How much did the wretched thing need to grow stronger?
Uneasy, Thalia was relieved when Rafe took a step backward. He managed to do so without truly garnering the female’s attention. And she longed to open up that line of communication between them, to ask him what he was about, but didn’t dare.
What if it wasn’t unique to them?
What if this woman could listen in? Eavesdrop?
It killed her to stay silent, to refrain from telling him her fears, but when Rafe seemed to sense them regardless, taking yet another step away, she settled into Theo’s hold.
“I can sense you’re young,” the woman murmured, and this time, her voice was stronger, richer.
“I am. I’ve just come into my powers.”
“And they’ll be confusing to you, of that I’m certain. I can guide you, brother.”
“I’m not your brother,” Rafe retorted, his voice monotone, even though Thalia sensed the rage in him. He almost vibrated with it.
“You are indeed,” she rumbled. “Know you not of our origins?”
He shrugged. “The past doesn’t count. It’s the future that matters.”
She laughed, the sound ripe and full-bodied. “The past affects everything, you fool. There are plans we’re not privy to, plans that are millennia in the making.” She snorted. “The past doesn’t count,” she mimicked. “You truly are a child.”
“How did you infiltrate the palace so well?”
“You’ll feed me more blood?” When he simply nodded, she wriggled her shoulders. “Each member of staff is on a database. It requires fingerprints, DNA tests, blood tests, and most recently, retina scans. I fed from the technician who deals with this, took his place, and supped from each and every new member of staff until I could slip and slide through every department.” Her lips curved into a beaming grin. “I’ve been here for forty-six years. No one caught me.”
“Until recently,” Mikkel stated, his tone a warning rumble.
She slumped at that. “I was too eager. Too impatient. Father warned me, but he can be cruel when he doesn’t get his way.” She bowed her head, bit her bottom lip. “When I lost track of the future Queen, he was most displeased and wasn’t afraid to take that discontent out on me.”
Thalia flinched at her wooden tone, then stated, “Morningstar wasn’t aware of me. I’ve met him.”
“Morningstar knows what his Legios tell him. He never leaves his palace. The only information that comes to him is from his most trusted Generals. For his own sake, for he is an impatient creature, they do not share all they know with him.”
Well, that didn’t exactly make them seem trustworthy, did it?
“I could have grown with him, been raised at his side.”
The changeling shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?” Rafe queried.
“I know not.” She narrowed her eyes at the wasted blood that had dried on the floor now. “Father doesn’t share everything with me. She had to be raised here. This is all I know.”
“And what of us?” Rafe continued, peppering her with questions. “Are your talents unique to you?”
That glint reappeared in her eye. “No. We can all do this.” Before their eyes, the female turned into a male. Then another. A redhead, a brunette, then, finally, Damien.
Elena wasn’t the only one who could discern which of the triplets was which.
As she saw her father’s face looking back at her, she realized the creature’s true power. Only his face appeared, on the woman’s body. If she shifted her entire form, did she think she’d cut the circulation to her hands and feet? The manacles were cinched tight, after all. If she transmogrified into a larger male form, sweet Gods, she might even end up cutting them off entirely.
“What else can we do?”
“We can put people in a thrall. We can enslave them on our blood, make them addicted to our bite and get them to do anything we wish.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “But if you’re mated, you’re different.” She sniffed. “If you’re mated.”
“He is,” Thalia rasped, catching the female’s attention.
The creature curved her lips into a simple smile that made her want to headbutt the bitch. She actually wriggled in the chains like a stripper on a stage as she stared at Thalia. “We’re better among our own kind.”
“I’m not,” Rafe stated instantly. “She is mine, and I am hers.”
The woman’s nostrils flared. “If you say so.”
“How am I different than you?”
“You are touched by the Goddess. Not just the God.”
Rafe scowled. “God?”
“Vulcun, brother. I did not lie to you. We are children of the God Vulcun.”
“You said you dealt with your father,” Rafe growled. “Are you lying to me?”
She scowled at him. “No! I d-do deal with my father. He is Vulcun’s vessel.”
“This sound like horseshit to anyone else?” Thalia snapped.
The woman turned to her and glowered. “My father is the Lord Almighty Vulcun, and he will make waves the likes of which you have never seen once Morningstar is back in his rightful place.”
Her words were a chant, one that she repeated. Twice. Three times. Four.
As the words reverberated around the chamber, Rafe reached behind him, lifting the flaps of his sports coat and revealing…
Thalia blinked.
Was that a knife? Where the hell had that come from?
As he grabbed the hilt, a small gilt pommel that was carved into the body of a snake, he fisted it tightly in his hands, and then he struck.
The female screamed as the knife slipped straight through her chest. With the precision of the surgeon he was, Rafe sliced her from throat to belly. Blood bubbled and poured free in a torrent he stepped back from, missing the gushing wave of liquid that stank like sour trash.
Blood bubbled in the woman’s mouth as she dumbly whispered, “Brother?”
“Never,” he ground out. “Return to your father, Bellatrix. I’m sure he’ll make you very comfortable.”
Bellatrix?
For a second, Thalia just stood there, dumbfounded, then she snarled, “You killed her. Was that necessary?”
“I did,” Rafe snapped, turning around to glare at her, jolting her at the rage in his eyes. “You don’t know what she was.”
“You should have told me, us,” she spat, surging forward.
Mikkel reached for her, grabbing her arm to drag her to a halt even though Theo’s forearm on her chest was holding her pretty much in place. “She was a siren.”
“A what?” she snapped, shooting Mikkel a glare.
Theo cleared his throat. “I don’t think she was.”
“I’ve seen enough films about Odysseus to know what a fucking siren is, and she was that. Don’t you try to tell me that only the fact we’re mated to Thalia was the reason we didn’t want to bone her.”
She blanched. “You wanted to sleep with her?”
“No, sweetheart. I didn’t want to sleep with her. If I’d been unmated, I’d have wanted to do anything but sleep.”
Flinching, she whispered, “What? Why?”
“Need you be so fucking cruel?” Rafe yelled. “Watch your damn tongue. She’s our mate. She’s not someone you’ve picked up from a bar and don’t care about. She’s ours.”
“I know, and that’s why I’m fucking telling her,” Mikkel snapped back. “She saw her standing there in chains, pitied her, for fuck’s sake. She’d never understand why you sliced her from top to bottom, Rafe.”
Thalia shook her head. “How did you know her name?”
“She told me.”
“No. She didn’t.”
He tapped his temple. “Here. She told me here.”
“This is insane,” Thalia whispered shakily.
“No, what would have been insane is keeping her alive any longer. She’d have escaped. At some point, one of the guards would have caved to her desires, to his.”
But she was filthy! The thought was all Thalia could focus on as she stared at the even filthier corpse hanging limply from the chains.
“Y-You’re not supposed to be like this, Rafe,” she whispered, her eyes beseeching him.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be, Thalia,” he retorted, but his tone wasn’t cruel, and his eyes weren’t doing that thing that messed with her head. He was just looking at her, really looking.
She bit her bottom lip. “What else did she say?”
“Nothing. She just tried to entice me.”
That made her cringe, even as she turned to Mikkel and then to Theo. “Both of you, too?”
They, almost as one, cleared their throats.
“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
As the stench of the woman’s blood rippled through the chamber, that disgusting vile odor that made three week old refuse smell good, she felt herself turn lightheaded. “I need to get out of here,” she whispered, more to herself than to them. “Let me go, Theo. I need to get out of here,” she repeated.
He released her then grabbed her hand. With his closed fist, he banged on the door and within seconds, it opened. As she took a breath of relatively fresh air, or as fresh as it got down in this pit of hell, she felt the scent dissipate, especially when her mates stepped out of the chamber and closed the door behind them.
“She’s dead,” Rafe said blankly.
Captain Cross glowered at him. “Excuse me?”
“She attacked me. I had to stop her somehow.” His tone was bland. All the more unbelievable for it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a healer?” Ethan demanded.
Rafe didn’t even flinch. “I am. Just not for demon spawn like that.”
12
Mikkel
The wolves’ song called to him.
Mikkel didn’t like that it did, because most people tended to avoid wolves when they were together in a pack. It wasn’t like coming across a bunch of wild animals could ever be a positive thing. And yet, that’s what he was doing.
Actively walking toward the song.
He felt like an idiot.
In fact, no, he felt like a fucking moron.
He knew there were natural wolves on the pack grounds. He knew, because when they’d sifted here, the pack had started singing, and Thalia had relaxed, the most beautiful smile on her face as she tilted her face toward the sun, murmuring, “The naturals know I’m home.”
The grounds here were beautiful. But he didn’t really take them in. They were perfection; so much so that it felt wrong to stand on the grass, but there was no other way to make it to the border of the land where the tended yard turned into forest.
Where he was heading, he didn’t know. But the naturals, along with something else, was calling him.
It wasn’t night yet. Overhead, the sun was dying out, sending streaks of purple and pink throughout the sky. It illuminated the way for him, but, weirdly enough, he could see as clearly as if it were high noon.
Was that another trait that was making itself known to him?
Yet another quirk of this weird monster he’d somehow managed to inherit?
His nostrils flared as the natural outrage he’d been feeling since meeting his father came to a head, but he breathed out, exhaling long and low to release the poison.
What was done was done.
He had to accept it, because if he didn’t, it would tear at his insides, and there was no point in that. He couldn’t change the past.
A man couldn’t change his fate, not when he was halfway down the path to the future.
Scrubbing at his face, he shrugged off the thoughts, enjoying the crunch of leaves underfoot. There were many scents here, and his ears picked up on the gentle sounds of a rabbit running through the leafy ground—did rabbits run? Or did they just hop?
Unsure, he picked up on the sound of a stag, its antlers knocking against something—the thud echoed around the forest like an alarm.
The wolves had gathered. That much he’d been able to piece together. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but something about the howls and their distance between one another, had made him realize they were united.
And that was where he was headed.
Ducking under leafy canopies that hung low, and winding down a path that wasn’t marked out anywhere other than in his head, he made it to a clearing.
What he saw, had him tilting his head to the side in surprise.
A giant willow tree.
The leafy fronds whipped in the gentle breeze. It reminded him of the tree in Pocahontas—a movie his nieces had made him watch a thousand times at every fucking Thanksgiving since they could say the word ‘Disney’ and had been able to recognize that he couldn’t say no to them.
They were too goddamn cute.
Not even a monster could say no to their pudgy little faces, with their toothless smiles and starfish hands.
Grumbling at the danger hidden in such cuteness, he focused on the wolves who were lolling around the base of the tree.
And there, among them, was Thalia.
“What are you doing here, Mikkel?”
Her voice was sharper than he appreciated, but he could understand.
The day had been long. Very long. And Thalia had not appreciated how it had begun or ended.
Who could blame her?
Mikkel knew she’d put Rafe on a pedestal. He hadn’t thought that could be a bad thing. Not until now, at any rate. Rafe had killed the changeling, and Mikkel couldn’t blame him.
The shit the changeling said?
He’d meant it when he said that only Thalia, not her physical presence, but the one she had in his heart, had saved him from being susceptible.
Her voice had been like a siren song in his head, and for the first time in his life, he’d understood why sailors would sail towards their deaths just to hear another sweet note such as that one. He was also relieved that, while Cross had guided them to the changeling’s cell, he’d passed Rafe his weapon—the small dagger he’d palmed the day he’d met his father. It had been on the tray Ragnor had used to carry in their drinks, and before he’d left, Mikkel wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d stolen it.
He was grateful for that now. Even more grateful to have the dagger back in the sheath he’d made for it at Louis’ place in Tampa. It was a link to his father, a link that grounded him when he felt like everything else was up in the air.
“I heard the wolves,” he told her easily, his tone betraying none of the thoughts that were spinning through his head like a whirlpool. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“They were greeting me,” she mumbled, and as he grew closer, he saw her amid the piles of fluffy fur.
She laid back against the ground. Her feet crossed at the ankle, her arms bridged on her belly. All around her, she was surrounded by wolves. The sight was…
Well, it was fucking incredible.
She looked like Mowgli or something. A true and fitting Queen of the Wolves, if not the Jungle.
Blinking at her, taking in just how beautiful she was, he came to a halt two feet away from the dipping branches of the willow.
“Why do they gather here?”
“I don’t know. Normally natural creatures don’t like places like this.”
“Like this?”
“There’s magic in the soil,” she murmured, shuttering her eyes from him. “I think shamans might have had sacrifices here or something.”
Processing that, he nodded. Then, “Rafe was worried,” he said, as he shoved his hands in the back pockets of the jeans Theo had conjured up for him—Mikkel seriously loved this not having to buy or choose his clothes shit. Even better when the dude dressed him too.
He saved a crap ton of time in the shower.
“I’ll bet he was,” she replied, seeming unapologetic about the fact Rafe could be hurting.
As that was unlike her, he cocked a brow, then peered around. The branches were weird. Well, weird was a bit vague, he knew, b
ut when he looked at them, they just seemed off.
He’d seen a willow tree before, and these branches seemed longer, stronger. The leaves more verdant, and bunching up in tighter clusters. It was beautiful, and truth be told, he wanted to lie beneath the canopy as Thalia was, tucked away in its sheltering shadows.
She growled under her breath and clicked her tongue. The noise had the wolves shifting and moving away from her, grumbling and snarling as they did. When they made a space down her left side, he grinned and, taking it for the invitation it was, ducked under the canopy and headed toward her.
Except, the minute his foot touched the ground, it sent a sharp burst of pleasure through his veins.
“Wow. That’s better than E.”
She blinked at him. “What is?”
“Stepping on this soil.”
“You’ve tried Ecstasy?”
“Could you sound any more disapproving?” he teased as he settled beside her, and when his entire body connected with the ground, he made a low moan, all joking and teasing forgotten.
It was like…
Once, when one of his unit had been torn down in front of him by a motherfucking IED, his shrink Stateside had recommended an isolation tank. It had seemed like his idea of hell, but when he hadn’t slept in close to three weeks, he’d been desperate for some relief.
The idea of sitting in an overly large bottle in water that other people might have pissed in hadn’t filled him with joy, but he’d gone in there, laid down, and had promptly fallen asleep.
He’d even been angry when one of the technicians had come to advise him his time was up.
He’d gone straight home and passed out in bed.
Laying here?
It was like that.
Jesus, was it better than Valium?
His mouth gaped a little at how comfortable it was. In fact, comfortable was an understatement. He jolted when the wolves moved around him, settling down as they’d done when Thalia had been alone here. Her hand shot out for his, to calm him, he thought, and she hummed long and low.
“Don’t worry. They’re here for comfort. They won’t hurt you.”
Triumph Page 22