Witch Darkness Follows (Maeren Series Book 3)

by Mercedes Jade

  Daemon’s legs got the same treatment. His ass bounced off of the hard packed earth as George dropped his brother, once the pants were over his hips.

  George buttoned the pants with ruthless efficiency given that Daemon was wearing those pants commando and he had stretched them to their limits.

  Lucky for Daemon, George didn’t have modern zippers on his pants. Buttons were safer for this careless, rushed dressing.

  “Done,” George muttered.

  He pivoted on his knees to yank her against his scarred chest.

  His skin was hot, despite the cool night air. He was as sweaty as her, his slick skin making it hard for her hands to find a grip as she struggled to take charge.

  He took advantage of her inability to hold him, his lips swallowing his name and her irritated tone as he wasted no time finding all the nerve endings to tease her witchy libido back to life.

  Damn it. There were going to be rules, and . . . the rules . . . ?

  She needed his lips to give her space, so she could tell him . . . all the rules . . . and scold him for thinking he could kiss her whenever he wanted.

  George would not be denied. His kiss was as wickedly demanding as the rest of his body. He was rough with his tongue, plunging in and taking her mouth prisoner.

  The prick and scrape of his fangs punished her when she tried to retreat.

  She dug her nails into his tough shoulders, paying him back for his rough passion.

  He moaned harder against her lips.

  Big hands worked her body as hard as his mouth. His calloused fingers made themselves known on every knot of muscle tensing her back as he worked his way down.

  The caresses were a sensual torture. She wanted to push into the massage, until he found another tender spot. Then, she’d try to pull away, with nowhere to go but his unforgiving chest.

  Her breasts ached as arousal sensitized them to the male hardness pressed against her.

  This was not going as planned.

  She had initially thought George could be satisfied with his own hand and her imagination.

  A plan that wasn’t that different from when she had talked dirty to Daemon the first night that she met him to distract him.

  Although, that also hadn’t worked out well.

  Both George and Daemon had gotten their hands onto her first, and then, the teasing games were over.

  There still might be some way to salvage this before Daemon woke up.

  She couldn’t be stuck between the two of them.

  A vampire.

  A demon.

  Hungry, demanding princes.

  Mates that had yet to claim her body fully.

  She bit George to get his attention, ignoring his growl as he kept trying to eat at her mouth.

  If he was even half as determined when he went down on a girl, she wouldn’t last long under his tongue’s onslaught.

  No wonder he was so arrogant about it.

  Letting herself enjoy one last taste of George’s deep kiss, she let go of one of his shoulders, so her hand could latch onto an ear.

  She brushed his unrestrained hair out of the way.

  Sending a mental command at his shields for him to stop, she yanked on his ear with the same ruthlessness efficiency as he had shown Daemon’s pants.

  George broke from her mouth with a Maerenian curse.

  His blue eyes found hers, flashing with annoyance and heat.

  Then, he blinked at her.

  His passion-lidded eyes suddenly got heavier and his grip lighter. He blinked slower. He swayed.

  Finally, he shuttered his blues and collapsed backwards.

  She’d broken George.

  Her squeak of surprise didn’t rouse him as she also fell, her shirt still tangled-up in his grip.

  Just like Daemon, a soft snore parted George’s lips. His chest rose with a reassuring breath.

  At least, she hadn’t literally killed him with her kiss.

  She swore.

  Nobody was awake to care.

  Letting George have all of her elbows and knees, she struggled to get out of his heavy, unconscious grip.

  She stood up to stare down at both of the sleeping monsters.

  “George?” she called.

  She nudged him with her foot. It was like kicking a mountain barefoot. She didn’t try it again.

  She plopped herself back down between their bodies to wait. Her mates were sleeping for the moment and nothing could be done about it.

  Daemon had seemed genuinely remorseful for his behaviour in the castle. He’d braved facing her mother alone, which said a lot about his commitment to Elizabeth.

  Only, he didn’t have the sole claim on her anymore.

  What was he going to say when he figured out that two of his brothers had joined themselves to her with their bonds, as well as an enemy, in her dragon-mate bond to Geer?

  George had quickly flipped from a bad seed in the family, who had attacked his own sister, to an avenging dark prince, and now, a determined mate who would pursue her through the realms as doggedly as Daemon.

  It made her head spin.

  George still hid much of his dark past, but he wanted her to open up about hers at the same time.

  Did George mean to use his earth to heal her bleeding heart or to crush it under his heel?

  Her mates not with her were as equally unhelpful to her situation.

  Geer was quiet in her head, not popping in to check in on her or even to keep her company.

  He was a gift she couldn’t open, couldn’t touch, hidden beneath a veil of wrapping and put on a high shelf to taunt her.

  He knew she was in the Wastes—closer to him than ever—so where was he?

  Phillip . . . well, she’d only recently found out that he was her fourth mate. He probably hadn’t understood her discovery of their bond during their last whirlwind encounter.

  The arrogant lover-boy wasn’t her choice, either. He was angry and misunderstood everything about her! She barely knew him and wondered if it was too late to sever their connection before it started to fester.

  This was not a good start to their partnership. Maybe the magic had it wrong.

  How could they all be her fated ones?

  If mates were like husbands, then it was like none of them were around to help and it was garbage night. That seemed to sum it up.

  Everything stank!

  Thief of Dragons

  “Five more minutes,” Elizabeth groaned, snuggling against her warm pillow.

  Somebody pelted her with pebbles. Sharp, little annoying stones that stung all over her back and shoulders, and then, one against her temple. The last one did it. She was awake.

  Her mother had hit her with enough rocks during slayer training that she knew what they felt like with her eyes closed.

  In fact, sometimes that had been the point. She was supposed to duck to avoid being hit.

  It wasn’t her mother’s thoughts pinging her barrier this time. The mind she sensed felt a lot like a dragon.

  Her first instinct was to spring up with some air and get the threat into sight—but she was only being hit by pebbles.

  That likely meant she was being underestimated in her ability to retaliate.

  She had to play down her magic if she wanted the misunderstanding to continue. At least, until she’d further assessed the situation.

  Her backup was still sleeping, or snoring, more accurately. It would be better not to stir up more trouble than she could handle on her own.

  “What do you want?” Elizabeth asked, opening her eyes to search for the thrower.

  A bare chest met her gaze first. She must have crawled on top of one of her mates to nap while waiting for them both to wake. She didn’t remember doing so. Perhaps, she had slumped down on top of one of them in exhaustion.

  She pinched the shoulder under her hand discreetly, but firmly. It had to be Daemon, lacking the scars of George.

  He didn't react.

  “Get up,” a feminine v
oice hissed. She sounded young.

  Elizabeth lifted her head and looked toward the speaker, a bit to her right.

  If this was a dragon, she was in human form. Her lithe curves hinted at womanhood, but not quite matured.

  Elizabeth would guess about sixteen. She was small enough to pass for younger.

  The girl had another pebble ready in her hand to toss.

  “I’m awake. Stop throwing stones. I’m not a window or your sweetheart,” Elizabeth grumped at her.

  “Come over here,” entreated the girl.

  She was kneeling in a circle. She dropped the pebble to fall outside of the chalked lines, standing firmly in the circle’s centre.

  There was no way Elizabeth was getting into a circle with a stranger.

  “What do you want?” Elizabeth repeated.

  “I’m rescuing you,” the girl answered. There was a little more urgency to her voice. “Hurry up. Markus will be here soon.”

  Who now? What were all of these folks doing in the Wastes?

  “Who’s Markus?” Elizabeth asked.

  She pushed up on Daemon’s chest to kneel, her legs straddling his thighs.

  With her mates passed out from the magic drain, she would have to deal with the intruders herself.

  One girl, even if she was a dragon, was something Elizabeth could handle while lying down. Markus meant she had to get up.

  She disliked him already.

  “Markus is an egotistical jerk with an overinflated sense of ownership and more magic than he deserves,” the girl answered.

  Yep, trouble! Elizabeth definitely had to rise.

  She tried to decode that insulting description as she stood up.

  The girl had a hand hovering close to her circle’s chalked outline, ready to set it with magic. Green eyes flashed with anger and fear, widening as a hawk flew circles overhead.

  “So, Markus is not a friend?” Elizabeth asked, stretching.

  She took a surreptitious look at the sky and then around at their surroundings as she worked out her sleeping kinks.

  George was still sleeping safely by Daemon. He had a leg over one of Daemon’s knees.

  The spilled contents of their traveling bag were close to George, drawing Elizabeth’s attention.

  “Hey, did you go through our stuff?” she asked the girl, annoyed.

  “Finders, keepers,” the girl answered. “You’re lucky I was scavenging here first. If Markus found you, he’d claim you, just like the baggage.”

  The ‘overinflated sense of ownership’ was making sense now.

  Elizabeth supposed this Markus was the girl’s main competition for thieving from travellers in the Wastes, which was why the girl hated him.

  “These vampires aren’t dead,” Elizabeth clarified.

  Nobody was going to make easy pickings of her, but it would be simpler to say that she had plenty of male protection.

  Maerenians would judge her strength by the vampire marks on her neck. Chauvinistic, but true.

  “They’re totally passed out. I’m not surprised with the amount of magic you used for your circle. What kind of spell did you cast? Magic like that is going to attract all kinds of attention,” the girl said.

  Maybe that was why she’d rifled through their bags, looking for a hint of their identities or what they’d been spelling.

  Elizabeth supposed that if one wanted to do darker spells, the Wastes was the perfect place to hide such power.

  Or to hide dragons?

  Victor had been wrong when he’d told her all of the female dragons were dead.

  They’d been hiding. Smart. Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel kinship with the girl for her need to keep herself a secret from the rest of Maeren.

  “The circle was a transport spell,” Elizabeth admitted to her, not seeing any harm in it.

  “Like a portal in a circle?” the girl asked, breaking into an excited grin. “Oh, Maeren. James is going to be so jealous.”

  There were way too many names being thrown around. Elizabeth had better figure out more about this girl in case she grew scared and took off.

  The princes would absolutely want to know about all of these dragons hanging around.

  Elizabeth would wait to tell them until after she first had a talk with Daemon to ensure he would deal with the dragons civilly.

  No more heads.

  “If you’re rescuing me, then where are we going? Your home? Is it around here?” Elizabeth asked.

  The girl stopped smiling. “I don’t live that close. It’s not safe there for you,” she said. She looked around her, and then whispered, “I’m a dragon. I’ll transform to fly you closer to the nearest town.”

  She was going to fly on a dragon. “Uh, how are you going to carry the guys, as well? I can’t even lift them. Are you a really big dragon?”

  “It wouldn’t be much of a rescue if I took your captors with you,” the girl replied.

  Why the magic circle, then?

  Surely, the girl didn’t need a circle to transform into a dragon?

  Elizabeth tested the girl’s mental barriers. She slipped in without too much effort.

  Dragon brains still felt strange to her magic, but not as difficult to manage as when the dragon was in animal form.

  Knowing this was an invasion of the girl’s privacy, she only stuck to the surface thoughts.

  The girl had thought Daemon and George had kidnapped Elizabeth, like so many other kidnapped witches.

  The idea had been reinforced by Elizabeth’s half-naked state that the girl had assumed, almost correctly, had been to prevent her from running away.

  Daemon’s possessive grip over her while they slept together hadn’t helped, either.

  “Actually, we’re all together,” Elizabeth said.

  She pointed at George. “I mean, that one did kidnap me and force me into the Wastes, so he could threaten me—but we had a talk about it. I’ve agreed to help him and his brother with a family dispute.”

  She pointed at Daemon. “That one used the circle to transport here.”

  “Don’t trust them,” the girl urged. “The one you were lying on is a demon.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth admitted.

  The girl’s eyes got bigger.

  “If your family won’t take you back due to the disgrace,” the girl said, eyeing Elizabeth’s naked legs, “. . . you could train to be a handler in the royal harems. I hear they pay well enough to support a single witch for years.”

  That was true.

  The girl held her hand out for Elizabeth, although she didn’t leave her circle.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you,” she promised Elizabeth.

  The girl was dressed in rags. Her robes were ill fitting, layered over her body to make up for the patched, ragged state of them. They were held together by simple cotton belts.

  A hint of dark hair peeked out from the cloth wrapped around her head, with the long tail of the fabric hanging down her chest. The extra length was probably convenient to wrap around her face to protect against the dust.

  If she had weapons, they were well hidden.

  She looked like a bedouin boy, except for the slight curve to her hips and bum that hinted at her femininity.

  “Do you rescue many girls?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Only the cute ones,” the girl answered, trying to sound friendly and flirtatious. “Don’t worry, not all of us dragons are looking for a witch to feed on. I promise to deliver you to safety. Now, hurry up! I don’t know how much time we have left.”

  It would be incredibly foolish to trust a dragon, especially a male dragon.

  The last answer made Elizabeth guess that the girl was pretending to be male, which she confirmed by dipping into her thoughts again.

  The reason why was a bit of a shock, too.

  Apparently female dragons weren’t supposed to transform into their dragon form or be allowed outside.

  The girl was worrying about Markus catching her and informing her u
ncle, Rael.

  This kind of injustice had to be dealt with now that Elizabeth knew. She couldn’t let the girl run away when she had the means and opportunity to help.

  “What’s your name?” Elizabeth asked, trying to delay the girl from leaving.

  “Pan,” she answered.

  Truth.

  “Do you need rescuing, Pan?” Elizabeth gently asked.

  Pan’s eyes flicked to the vampire, the demon, and back to Elizabeth. She laughed nervously, her eyes reflecting the turmoil of her thoughts.

  “I am a dragon,” she stated, in denial of being in need of help.

  Her surface thoughts were desperate.

  She wanted Elizabeth to come with her badly. Despite her fear of Markus, as well as of George and Daemon, Pan had risked staying here to get Elizabeth.

  It was tempting to slip further into Pan’s thoughts for the answer, but Elizabeth resisted.

  Once trust was lost, that greyed line that crossed into someone’s private thoughts, it could never be fully regained.

  The girl meant her no obvious harm. Elizabeth had to let her tell her story on her own.

  She left Pan’s thoughts, purposefully setting a lightning barrier between their minds. It wasn’t something Pan would be able to detect, but it still protected the little dragon from Elizabeth’s power.

  “Is Markus a dragon, too? Does he have anyone else with him?” Elizabeth asked, trying to get an idea of what they were up against.

  “Markus is a dragon. He never scavenges alone,” Pan answered. “He’s afraid of running into the dark enforcer, even though that demon never comes to the Wastes.”

  Oh boy, if only Pan knew.

  “I can’t abandon these males, Pan. They are honourable and once they wake, they will be able to help defend us,” Elizabeth promised.

  Elizabeth would ensure it. She rose fully and walked over to her pile of clothes and boots left by the dumped bag to start dressing.

  Her mates couldn’t sleep much longer. It was time to go.

  “I don’t need help to protect you,” Pan said. “You shouldn’t stay here, alone with these males. They are unconscious and unable to defend you from Markus. He will steal you.”

  Pan looked around again, obviously searching. “Markus hurts his captives.”

  He what? Pan sounded like she was speaking from painful experience.