Not Quite Free

by Kaye Draper

  I grunted as the pain flared and hot blood streamed down my right arm, which now hung uselessly at my side. My animal side kicked in, demanding we fight to the death, even if the odds weren’t in our favor.

  Baghinder saw wounded prey when he looked at me, and his distorted features were filled with lustful glee. “Your blood smells just like hers,” he growled, pacing ever closer as he circled me.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Fuck you.”

  But I knew who he was talking about. My mother had fucked off right after she tried to drown her half-human offspring in the river. Maybe she hadn’t just run off because of me. Maybe she had other reasons for leaving.

  “She screamed and bled like the queen she was when I punished her for her stupidity,” he continued, taunting, prowling. I spun to keep him in my sight, squaring off, always ready for the final pounce.

  “But in the end, she wasn’t strong enough to mate an alpha. That’s why the bitch chose humans. They were her weakness. Looks like her offspring is just more of the same.”

  He shifted his feet and I darted sideways, just managing to avoid getting pinned to the wall. “Sounds like the dick here just wasn’t good enough to satisfy,” I snarked, sliding further away from him, closer to the guards and their guns. One headshot was all it would take, but they were probably too fucking scared of winging me in the process to take the opportunity. Weaklings.

  I flexed my good hand, my eyes taking in everything around us in quick, darting glances without ever taking my attention off the monster in front of me. I needed a way to distract him. Something to get his attention off me just long enough to grab a weapon of some sort. Then I could get him down long enough for the others to either shoot him or get me a damned gun so I could do it myself.

  But the alpha must have had the same thought about distracting me.

  His eyes narrowed as he glanced to the side. “Weakness,” he purred. Then he was moving. Away from me.

  The alpha took a couple gunshots to the shoulder and flank. Then he was bowling into the ring of guards and hunters, knocking them aside with his inhuman strength, maiming without intent to kill, his only purpose to cause as much pain and suffering as possible. He was punishing me by hurting everyone around me. Thank fuck I didn’t see Angel anywhere near that group. I shoved myself up off the table where I’d been bracing myself as blood loss made me feel light headed and weak. Then I started running toward the carnage. “Baghinder!” I yelled, scooping up one of my knives. “You fucking coward! Only a pussy would refuse to face the strongest predator in the room.”

  He whirled and I knew I had his full attention, all that offended alpha need to prove himself narrowed in on me. Fuck. All the old terror rose up inside me. The fear. The pain. The excruciating physical torture and mental anguish that I’d suffered at the hands of the people he had forged into psychotic monsters.

  I was going to die here. Finally. I gripped my knife in my sweaty palm as the world threatened to go black before the artery in my arm finished healing itself. No passing out. Not now. I had to take this fucker with me when I died. “You want me?” I said, flinging my good arm wide. “You’ve always wanted a piece of me, but then you’d have to admit to your fucking pack that their alpha was lusting after the freak.” I let out a deranged laugh. “I bet that’s why most of them wanted to hurt me so bad, isn’t it? They just couldn’t admit they were all either jealous or horny.”

  I waved my knife at the enraged beast. “Fuck. You.”

  He lunged, flying through the air toward me, shifting to full fiend form mid-leap. I braced for the hit, but it never came.

  If I was lithe and quick, there was one person I knew who was faster. And not half as strong. Silver sparkled in front of my eyes, a streak of glimmering light that darted in from the side, appearing between me and the alpha shifter.

  Time slowed, and every heartbeat seemed to echo inside my chest like a hallow cavern. Like the end of the world.

  Then everything sped up, moving too fast for me to do anything. Angel stepped in front of me, shoving me backward, letting out a sharp blast of song that made my ears bleed. Then Baghinder’s front paws hit him, bearing him to the ground with a heavy thud and a sickening crunch as something in Angel’s chest broke.

  I stumbled into the wall, then pushed myself forward, my brain turning off. Nothing else existed except Angel on the floor under the sabertoothed monster. Baghinder’s paws rested on the siren’s shoulders, and the claws had plunged all the way through, literally pinning the slight guy to the floor as he gasped and writhed in pain.

  Angel managed to lift a hand, trying to bring up the handgun he somehow still held, but Baghinder moved faster. The shifter turned his head, closing that massive maw around Angel’s arm, crushing bones and ripping through tender flesh with ease. The smell of Angel’s magic-rich blood was heavy in the air, and now the beast’s mouth was full of it, prey bleeding out beneath him. Baghinder was lost to his fiend instincts.

  So was I, but I had enough human left in me to at least focus on my goal. The fiend didn’t notice when I slipped around him. He lifted one paw from Angel’s shoulder to play with his meal, stabbing his claws through the siren’s soft belly as he chewed on his arm like a chew toy.

  My right arm was still mostly useless, but I forced it up through the pain. It was just strong enough to grip the beast’s fur as I flung myself on the alpha’s back, strong enough to brace myself through the pain so I could get my good arm around the monster’s neck. My claws sank in deep, past fur and skin, through tendons and vessels, digging deep, slicing hard and quick, severing the great arteries at his throat.

  He released Angel with a roar and a spray of hot blood, lunging up to try to get me off his back. But it was too late. The damage was done. He was losing blood too fast. He could heal that wound, but he’d be weakened. And it would take time. Skirting around the flailing, snapping beast, I crouched near Angel and retrieved his gun. Then I stood and calmly emptied the thing into Alpha Baghinder’s brain.

  The corpse was still twitching, but I turned away, confident he wasn’t getting back up. All around me, people were moving, herding the few surviving shifters who had surrendered outside while I fell to my knees by Angel.

  The beautiful, shimmering siren lay in a growing lake of blood. I thought he was unconscious—he wasn’t dead, because I could still hear his faint, racing heartbeat—but his golden eyes opened when I knelt beside him. The light in his eyes was dim, and I’d never seen him look so fragile and pale. “Theo said,” he rasped out, his beautiful cur voice ruined by all the screaming. I clutched his good hand as he sucked in a breath and coughed up blood. “Said not to let you get yourself k...k...killed.”

  I couldn’t see through the hazy film of hot tears that were streaming unchecked down my cheeks. “Moron,” I whispered, my voice choked. “Stupid. Idiot. Why?” And then I was sobbing. Angel’s hand went slack in my grip and I looked at him in panic. He was still alive. Barely. But he had passed out. And his heartbeat was getting fainter by the second.

  “Sam. Sam.” I blinked rapidly, trying to focus, even though everything seemed distant. Red hair. A small hand trying to pry my grip off Angel’s. “You’ve gotta let go.”

  A fierce, enraged, tearing growl erupted out of me. Let go?

  “Hey, hey. Just for a second, okay. We’ve gotta get him out of here, Sam.”

  I was shaking, nearly spasming with something I didn’t understand. Emerson’s deep, soothing voice was quiet in my ear. “Come on, sweetheart.” He shouldered me aside as he crouched down by Angel. “I’ve got him.”

  Then the gentle giant carefully got his arms under Angel’s limp body and scooped him up off the floor. I finally let go of the cold hand I held in mine. But that only made the shaking worse. “We have to get him home. To Theo. Jules. They have water magic. And a doctor.”

  Emerson’s big, red-brown eyes met mine and the wealth of sadness and understanding there almost sent me to my knees. “Okay, Sam.”
<
br />   People wanted things. I was the viceroy, the sovereign’s bloody, battle-hardened right hand. I was supposed to be in charge of this fiasco. The guards and hunters needed direction. The shifters who hadn’t fought us needed to be reassured that under new leadership they could coexist and have a good working relationship with the humans of Westhold. But I was moving on autopilot. I have no idea what I said to anyone. Only that my words were short and sharp. And that they all stepped aside and let their fucking viceroy follow his fallen coworker to the car.

  Emerson hadn’t bothered trying to lay Angel down in the car, since that would just mean more jostling him around. He hunkered down in the back seat with the lanky siren cradled in his lap, both of them covered in blood. I stood by the door as Fin slid into the passenger seat. My hands were shaking, and I fumbled for the keys with one hand.

  “Sir?”

  My head snapped up and I found myself looking into the concerned face of the lead guard, a human guy who I’d seen around the gym and during security briefings at the sovereign’s home.

  “Viceroy, let me drive you home.” He held out his hand. The tips of his blunt fingers stuck out of his fingerless gloves, and they were tinged rusty red with blood. “We can’t always be in charge. Losing people under our command hurts, no matter if you’re a human or a cur.”

  I slapped the keys into his hand. “I’m not losing anyone,” I growled. “Get behind the fucking wheel and drive like your life depends on it.”

  I glared, letting him know his life did depend on it.

  He only nodded in complete understanding and...respect. “Sir.”

  I slipped into the backseat and let my head thump back against the seat, my eyes closing as I fought against the fatigue and darkness that tried to drag me down. I reached out my good hand and set it on Angel’s leg, feeling his dim lifeforce humming under my touch. The car lurched into motion and I sent out a prayer to whatever fucked-up deity was listening. I’d do anything, if only my mate survived.

  Chapter 7

  When we reached the sovereign’s mansion, the guard drove us around to a little-used private side entrance. I led Emerson through the door with his burden, only to find Jules waiting there as if he’d been expecting us.

  “To his room please,” the efficient butler said in a calm voice, turning to lead the way up to Angel’s suite. “Dr. Johansen and her assistant are already set up for triage.”

  I clenched my fists so hard my claws dug into my flesh, the pain keeping me present, keeping me from floating away into that haze of shock and denial that wanted to sweep me away from everything that was happening. I couldn’t hear Angel’s heartbeat anymore. In the car, I’d had to physically find a pulse, and it was so weak I was afraid he’d be dead by the time we got him upstairs.

  My mind whirled as we climbed the stairs. Maybe we should have taken him to the supe hospital across town instead of bringing him back here, but the care there was notoriously bad. They could cure minor injuries on well-known cur types. Angel was not one of those. His subtle reliance on the magic that infused his being made things more complicated than a cur who just had enhanced strength or different physical structures. Theo’s people were usually pretty top notch. They could help him. They had to.

  Theo and Dr. Johansen were waiting in Angel’s room when we arrived. The politician looked pale, and he had lost every last bit of his human mask. I blinked at him in surprise, my vision swimming with the fatigue of blood loss and adrenaline. His eyes were glowing, his features were sharper, and...there were feathers in his hair. Little curling bits of red, orange, and yellow nestled in the messy chestnut curls. He raked a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, then hurried forward, only to come to an abrupt halt in front of Emerson, hand hovering as if he wanted to touch his blood-soaked lover, but didn’t want to hurt him.

  I pushed past Emerson and around Theo to get to a chair by the bed before I collapsed. Dr. Johansen pushed Theo out of the way and started bossing Emerson around, getting Angel stripped down and in bed so she could get to work with syringes and sutures, muttering the odd curse word every now and then and barking instructions at her assistants. I stared at the still, pale man on the bed, my mind gone blank as time seemed to slow to a crawl.

  A touch to my uninjured shoulder brought me back to the present. Theo squeezed hard, his blue eyes burning into mine. I had no idea how he was even holding onto his humanish form right now. “I’ve sent someone to fetch his mother. She should know what he needs,” he said, his voice so soft it might have been my imagination, like speaking was so difficult he could barely manage it. I felt the same way.

  “I don’t know all of it,” I managed, my voice rough and wobbly. “But I think he needs both of us to stay here with him.” Touching him would be preferable, but we had to let the doctor do her work first, and she was like a one-woman army over there. I was afraid to get in her way. I might lose a limb. Watching the speed and dexterity as she sewed up the worst of Angel’s wounds, then efficiently splinted and bandaged Angel’s macerated arm, I blearily wondered what kind of magical creature she was.

  I shook myself and tried to pull back on my hazy, wandering thoughts. What had Theo said? Athena, right.

  Angel’s mother hadn’t chosen her profession at random. Sure, the Magic Mushroom was lucrative, and it gave her—a full fiend with a license to live in the city—a place to live and a solid way to provide for herself. But it was more than that. Angel didn’t like to talk about it when we were younger, and I had been too embarrassed to listen at the time, too awkward and infatuated. But there was a good reason he was the best whore in the city.

  To a human, it would probably seem odd for a mother who was a prostitute to encourage her teenage son to follow in her footsteps. It might seem like she was heartless, uncaring...like she was using her own son to turn a profit. But the truth was, Athena did it to make sure Angel was safe and cared for—so he could meet all his needs in a place where she could watch over him, and where no one would hurt him or take advantage of him when they didn’t understand the cur. Because Angel’s people needed intimate connections. They needed sex and physical bonds with multiple people to really be happy. It had something to do with their magic and their fiend nature. And even though Angel was a cur with some human blood, he seemed to be just as needy in that sense as his mother.

  It seemed like an eternity, but at the same time, it was like I blinked slowly one time and the doctor was standing in front of us wiping off her bloody hands and brushing an escaped whisp of wheat-colored hair from her eyes with her forearm. The no-nonsense woman seemed human, but I had my doubts. With Theo’s people, you never knew.

  “I’ve done everything I can,” she said, her blue eyes direct and unflinching. “He nearly bled out, and I’m not willing to try a transfusion on someone with this much magic in his blood. His heartbeat is irregular, and I’m pretty sure his body is shutting down. I’d recommend you take him to the healing wing to be put on life support, but quite frankly, he won’t survive it. There’s something fiend going on here. A broken magic mechanism that I can’t fix.”

  She glanced between me and Theo and her expression softened, losing some of its stoic indifference. “You might want to say your goodbyes now. I’m sorry.” Then she squeezed Theo’s arm and went to start picking up all of her equipment, muttering some sort of charm over each piece, confirming my suspicions that she was more than human. “I’ve got a monitor charm on him,” she said as she went to leave the room, a basin of tools in her hands. She nodded down at her own chest and I saw an amulet hanging from around her neck. It pulsed with a soft red light, the rhythm erratic. “I’ll know if his condition changes. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Emerson was by the bed, hovering over Angel with a tender, wounded look on his face. He fussed over the blankets that had been piled over the siren, tucking him in better and arranging his head on the pillow, as if Angel might possibly care about a crick in his neck. Em’s red-brown eyes met mine and there wer
e tears pooled there. “I’m sorry, Sam,” he said in a thick voice, his entire being radiating helplessness.

  Fin appeared from somewhere, reaching up to tug on the hem of Emerson’s shirt. “Hey. Come on. Let’s give them a minute, yeah?”

  Emerson nodded and they turned toward the door, but I reached out, grabbing Fin’s shoulder. “Use your magic,” I croaked out. “Please, Fin. Please, you have to....” I swallowed around the lump in my throat that threatened to choke me. “Please.”

  The leprechaun glanced between me and the dying siren. “Are you sure, Sam?” he whispered. “Last time—”

  I cut him off. “Last time wasn’t your fault! And he’s already dying, Fin! Just fucking do something. Please...someone has to do something.” My voice cracked and my body failed me. I stumbled, falling to my knees and resting my head on the bed beside Angel’s chest. “I don’t know what to do.”

  An overly warm hand squeezed the back of my neck, the touch burning like banked flames. I could feel the tremor in Theo’s hand as he tried to offer me comfort while he kept his own pain and building fiend magic in check.

  “Yeah,” Fin breathed, sounding a lot like Emerson usually did. “Okay, Sam.”

  Then he clambered up onto a chair at the bedside. Holding his hands out over Angel’s chest, he closed his eyes and pulled on his luck magic, muttering something under his breath as he cast his spell.

  Nothing seemed to change when he was done. But that was the way his magic worked. It wasn’t flashy and immediate. It was subtle and invisible.

  Then the leprechaun and the ogre left the room, and I was alone with my dying mate and his lover. Theo took the seat Fin had abandoned, and his eyes met mine. There were so many unsaid things that passed between us in that look. Did he blame me for this? Was I angry that he was here now, intruding? Did I know what I was about to lose? Was I sorry? Was he? A million questions and fears. And in one glance we silently agreed that none of it mattered.