an environment suited to their physiology like the catacombs.
“You disgust me.”
She spat on the floor at his feet, fighting back tears of anger and frustration. If the two guards either side of her didn’t have an iron grip on her arms, she’d have thrown herself at Jacob and torn his throat out herself.
Anything to stop the trap the love of her life was about to walk into.
Veyr’s world had changed in a heartbeat. As soon as Margarite burst into the room, a chill rolled down his spine and a terrible sense of foreboding filled his soul. The seconds as she stood there, looking at them with tears rolling down her cheeks, had stretched out to an eternity. A lifetime of torture as he read the truth in her eyes.
“Enemy in the court… They have Lady Cyan. Oh my god, they took the lady. I’m so sorry!”
Veyr stormed through the corridors of the court, Jace and a horde of guards on his heels as he followed the scent of his mate. No one spoke, the silence around the group of werewolves thicker with each step.
Cyan was terrified, the sharp stink warping her scent. Veyr’s wolf snarled, the sound transferring to his human form and trickling from the corners of his lips in a low and dangerous noise. Someone had dared to set foot here, had dared to infiltrate his home and threaten what he held most dear.
Rage rose, hot and thick in his throat, his wolf almost spilling through his skin. But he was an alpha, and the days of losing control like that were long gone. Instead, he channeled his beast’s rage back into his own, using both to sharpen his senses and bring claws to the ends of his fingers, ready to rend and tear.
When he found the assholes who had taken his female, he’d make them regret the day they’d been born. No, he’d make their fucking grandparents regret the day they’d laid eyes on each other. If they’d hurt her… he’d rip apart time itself and eradicate their entire bloodline right back to the beginning of time. He’d hunt down and destroy every member of their family as a warning to the world that no one took what belonged to him and lived to tell the tale.
Cyan’s scent wound out like a spool of thread in front of him. Clever girl, she’d lost one of her shoes somewhere along the way, her bare skin against the stone floor strengthening her scent as it descended into the basements and tunnels beneath the complex. Rather than one, large palace, the master’s court was comprised of many buildings, all interlinked and running into and out of each other. The subterranean levels were the same, even though they were mostly disused now.
Which made them perfect for kidnap and…
He snarled again, cutting that thought off before it could form. Instead, he focused on the scents around Cyan’s. They were shifters, at least one alpha, and a scent he didn’t recognize, something that made his wolf sneeze and snarl. Around him, other wolves did the same, and a low growl echoed from the back of the group.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Never smelled that before.”
Veyr held his hand up, cutting off sound and movement as he listened. He’d not been down here for an age, but from memory the corridors opened out just ahead into a larger gallery. The scents all went that way. A small sound up ahead made his ears pick up. It sounded like a stifled scream.
It was Cyan.
He’d know the sound of her voice anywhere.
The howl was out of his throat before he could stop it, his wolf giving voice to the threat in his soul. Other voices joined him and in a heartbeat, they tore down the corridor toward their prey. Running wolves, some in human form, some on four paws filled the small space until they spilled out into the gallery to meet the threat that had infiltrated their territory.
4
A small scene was set in the middle of the gallery. Cyan was on her knees, her clothes dirty and torn, hands behind her back and a strip of her skirt in her mouth to gag her as she looked at him with tears in her eyes. Behind her, hand hard on the back of her neck, stood a familiar figure. Veyr’s lips c
urled back from his teeth in a low, warning snarl.
“Jacob McCauley. What the fuck are you doing here?”
The disgraced alpha smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. Instead, they were hard and flat, glittering with triumph.
Around Veyr wolves grumbled in the backs of their throats. Some were from the McCauley pack and had suffered at their old alpha’s hands, while the rest knew what a cruel bastard Jacob was.
“Shifters with him,” Bryce said in a low voice. Of them all, his sense of smell was the most accurate. “I count four or five. Not wolves, but canine, perhaps hyenas.”
Veyr nodded slightly. That made sense. No wolf would support a sadistic asshole like Jacob, not in Veyr’s city anyway, but hyena’s had no honor; they only looked out for themselves.
“I’ve come to take back what was stolen from me.” Even now, even after a challenge fight he’d lost and that had almost killed him, Jacob’s manner was filled with grandeur and entitlement as he swept an arm around. As though he were lord of the manor and the rest of them merely serfs. “Take back what I deserve.”
“A dank hole in the ground?” Veyr snorted, derision in his tone. “Well, at least you’re realistic.”
Jacob fixed him with a glittering look, eyes filled with hatred. The muscles in his bare forearm tensed and in front of him, Cyan’s expression tightened with pain.
Veyr stepped forward, a snarl on his lips. “Hurt her and I’ll fuck you up so many ways you’ll beg me to kill you.”
“Really? A base mongrel like you? You think you can best me, a born wolf? Mutt, you aren’t even in the same league.” Jacob laughed, the sound low and amused. “I’ve already outmaneuvered you, and you don’t even realize it. Oh no, my friend, I’m going to walk out of here the Master of the City and there’s nothing you and your pack of mutts can do about it.”
“Really?” Veyr’s lips split into a broad grin as he stepped forward, arms wide. “Well, you know what you have to do then. You want to be master. You have to beat me.”
He stood there, watching and waiting for Jacob’s reaction, the twin fires of human and lycan rage within carefully controlled. Whatever delusion the former alpha was under, Jacob didn’t stand a chance against Veyr. Not only was he Master of the City, but he’d clawed his way up out of the pits in the bowels of the city, the no holds barred, no rules fights only the truly desperate or sadistic entered, before becoming King of the Ring, the first to ever retire rather than be killed.
Jacob was outmatched, outclassed and outgunned. Every which way, he was fucked, and not in a good way, as soon as he got into a “ring” with Veyr.
“Come on, Jacob,” Veyr urged him on with little “come hither” motions of his fingers, his wolf already just under his skin, so close he felt the brush of fur beneath his pores. He was ready… he’d tear this asshole apart within seconds and stomp in his entrails. “Come and see if you’ve got the wolf to beat me.”
Jacob laughed, face wreathed with mirth. “Yeah, right… like I would stoop to your level. No, mutt, I don’t need to prove anything to you. I am pureblood, my line goes back unbroken to the first wolf to take human form. I know my worth and that I am worthy… that I deserve… no, that I was born to be Master of the City. I don’t need to fight you.”
“Fucking idiot.”
“Delusional.”
Veyr heard the mutters behind him but ignored them in favor of watching Jacob.
“So, if you’re not going to fight me, how are you going to become the Master of the City? You expect me to just hand the title over?” He chuckled. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“Oh no, you have to die.” Cyan made a small panicked sound at the words, her eyes fixed on Veyr’s. Once he met her gaze, she looked deliberately in the darkness to the left. Warning him?
“But I’m secure enough in my worth that I don’t need to be the one to kill you and your little pack mates here. Mia, my darling, you can come out now.”
A sense of foreboding filled Veyr in the seconds that followed. A dry rasping sound filled the air, the weird scent he’d noticed before stronger. The darkness to the left changed, and the figure of a woman emerged. His eyes narrowed, a low rumble of warning trickling through his mind from his wolf. No, she wasn’t a woman… She looked like it, with masses of light hair, but her features were wrong. She looked more like a—
“Lamia!” Cyan cried, tearing the gag from her mouth. “Run, Veyr… save yourself!”
The woman—the lamia—struck using the scaled tail coiled under her in place of legs to propel herself forward. Glittering nails like small swords raked the air where he’d been a moment before and he got a quick glimpse of a mouth filled with needle-point teeth.
“Secure the gallery!” he bellowed, wolves scattering to do his bidding as he whirled to keep the creature in sight. Lamia were rare but hellishly dangerous. If this one killed him, he didn’t want it loose in the court. It would be a bloodbath. Better to keep it contained down here, even if they all died… if Cyan died. But better than the lamia getting upstairs… to where Lily was.
The thought of such a creature anywhere near his daughter made his heart lurch painfully, the thud coinciding with another lightning fast attack from the she-monster in front of him. He jumped to the side, rebounding from a pillar to land a heavy kick between her shoulder blades. Deliberately, he locked all his human thoughts and emotions away. He couldn’t afford the distraction. Not now. Not when his mate’s life was on the line.
He would do anything to save her, he realized, his wolf echoing the utter certainty. Some wolves mated but you could see that the bond wasn’t complete. If anything happened to their mates, they’d be upset but would go on.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
If anything happened to Cyan, he’d manage for Lily’s sake, but it would be a poor existence without the other half of his soul.
“Think locking yourself in here will help, do you?” Jacob taunted, his cruel laughter echoing through the darkness. “I don’t think so. You’re going to die, Veyr, executed like the mutt you are, and your bitch along with you. Then I’ll take my rightful place as Master of the City.”
“You’re a fucking lunatic,” Veyr spat, blocking another flurry of slashing claws and blows from the snake woman. She fought as he did, with utter concentration and focus, her strange eyes flashing in the darkness. At least she couldn’t turn him to stone…
He broke away, turning to run at another of the pillars. Her breath was hot on the back of his neck but he kept moving, planting one foot in the middle of the stone to hurl himself around. His foot whipped out as he turned, catching his opponent on the side of the jaw. She fell backward and he followed her down, his wolf bursting through his skin. Within a heartbeat, he’d shifted form. Not human, not wolf, but something somewhere between. Standing on two legs, he curled massive fists and hammered blows down onto the lamia. She screamed, hissing at him as she fought back. Hard.
Her clawed fist lashed out, slamming a blow into his ribs, but he absorbed it with a grunt, grappling with her as he tried to take her the rest of the way to the ground. Fire sliced across his shoulder as she got him with her claws, but he paid her back with a swift uppercut that snapped her jaws together.
Round and round they went, trading blows until their surroundings fell away, until it was just the two of them and the damage they could dish out and take.
His heart pounded in his chest as adrenaline surged through his system. Letting loose the darkness within, he fought her with everything he had, taking and giving blows that would have felled lesser creatures as they both looked for an opening to end the fight. Needing a larger area to battle in, they’d moved away from the others.
Twisting to the side, he blocked a lash of her heavy tail with an upraised arm and slammed a hook into her unprotected ribcage. She cried out, lurching a little to the side as pain twisted her strange features. Slithering backward, she gulped air as much as he did, strain showing in little
lines around her mouth. A strange expression crossed her face as she looked at him.
“No one hasssss ever lasted sssssso long againssssst me,” she said, staying out of his reach. “McCauley said you were nothing, less than nothing, a coward and mongrel who had gained your posssssition through trickery.” She tilted her head to study him curiously. “But I think not. You fight too hard to be a coward and too well to be a tricksssster. Does the title mean that much to you?”
“No.” He’d altered his jaw enough to speak but the wolf was still heavy in the rough tones. “The title… being master… that’s nothing. She, though, is everything. My love, my life, my everything. And I’ll be damned if I let you or that asshole hurt even a hair on her head.”
Her gaze slid past him to where Jacob stood over Cyan, and something flickered in the back of her eyes. Need… or longing perhaps. “Thissss is why you fight so hard? All thissss, for a woman? You love her that much?”
He just looked at her. “Always.”
The lamia nodded and then shivered all over. As she did, the scales receded from her skin, darkness and shadows wreathed her lower body for a moment until she stepped forward, legs where the tail had been a moment before. Bruises on her face and holding a hand against ribs he’d felt crack under his fist, she nodded. “You are not what I was told. My deal with McCauley is null and void… I do not deal with liars.”
She turned to go, all but disappearing into the darkness of the gallery before pausing for a second to look over her shoulder. “You are a rare man, Veyr of the pit. I sssshall tell my sisters of you. Our kind will not bother your city again.”
“Thank you.” He nodded, offering a smile as he folded his wolf back within. “Should you ever need help, though, you are welcome.”
Her eyes widened a little at his offer. Few would be crazy enough to offer aid to a lamia, but she had proven she had honor. Inclining her head in thanks, she turned and disappeared into the darkness of the catacombs.