Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  “What?” She frowned, mouth parting just slightly. “Never?”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly. “The rules of magic concerning our kind are very different to your own, or any other species born on Kingdom. Unless I am with another demone woman, I cannot impregnate anyone.”

  Her tiny fingers clutched at the back of his shirt, but she didn’t say anything.

  Feeling as though he’d crushed her dreams all over again, he gave her a bitter twist of his lips. “I worry that not only could I not please my bride by having the time to devote to her as I should, but she”—he pulled her chin toward his—“would never even get to know the joy of holding her own child in her arms. So answer me this, little wolf, does that sound like much of a fairytale to you?”

  If she said yes, he’d make her his now. He’d mate her in the way of a wolf; however, she needed it to be to ensure that no male could ever have her again. He’d offer his hand, his heart, and his protection. It wouldn’t be nearly as much as she deserved he knew, but it would be all he had to give.

  And if she said it was enough then he would stop second-guessing himself and just take the leap of faith.

  Lilith claimed his lips and her kiss was so slow and gentle and tender. And his heart leapt for joy because he knew she’d accepted him as he was. And somehow this would have to work. Somehow he’d figure out a way to make both his prince and his bride happy.

  “I wish to bathe,” she whispered upon his mouth before pulling back and giving him a timid smile.

  Was she asking him to join her? Were they to formerly become a mated pair already?

  Moving to get up, she pressed her palm to his shoulder.

  “Alone, Giles. I need to be alone for a while.”

  When she got up he did not protest. She moved with ease again and though he couldn’t understand the strange feeling suddenly rippling through his heart, he watched her walk away from him.

  She moved down the slope and a part of him wished to give her privacy but another part understood that they weren’t in a completely safe area. Getting up, he walked after her, telling himself it was just to keep watch and see that she was safe.

  But when she began to strip down to nothing, he didn’t turn away. And seeing her naked this time, it was like he’d never seen her before.

  Her movements were graceful and smooth. Her body long and lean. The inky spill of hair ended just above the line of her apple-shaped bottom. Lilith moved toward the water, and with each step he caught a glimpse between her thighs. His mouth watered. He’d seen her nude so many times, but it had never bothered him before.

  Now he could not take his eyes of the rosy tips of her nipples, the fullness of her breasts, her slim waist and plump hips. A vision of her writhing upon him, her hands all over him, came suddenly upon him and he was hard and ready, painfully so.

  She’d said no.

  Why was it bothering him?

  He’d told her hoping to spare her being bound to someone like him. It shouldn’t bother him. She’d made the wise choice.

  Gripping a low-hanging branch in his fist, he found himself wishing he were a free man. For the first time in all his life, Giles hated the man he was.

  He’d only ever broken faith once before and it had cost him everything. He’d vowed never again. A demone was defined by the vows he made. Giles was loyal, always had been.

  He told himself it did not matter. That the only reason he felt anything at all was because of their forced time spent together. But as she dipped her head beneath the water and kicked up her foot, floating with a lazy smile on her face, his heart twisted painfully in his chest and he knew it for the lie it was.

  She did matter.

  Lilith mattered to him.

  But if she wished to walk away, he would let her. He would have to; he would honor her decision no matter what. Closing his eyes, he took a step back, intending to give her a bit more privacy.

  And just as he was about to head back to camp, the snapping of a twig caused him to turn back around.

  He had just enough time to see a group of five or six dwarves surrounding Lilith. She was screaming as their hands grabbed at her.

  Lilith called her light, shifting to a wolf. But it was no use. With one powerful blow she was knocked unconscious.

  It all happened so fast—within a fraction of a second—that Giles could only stand there in stunned silence. When he blinked himself back to reality, it was to note that he, too, had been ambushed. There was a circle of ten around him and one of them was holding a black candle that flickered with deepest, black flame.

  “Ain’t no shiftin’ allowed, demon ilk,” the thunderous voice of the one holding the candle cried, and then something hard and powerful knocked into his skull from behind, causing him to black out instantly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lilith had no idea where she was. She could barely even remember what she’d been about to do. Moaning, she gingerly lifted a hand to her hair.

  “Little wolf,” Giles’s soft rumble caused her to gaze up at him.

  “Knight? What?” She shook her head.

  “Shh.” He placed a finger over his lips and then pointed straight ahead.

  Shaking the marbles loose, she blinked through her blurred vision and noted that they seemed to be locked inside of a hollowed-out corner of mountain. The moment she noticed that she also noticed she was sitting in water and not only were her ankles chained together, but she was bound around her middle with a fibrous section of rope.

  “What?” She jerked with a sudden jolt of adrenaline brought on by a sharp burst of fear.

  Wolves did not like to be tied up.

  Breath coming in rapid-fire punches, she twirled on her butt as the enormity of their situation became obvious to her. She was sitting inside a large, black cast-iron pot. Beside her, Giles sat in his own pot.

  “Great wolf!” she cried. “We need to get out, we can’t—”

  “Shh.” He hissed again louder, and this time his brows dropped and his head swiveled toward the door where a long slice of shadow inched beneath it. “They’ve posted guards,” he began in a whisper. “I heard them say they would not begin supper until the meat had awoken.”

  “Meat?” she squeaked, swallowing down the bile that had risen at the mere mention of them being meat. “Shift, Giles, get us out of here.”

  He glowered. “I cannot.” His chin jerked toward a fat black beeswax candle cushioned between sections of chiseled rock. Its black flame flickered macabrely across the shiny surface of the silver veined stone walls.

  “The candle is blocking you?” Lilith tried so hard to keep the tone of her voice down. Now that Giles had warned her she could indeed hear the murmurings of dwarves just outside the door.

  Their voices held a gruff, rumbly tone to them, which clearly came from mining in the dark bowels of the earth and constantly inhaling dusty fumes.

  Lilith gripped the edge of her pot, fingers curling around the lip of it as she tried in vain to not think about the fact that all they needed to do was light a fire and she’d be wolf stew.

  “My necklace,” she gasped, realizing there could be no better time to use fairy magic than right now. But when she patted her neck it was gone, in its place a little brown sachet tied with a string of leather.

  He shook his head, “I already looked. They stripped our possessions while we’d been out.”

  Gripping the sachet, she attempted to open it to see what was inside. It was squishy and full of something, but she had no clue what. There were no visible openings, so she lifted it to her nose and sniffed.

  There was a pleasant but slightly earthy smell inside. She’d never smelled the scent before. A hideous thought came to her then. “Is this a pouch of cooking herbs?”

  His eyes were hollow. The red in them almost a dull, lackluster yellow. She did not like that look, she would not accept that look.

  “Stop it,” she snapped at him and dropped the sachet. “You will not get sad about t
his.”

  “It’s my fault, Lilith. I should have guarded you better. I should have been more alert.”

  She waved her hand. “No, you couldn’t have known. I have better hearing than you and I did not hear them. I heard you in the bushes, though.” She arched a brow at him, completely disgusted with herself. She’d been all too aware of Giles’s hot gaze on her while she’d bathed, and maybe it had been her focus on him that had prevented her from hearing the sneaky bastards coming up, but she didn’t quite believe so.

  Stone dwarves were said to possess almost preternatural powers when in the vicinity of their particular cave system.

  “Think.” She looked at him. “Can’t you get out of the ropes? Maybe you can’t shift, but—”

  He slapped his hand across the water. She noticed that, unlike her, his wrists were bound.

  The room was very dark, but thanks to the flickering of the candle she was able to see faint scratch marks across her wrists.

  “I couldn’t undo mine. They seem to spelled. But I was able to get yours off. I had hoped that with your hands free you could undo yourself at the very least and slip away.”

  Even in the face of death he still continued to try and save her.

  Nodding, knowing if she did manage to undo her knots she wouldn’t leave him. She went to work on the rope around her waist. Though it was lax enough to let her move, it still gripped tight enough to her that she knew they had no intention of her slipping free so easily.

  Her human fingers were clumsy on the sodden fiber ropes. “Ugh,” she growled. “I can’t even find where the knot begins.”

  Outside the voices grew and one of them rumbled loud enough for them to hear, “I do believe the meat has woken. Send for Heapy.”

  Giles’s gaze snapped back to hers and in them she read his fear. Though if she knew him, she sensed that fear was not for himself.

  “Maybe if you shift, Lilith, use your claws. You have to get away from here.”

  And go where? It was on the tip of her tongue to argue it, but she did want out of her bonds if for no other reason than to blow out that infernal candle and help him to shift to shadow.

  If she’d been thinking straight from the beginning she would have known to do that first. Rolling her eyes at her stupidity, she quieted her mind and called to her light and then paused when she sensed its absence punch through her like a fist. Black ice skated down her spine.

  “My wolf,” she whimpered. “They’ve done something to my wolf.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she called the light again. And still nothing, just a vast emptiness that made hot tears gather at the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t sure how, or what they’d done, but just as with Giles they’d prevented her from calling their means of salvation.

  Reluctant to give up—even though she heard several pairs of shuffling feet just outside the door—she attacked the rope around her again.

  Slicing her fingers open on the coarse material, she wouldn’t stop. Even as the door handle began to jangle and the cackling laughter of devilish glee slipped through the room.

  Lilith would not have stopped trying at it if it hadn’t been for Giles’s soft voice.

  “I’m so sorry, Lilith.”

  Swiping at her tears, she shook her head. She wasn’t sure for what, or if she were trying to convey a meaning to him by it, but it was all she could do for a minute. Just shake her head sadly.

  Their pots were close enough that if she leaned over she’d get to within an inch of his beloved face. Moving as close as she could, she leaned into him.

  “Knight?”

  “Yes?”

  They were in dire straits, and the odds were very good that they would not walk away from this alive, but even in the darkness a wolf could sometimes find humor. “Orcs, yes. Centaurs called Chest, yes. But flesh-eating dwarves…bluidy hell, knight, we have the worst luck.”

  She said it with a lilt in her voice and tears gathering in her eyes. It was so unfair that things should end this way, and yet if there was one good thing that could come from this it was that she refused to ignore her feelings for him any longer.

  “Lilith?” He lifted up both hands and gently traced one finger down her cheek, causing her lashes to flutter at the sensual touch.

  “Aye?” She clutched at his fingers, pinning them to her cheek desperate he never stop touching her.

  “Can I kiss you?”

  Smile going wide and her heart trapped in her throat, she nodded forcefully. His kiss lacked the passionate intensity it had had the other night, but it was full of so much more. Of unspoken promises and vows. In this kiss she finally tasted Giles’s truth, and the words that had refused to pass his lips now came pouring forth.

  He loved her.

  She felt the sentiment flutter through every square inch of her body as he pulled away.

  “That kiss was—”

  “I love—” Giles began to say.

  Her eyes widened. “Kiss!”

  The doorknob rotated slowly, the door creaked open with a groan.

  “What?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door as a gathering of dwarves bearing unlit torches piled through.

  “Kiss. Giles. Kiss!”

  She knew he didn’t have a clue what she was getting at, but the rush of jubilation had tied her tongue completely. Smiling stupidly at the miniature men stamping through, she whispered two words.

  “Ying. Lor.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Giles wanted to crow the moment Lilith had murmured the dragon warrior’s name. The rock foundation shook, and the fifteen or so dwarves already inside threw out their arms for balance, gazing around with terror-filled eyes as a giant fissure tore through the stone.

  There was nothing more deadly to a stone dwarf than a cave collapse.

  The power of the earthquake didn’t last long though. As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

  Hoping that maybe the shifting ground beneath had snapped some of the chains holding him in place, he was disappointed to learn that besides a little water sloshing over the rim’s edge, nothing more had happened. The candle hadn’t even blown out.

  But when he glanced at Lilith she no longer looked like a frightened little cub, she was smiling gleefully at the stumpy men, as though she knew a secret none of the rest of them did.

  Taking his cue off her, he forced his mind to relax. A warrior was only as strong as his mind, for a second he’d allowed the panic to take him, believing he’d failed not only Erualis and Rumpel, but also the shifter who was coming to mean more to him than any vow of fealty he’d ever sworn.

  This would not be the way things ended for them. It wouldn’t. He’d be patient, and wait for the moment freedom revealed itself.

  “This meat has brought us much trouble,” a dwarf who stood in the center of the semi-circle of grizzled men said. “Shy, why haven’t they been cooked yet?”

  The leader didn’t simply look as though he hated the thought of bathing—as he was coated in years’ worth of grime and dust—but he was also missing an eye. The skin around the empty socket looked melted down, as though someone had stuck a torch to it. Perhaps another victim of the cooking pot that’d managed to escape?

  Giles could only hope.

  A little man hidden behind the shoulders of another much broader dwarf stepped out and hung his blond head bashfully, rubbing his hands together. The length of his hair fell nearly to his knees, shielding him from view as though he stood behind a curtain.

  “Sorry, Heapy. Sorry.” His head bopped up and down. “But Vet said the meat would be too soft and bland unless pumped full of adrenaline to make it stringy and game it up.” His voice was a meek whisper of sound.

  “Aye, just so!” Another dwarf came forward; this one was wearing tiny little spectacles across his bulbous nose. He scratched at his matted red hair and without missing a beat, stared at his finger, then sucked it into his mouth. “Meat must be tenderized.”

  Giles scrunched his nose. “I
am the royal valet of Rumpelstiltskin. This female,” he pointed to Lilith, “is under his protection as well. Release us at once.”

  Rumpel had done much business with the dwarves in the past, and just as his master loved his deals, the dwarves loved making money. Of which Rumpel had a limitless amount.

  “We know who you are,” the one called Heapy snarled, then, grabbing his stomach, he hollered, “Well, what say you men—should we release the meat?”

  “No!” The voices thundered, causing pebbles to crumble off of the ceiling and rain down on their heads.

  Even the bashful Shy was pumping his fist in unison with his brothers’ chants.

  The flame of the black candle flickered.

  “Oh, I really think you might want to rethink that, dwarves,” the sultry strains of Karis’s voice suddenly echoed through the room.

  As one the dwarves twirled on their heels, roaring at the lone female holding the tip of her sword at the center of Heapy’s chest.

  Shy lifted his hands, looking as though he meant to tackle Karis to the ground.

  The petite brunette laughed. “Oh, dwarf, I promise you don’t want to go there.”

  And then Rayale’s pipes began to play. The beautiful dark-skinned pied piper stepped out from the shadows and bowed toward Giles and Lilith even as she continued to play her song.

  The music seemed only to be attuned to the dwarves and no one else, because only they stood still and silent. Their eyes were wide in fury, though, as the final member of the deadly three stepped into the room.

  Ying plopped her hands onto her hips, her golden bow gleamed like fire as she gazed around. “Well,” she looked at them, “are you gonna get out or stay and get cooked? The girls and I were just about to get our mani-pedis done.”

  “The flame, if you could.” Giles jerked his chin in the direction of the candle.

  Lifting a brow, Ying glanced over her shoulder. “Ah, demon, you’ve shown us your weakness. How wonderful.” And then, with a smirk that revealed just a hint of fang, she turned on her heel and blew out the flame.

  Sighing with relief the instant he felt his body become his own again, Giles shifted to shadow, easily slipping free of the bonds and turned toward Lilith. “Lilith,” he said in a ghostly whisper, “can you ssshift yet?”