by C. M. Owens
“I’m not going to keep taking you on the ground,” he says, then smirks as he undoes my dagger belt and tosses it aside. “Won’t be needing that.”
My lips turn up in an unexpected grin as he slowly peels the rest of my clothes off my body. My breathing turns heavy, and I swallow as he takes his time, as though he’s relishing each second of baring me to his eyes.
I’ve never had anyone use such care with me. In the rings, it was always cold and detached—just something to scratch an itch or pass the time. They would send different ones into our cage, and we’d be watched by the guards who took notes of our interactions with each other like we were a science experiment.
All thoughts of the ring vanish when Chaz starts kissing his way down my body, torturing me slowly in all the best ways. It’s slow and worshipful, completely opposite of the way it was our first time together. Both are so amazing in their own way.
A breath leaves my lungs when his lips fasten on to a spot on me that has never been touched in that way. Sex? I’ve had plenty of sex. But no one has ever done this.
I start making incoherent noises, and he growls against me, the vibrations rattling straight to my core as I try to squirm. He simply pins me in place, his strength showing as he does it with very little effort. I’m at his mercy as he sucks and flicks his tongue, and praises and curses mingle with one determined cause.
I tug at his hair, but it only seems to fuel him as he continues to manipulate my body until something painfully erotic seizes me, dragging me over the edge in a way I’ve never gone off before.
I’m crying out in anguish when he suddenly stops right in the middle of perfection, but he flips me over, and in one powerful thrust he’s inside me. My entire body shudders, and the interrupted piece of ecstasy washes over me ten times as hard as it was.
I’m crying out for a different reason this time, and Chaz grips my hair and hip, using both to anchor me in place as he drags out my orgasm to the point of almost causing me to blackout from the sheer pleasure. Every part of me is on sensory overload, and his grip tightens as he starts making all kinds of deliciously feral sounds, losing some of that control for a whole new reason.
It makes me feel powerful, unrestrained, and lost—a good kind of lost. The kind of lost that I want to stay and never be found from.
He bends swiftly, and his teeth rake over a spot on my shoulder. He uses his hold on my hair to roughly tug my head to the side, and I move with him in invitation as I ride the high. Sharp points against my flesh press down harder, etching up that desire once again. But he jerks his head away at the last minute, moving the hand that was on my hip down and across my stomach. It keeps moving south until it finds that perfect place once again, and I moan as pleasure snakes into me, growing at a steady pace.
So close.
A tremor courses through him, and it’s like it flips a switch on me. I’m suddenly drowning in sensation as his hands start running all over me, and I call out his name as my body spasms in an orgasm that leaves me boneless, panting, and almost incoherent.
He grips me tightly, finding his own release as his hips jerk against mine, and a deafening sound of madness comes from behind me, a mixture of a violent roar and a wild cry. It’s intoxicating.
His body drops to mine, and we both breathe heavily, unmoving, suspended in disbelief. He almost bit me, and I was going to let him.
It’s a sobering thought.
Slade ended up reading that dragonite book to me from cover to cover before I turned it over. He even highlighted some important parts—not for me, since I can’t yet read written English. Those parts were for him.
Chaz knows the consequences just as I do—one passionate bite, and we’re locked together for eternity, our lives becoming intertwined.
I wanted to be reckless, but...
“You’re incredible,” he says against my ear, forcing an unexpected smile to cross my face as my reservations slowly slink into the forgotten abyss.
I don’t really know what to say to that.
As we’re luxuriating in the never-ending afterglow, both of us still trying to come down from the high, the world tilts, stealing the rest of our moment. It’s as though there’s a damn conspiracy.
Pain slices through me without mercy, stealing my breath and stabbing through me like searing hot claws dipped in demonic acid. No part of my body goes unscathed. It feels like my entire being is being ripped right out of me, as though someone is trying to steal my soul the way I’ve stolen so many.
A gurgled scream slices through my lips, and it doesn’t stop. The pain... the pain doesn’t stop...
Chapter 19
CHAZ
I feel it rip through me like a painful wave, and Kya cries out under me as her body curls into the fetal position. I wrap her up, holding her to me as the entire world shakes around us.
The earth roars her fury, as though blasphemy has become a treasonous crime and she’s punishing us all. The ground splits inside the hotel room where I’ve taken us, and I try to transport us out, but panic hits when I can’t.
Nothing is happening. The ground is still violently shaking, but I can’t transport!
I lift Kya in my arms, moving us quickly to a doorway for the bathroom. It’s a useless instinct, because we’re immortal. Still, I trust my instincts, doing as they demand.
She curls into me, still screaming in agony. Some unknown, invisible force hit us. I could feel it coming, and then it barreled through us without ever showing itself.
Now the entire hotel is vibrating, more cracks are forming, and Kya is hurting more than I am. The pain was intense but brief for me, but I felt stripped... Almost as though I suffered a loss that I couldn’t peg. Now I can’t transport.
The ground stops shaking as suddenly as it started, and car sirens all wail their disapproval as water shoots free from different parts of the ground.
I can see chaos going on through the window that has shattered on our first-floor room. I chose this hotel because it doesn’t belong in any region to any immortal. It’s a neutral territory, safe for all strays. I knew we’d be safe here and far away from the others to avoid any interruptions, but now... Fuck. How am I going to get us back?
My lips press to Kya’s head as she stops crying in pain, and she takes shaky, calming breath
“Wh-What happened?” she asks, sounding disoriented and still pained.
Cradling her in my arms, I shake my head. “No fucking clue. But I can’t transport us out.”
I keep trying, but I keep getting denied. It’s like the power is just suddenly gone.
“I... I can’t dematerialize,” she says, wincing as she shifts in my arms.
It’s then I get sick as the scent of blood hits me. Her forehead is bleeding, and a small piece of glass is stuck there. No. No way can glass touch her body and leave it scratched.
“What?” she asks, studying my face with worry.
“You’re bleeding. From... fucking glass.” I slowly lower her to her feet, and she whimpers when I tug the glass free and toss it aside.
More blood pools at the wound, and my eyes widen. Quickly, I grab a cloth from the bathroom, stepping on the glass there with no problem.
“Chaz,” Kya whispers, sounding horrified.
I look over to see another spot on her leg that is bleeding from another piece of glass. What the actual fuck?
My phone starts ringing as soon as I press the rag against her forehead, putting pressure there.
“Answer it,” she says, taking over the rag as she winces again.
Cursing, I rush to my phone, lifting it as I look outside. People are screaming and the sirens are still wailing. Alarms are going crazy, and cars are flipped on their sides.
“What’s going on?” I ask Gage when I see it’s him calling. “Please tell me that earthquake didn’t reach you.”
“Definite earthquake. Seems to be worldwide, according to the news. Several blackouts are all over the place right now. But... We have a prob
lem. Can you use your magic?”
A sick feeling unfurls in my gut. Stripping the bed, I make sure there’s nothing on it that can hurt Kya, because she doesn’t seem so immortal right now.
Closing my eyes, I feel the dragon stirring heavily in me with a stronger presence than ever before. But everything else seems to have disappeared.
“My dragonite powers are still active,” I tell him quietly. “But nothing else is.”
Kya’s eyes are wide when I look over at her. She throws her hand up, but nothing happens. She closes her eyes and seems to be straining, but nothing happens.
When she opens her eyes, horror is there.
“None of us can use our magic, and Kimber is getting stitches from Frankie right now, who fortunately knows how to tend mortal wounds. Somehow, we’re fucking mortal.”
I move over to the window with all the broken glass, and with a little dread, I slam my hand down on a jagged piece. The glass breaks and falls away, but my hand remains unscathed. “I’m still immortal,” I tell him on a quiet breath.
“Then we need you. Even Alyssa seems to be mortal right now. We’re vulnerable, exposed, and weak.”
“I’m at least twenty-four hours away if I drive all night, and I’ll have to find a car.”
“What the actual fuck? How’d you get that far away that fast?”
“My magic is different than your magic. But that power is gone right now.”
He releases a litany of curses, and I lift Kya when her phone starts ringing. Carefully, I hold her to me, allowing her to climb back onto the bed that I’ve ensured is safe to the touch.
All those years I spent tending to Ella and Kimber as they grew up with mortal fragileness until they hit immortality is coming back to me.
She answers her phone, and I can hear Slade barking at her from this side after she tells him how far away we are.
“Hang on,” I tell Gage as I listen in.
“How long will it last?” Kya is asking.
“Twenty-two hours exactly,” Slade tells her. “So stay put. You’re too vulnerable right now. We all are. There will be a brief intermittent moment where our powers are restored for a few hours, but they’ll be stripped again. Those fuckers are close to opening the portal, and now there’s no way we can go after them until this wears off.”
I question her with my eyes, but she holds up a finger.
“Chaz has power. Just his dragonite power, though. And he can’t shift.”
A silence stretches for a few long minutes. “Then they don’t know what all he has in him. This could be what we need to surprise them, because there’s no doubt they’ll do this again right when they open the portal. That’s why they wanted to know all our weaknesses. It was never to build an army of power. It was always to do this. They have all the anointed weapons they need and the numbers to take us down.”
“And we’ve been honing our skills instead of our fighting abilities,” Kya groans.
“Which is what they knew we’d do.”
“What is it?” I ask her. I somehow missed the explanation.
She purses her lips. “A spell.”
“No spell is this strong.”
“A fucking spell?” Gage says against my ear, reminding me he’s still on the line.
“Only a coven—a very powerful coven—could pull off something of this magnitude, but they’d have to have a sample of blood from every known species to block their powers. It’s temporary, because they don’t have the power to hold it for that long. No one does. Twenty-two hours is the maximum, but they can just relock it in. It’ll drain them, but they can reuse the spell immediately. We’ll only have a small window to get back and help the others take them down,” Kya explains.
“Did you hear that?” I ask Gage.
“All I heard was muffled bits and pieces. Apparently our keen hearing has disappeared with our powers. Vision and other senses too.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
I repeat what Kya just said to me, telling him almost every detail, and pausing for her to tell me things I might have missed. She finally takes the phone away and puts both our phones on speaker.
“Now tell us the rest,” she tells Slade. “Why does Chaz still have his dragonite?”
He mutters something too low for even me to hear.
“The spell has certain limitations. I doubt they had the blood of a dragonite to use, nor did they even consider that possibility,” Slade explains. “The spell is complex and incredibly exhausting to the ones using it. It’ll weaken them.”
“But they would have weakened the demons too, right? And they’re witch demons or something,” Gage says through the speaker.
“I don’t have my powers, so they had to have stripped demons as well,” Karma interjects through my phone.
I guess the others have assembled and are being quiet.
“You’re not a demon,” Slade says, answering as though she’s right in front of him. “You’re a hybrid. You have a soul. Demons have a spirit, but no soul. It makes you different. All this time we thought the rings were to build an army. And partly it was—”
“It was to collect samples of blood from every known immortal out there to cast this spell,” I say on a long breath, interrupting him.
“And to find out which immortals were the best vessels for their purposes,” Slade continues. “It’s likely they’ve stolen the bodies of more than just night stalkers. It makes sense now. The front line would be given the weakest. It’s hard to find a body that isn’t warded against possessions these days, from what I’ve noticed. They were selecting puppets.”
“Kya and Karma can possess any immortal, unlike a true demon. Most of them struggle to overtake an immortal even without the anti-possession markings,” I interject, moving to sit by Kya.
She threads her fingers through mine, almost like she needs the comfort. My eyes scan her head to see the blood has started to clot. The wound looks more superficial now than anything, but it definitely scared me at first. Her leg also looks to have stopped bleeding, which makes breathing a little easier for me.
“Why cast it tonight?” Ella asks.
Slade grows ominously silent, not even taking a breath. I look to Kya, who shrugs.
Finally, he answers. “Because they think they can open the portal tomorrow. Which is why I felt so confident it’d be easy to stop. But without our powers, we’re no more effective than a human right now, and the advantage I planned for us to have is gone.”
It’d be so easy to kill him now... To eliminate any possible future threat he posed.
“I could have found a way to ward against it if I had seen it coming. I thought the magic was lost with the ancient ones. It shouldn’t be possible. The earth isn’t thriving as well as it was back then for witches to pull their power.”
“Mortal witches didn’t draw their power from the earth,” Gage says. “They drew it from dark matter left behind from dark magic. Some drew it from immortals, even harnessed their power as their own.”
“Impossible,” Slade says dismissively. “You can’t harness an immortal’s magic as a mortal.”
“You can,” Gage growls. “I would know. It was done to me and my brother. They—”
“They what?” I ask when Gage goes quiet.
“They... They took it into stones,” he says, but he sounds distant now. Thoughtful. Like he’s holding something back.
“What aren’t you saying?” I ask him.
“Nothing. I don’t want to send us down the wrong rabbit hole because I’m being paranoid.”
Slade has grown quiet. The rest of us fall into a similar silence.
“So what do we do?” Kya finally asks.
“You stay put until this thing times out. Being on the road would leave you exposed to any number of mortal deaths. And don’t fucking leave the state again when we’re in the middle of a war,” Slade growls before the line goes dead.
Kya blows out a long breath, and I tighten my lips, refraining from say
ing something to her about killing him. Because the beast really wants to do just that right now. If I’m being honest, the man wants it too.
“He could have worded it differently, but he’s right about staying put until this thing times out.” Kane’s voice breaks through the phone, and I groan.
“You’re supposed to be with Alyssa.”
“I’m on another phone. They conferenced me in. Alyssa and I are still in the underground bunker. It shook us hard, but nothing caved. She’s actually feeling stronger as a mortal than she did as an immortal. Apparently an immortal child is much more draining on the body than a mortal one.”
Breathing out in relief, I study the destroyed room. We’re still fucking naked, and now people are noticing us through the window, even though they’re wise enough to keep a safe distance away.
My body is still indestructible to mortals. And I’m not in a mood to be pissed off. Humans always revert to evil in times of crisis. It’s like they’ve been holding it back for too long, and the first opportunity to show their darkness will emerge when the lights dim.
“We’re going to find a safer place to stay for the night,” I say, standing and grabbing our clothes from the floor.
My vision shifts. I find and remove every shard of glass on Kya’s clothes before handing them to her. Then I do the same with mine, to make sure she doesn’t get cut against me.
“We’re going to do check-ins. Dice is with Liza and Sadie several hours away. He’s trying to get back to Karma, but we’re trying to make him stay put now that we know what’s going on. Thad and Roslyn are with them too,” Gage tells me.
“Why?”
“Sadie had more information on portals locked away in a vault. Thad’s arm is broken, but it should mend as soon as our immortality comes back. Karma stayed behind.”
“Why?” I ask again, confused. They never go anywhere without each other.
Gage blows out a long breath.
“Because I’m pregnant,” Karma says quietly. Kya almost falls off the bed while putting on her shirt, but I catch her as I gawk at the phone. “I don’t know how it happened. I thought I was spelled. But it did, and I just found out a few hours ago. That’s when they left. I haven’t told Dice yet, but I told him I needed to stay behind. I felt... I felt something off. And I felt like I needed to stay put for the... baby. That word sounds so wrong. It’s the worse time ever for me to be pregnant.”