by A. K. Koonce
“In Hell,” I answer all too gruffly.
Latham shoots me a look, but I won’t sugar coat it. What’s the point? And yeah… maybe I want her to put up a little fight. See if she’s as powerful as Hela makes her out to be.
She blinks slowly at that, and I see her chewing it around in her pretty little head.
Still isn’t running or screaming though…
Hmm.
“You know, the place of eternal suffering and such,” I add, and I swear Latham’s death glare just shot beams my way.
Why’s she so calm? Where is the screaming and running?
I listen intently, and her pulse is soaring faster than when she was in her wolf form.
So she is afraid.
She’s just very, very good at hiding it.
It’s then that she slips out of Latham’s arms and I note the way he drags her down his body before letting her feet touch the leafy ground. I arch a brow at him, but he just shakes his head at my suggestive smirk. He hovers near her, obviously prepared to catch her should she fall, faint, or just keel the fuck over.
Must be fucking exhausting being that nice.
Latham sparks a flame in his hand. It sizzles hotly against the chill in the air before black clothing and a pair of boots appear there.
He hands them to her, and she takes a step back, turning away as she changes quickly right in front of us. My gaze slides down the nice arch of her back toward the curve of her ass, and I have to look away as a rumble of sound I can’t control crawls up my throat.
I shove my hands deep in my pockets as I wait, but I’m clearly not cut out for this gentleman shit. Latham always makes it seem so easy. It’s fucking not. Because I look again. White frost kisses her pale hair in the shine of the moonlight as the snow continues to fall lightly around us. She’s beautiful in that pure, don’t-fuck-up-the-innocent kind of way.
Tonight played out like a fucking fairy tale. We saved the girl. Funny how story books make dragons and monsters like us out to be the ones you rescue the girl from, not the other way around.
She pulls her last boot on and turns to assess us more carefully.
“What do you guys want with me?” she finally asks. I realize how much farther she’s stepped away from us while she changed. Two yards now lie safely between her and us.
We’re just on the outskirts of her pack’s territory, between their land and the Ice Mountains. She could make it back to those tormenting assholes in about five minutes if she shifted.
“You don’t belong here,” Torben says in a deep, rumbling tone. She peers up at the half giant. He’s intimidating. Nearly seven feet tall of solid, impatient strength.
Only person that has the balls to test the demigod is Latham. Which is odd to me since I’ve never seen the shapeshifter throw a punch in his entire life.
“I know that. Thanks.” Her bright blue eyes narrow on Torben, and I’m not going to say it, but maybe we should leave the small talk to Latham. He’s good at that shit, making women feel all warm and fuzzy and shit.
Let him do the hard part.
“You don’t fit in with your pack because you belong in Hell,” Latham explains, his honey accent is all calm waves of relaxation and circle jerks.
Yeah. Girls like that shit.
She closes her eyes and a long, tired sigh slips from her lips.
Hmm. She’s not loving it the way women usually do when Latham talks.
“Try again,” I whisper to my friend.
He glances my way with a mixture of bewilderment and annoyance crinkling the corner of his eyes.
I wave a hand between him and her like it’s obvious, but now they’re both sighing at me.
Whatever that passive hostility means.
“You mentioned my mother,” she whispers, and the deepest, saddest blue eyes look to Latham like she could drown him in the depths of her oceanic gaze.
He nods.
She lowers her head, and I can see her thinking this through. Her pack doesn’t want her. Hell, after tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re ordered to kill her, much less shun her. The little fucker who threatened her flashes before my eyes, and I make a mental note to run one last errand before we head for the Ice Mountains.
She has nothing here. And we can take her to her mother. Her homeland.
Her place in life…
We’ve more than proved that we have the magic to make those things happen for her.
She’s really taking her sweet-ass time thinking this over though.
My fingers drum against my thigh as I wait.
And wait.
Fuck. Who has this kind of patience?
Rhys eyes her pack’s territory, and then us, and then back again like she’s truly weighing her limited options. Finally, a defeated sigh breaks past her lips.
“Okay,” she says with a slow nod that I think is meant to reassure herself rather than us.
“Okay!” I clap my hands with a wide smile that just seems to set her even more on edge. “Okay,” I try again with less enthusiasm and a smaller smile of encouragement.
She still looks at me like she isn’t sure if I’ll help her or kill her.
“Okay,” I say one more time so quietly the effort drifts off into total nothingness, and at this point, I need to just let it the fuck go.
“I want to go home first.”
Torben shakes his head. “Can’t go back to the village. We have to keep moving.”
“I’m leaving my adoptive mom, my best friend, and my entire life behind on a half-ass chance that you guys can actually take me to my mother. I’m not leaving my cat to die in my bedroom because Mary can’t be bothered to feed the poor thing. It’s just not right.”
“Your adoptive mom’s a cunt, your best friend mated with your prick of an enemy, and your cat will be fucking fine,” I tell her, but the flinch of her gaze and the hard pull of her brow tells me those words may have sounded a bit harsher out loud than I intended.
“He’ll be fine,” I try once more in a softer yet still growling tone.
Her glare is still a look of hellfire. It’s a death threat she gives to me, Torben, and even Latham.
So… I guess we’ll be making a pit stop for a fucking house cat.
Chapter Seven
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Rhys
The tall man stays in the woods as Aric wraps me up in his arms without provocation.
Between one breath and the next, shadows crawl over Aric’s tattooed skin, extending to creep over onto my own. A feeling as deep and dark as despair seeps into me. It spreads through my chest with a ferocity that makes me cling with bruising force to the asshole who pulled me against him without so much as a warning.
My anger sits heavily on my tongue, but I can barely squeak past Latham’s heavy stare. His gaze traces the way Aric’s arms band around my body before he goes up in another poof of fire, disappearing in a way I’m growing used to.
What the hell am I doing with these three?
“Buckle up, buttercup.” Aric’s dark tone sucks all the humor out of his words. He should really stick to being scary, humor isn’t a good look on him. Or perhaps he’s more terrifying when he’s trying to lighten the mood.
I don’t get another second to contemplate as the same dizzying, shadowy void descends. It presses in on me with a pressure that might kill me if I take a single breath. It eats us up. Then it spits us back out in some other place.
Aric releases me long before I’m ready, and I nearly fall to the chilled ground as my lungs heave. The air around me fills with that smoky steam you get when you exhale warm breath into winter air.
Latham’s hand strokes soothingly over my back until I’m ready, and then he guides me through the shroud of woods covering us. It takes a minute for my brain to catch up with the speed things are coming at me, but I realize we’re still blocks away from my cottage.
“It was safer not to take you directly to your front door in case they’re waiting for you,” Latham ex
plains, and I nod, like this is all completely normal.
Not one thing about this day has been fucking normal though.
I know if my pack catches me, I’m as good as dead. And if by some miracle they let me survive, my fate as the pack whore is sealed.
I’m out of options, except to play out the offer from these hellish men.
Aric and Latham jump a tall wooden fence and I follow. We land on our feet, me with a bit more of a stumble than the two infernal men at my side. They peer around at the village, the park benches abandoned with only a layer of snow now decorating them in the quiet of the night.
“The snow’s getting heavier,” Latham whispers as we keep to the shadows, heading toward the row of cottages and tromping through their backyards.
“It shouldn’t be snowing,” I comment offhandedly, peering up at the flurries that are only growing thicker.
“End of Days,” Aric grumbles oddly, and my brows pull down as I stare up at the towering beast of a man next to me.
I collect their words, but really, I’m just buying time while we head back to the home I grew up in. I don’t know where I’ll end up at the end of this messy night, but I know I can’t trust them. It balances out to about as much as I can trust my own pack though, and that’s sad.
Asking for my cat was more of a test. If I’m a hostage to them, they would take me with or without my approval. But I’m not a hostage it seems, and they’re not violent.
Toward me anyway…
Do I believe them enough to find out if they can take me to my mother, someone who has been a mystery to me my entire life?
I guess we’ll see.
“No, it’s because of us. We’ve been in one place too long. We’re affecting their world.” Latham scans the night with a casual sweep of his gaze.
“You’re claiming responsibility for the snow?” It’s half a scoff, but then reality sets in. I’ve legit seen these guys disappear into thin air. Fuck, they just transported me in the same shroud of darkness. Deep down, part of me registers what they say as truth. I even thought as much myself.
They’re not from here. And if they’re not from here…
“Hell creatures shouldn’t be in the Realm of the Living. It throws everything off balance.” Latham catches my hand, and I stiffen hard before he points down in front of me and I realize I’m half an inch away from falling face first over a tricycle in the dark.
“Thanks,” I whisper and he slides his hand down my wrist as he releases me swiftly. His words linger in my mind as much as his smooth touch lingers on my skin. It’s not hard to imagine these men as some kind of demons. I’ve grown up hearing the stories of the light and dark gods. Once upon a time, shifters used to think our magic was a gift from the gods themselves, but over time that belief faded until it became nothing more than fairy-tale fodder. Now, I’m questioning everything.
If wolf shifters exist—a hard and true fact in my life—what else does?
Somehow the words are forced from my mouth, my curiosity eating away at me. “Am I a Hell creature?”
“In a way.” Latham shrugs like he’s not changing my whole life with three small words. “All magic comes from one of the nine realms. Some, like Torben, are a mixture of magic. Just like you.” Latham kicks a soccer ball out of my way just before my foot nearly rolls off of it.
He keeps his watchful eyes searching the perimeter, but he seems unnaturally aware of everything and everyone.
“Nine realms?” I ask as we turn down my street.
“Fucking grocery list of locations: Asgard, Midgard, which is the Realm of the Living, places with giants, places with elves, places with dwarves, places with just fucking beasts on fire,” Aric rumbles off some examples.
“The emptiness where you come from,” Latham scoffs with a sexy smirk that reveals a dimple just above the corner of his lip.
“Fuck you! Don’t mock my home. I will strip your flesh down to bones and feast on the sloppy leftovers.” Aric shoves his hands into his pockets as he mumbles something about dragon magic.
“You’re a dragon shifter?” I look at the tattooed man at my side, trying to figure him out.
He peers at me with that magic burning in a ring around his pupils, then he nods. My attention slides down his muscular frame, the hard build of his posture and even the rough caress of every word he speaks. He truly seems like a dragon in a man’s body. He appears more beast than he is man.
“And you’re…” I glance at Latham.
“A fenrir. Son of Loki. My inner shifter is a hellhound. I try not to let him out too often.”
Something about the way he phrases it makes me prod further. “But you can shapeshift into other things… people even?”
He nods. “The magic of the gods,” he tells me.
The oddity of Mrs. Linskey’s behavior tonight circles my mind. She’s most likely curled up in her favorite afghan at home watching reruns of The Price Is Right. She was never in that clearing, and that chills me to the bone more than the snow ever could.
Latham is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He might be the most dangerous one of all.
“And the other man, Torben. Can he shift?” The desire to know them and figure out what I’m up against keeps the questions flowing off my tongue.
Latham smirks.
“No,” he replies.
“Well. That’s not entirely true,” Aric says with a sharp smile slicing up his lips. “He quite frequently shifts into a total jackass.”
Latham closes his eyes hard as a wide smile overtakes his handsome face. But then he stops in his tracks, then nods to the small cottage with the blue shutters.
“That’s your place,” Latham whispers.
My chin lifts and just seeing my house grounds me. The loneliness and the hurt of the last fourteen years slams into me all at once.
Why am I coming back to all of that?
And if I could, would I truly want to stay?
Chapter Eight
Here, Kitty Kitty
Latham
The lights are off in the small cottage. I don’t sense a soul, but I hold Rhys back, keeping her hidden in the shadows. Just to make sure.
We didn’t come all this way to fuck up over a house cat.
Not that apprehending the girl Hela sent us to collect has gone all that smoothly.
Never once have I run into a person quite like Rhys.
Usually mere mortals cower from the sight of us. Or piss themselves after witnessing our infernal powers.
It’s like their puny little brains can’t handle the truth of the world and their insignificant place in it.
But this girl? She’s a fucking anomaly.
Or maybe she just has no common sense for fear.
A more likely possibility.
Still, the small voice in the back of my mind is reminding me that despite the way Rhys has grown up, she’s no mere mortal, or even a regular shifter for that matter. She just doesn’t realize it yet.
Rhys is silent at my side, eyes trained on the dark windows of the cottage. Her light blonde hair is nearly as pale as the moonlight, and the deepening night makes her ocean blue eyes appear more like sapphires. And her face… it’s far too delicate. A blush covers the perfect arches of her cheekbones which frame the pink bow of her lips. Compared to Aric, Torben, and myself, she’s tiny. The top of her head falls at Aric’s shoulder. I’m only slightly shorter than the dragon, and standing this close to Rhys, I have to peer down to take her in.
Nothing about this girl deserves what we’re going to do to her.
The weight of the invisible shackles on my wrists burn with the heat of my sworn allegiance.
Rhys gazes up at me. Her attention is like hellfire across my skin, making me all too aware of her captivating eyes. It’s her strange magic… I think. I quickly turn away while grinding my teeth. My jaw jumps as I nod toward the house.
“I think it’s safe to go inside,” I say, ready to get her cat and get the fuck out of
here. Besides the fact that I don’t like the danger we’re putting Rhys in, if we don’t get going soon, we’ll be facing a much greater danger.
The one where I change my mind and report back to my sister that we never found the girl. Because this girl—she’s too innocent for the Realm of Hell.
I can tell she doesn’t belong, and I’ve barely known her for a few hours.
Aric looks over at me with a hard glare that says he knows what I’m thinking. Unlike me, he’s not ready to risk my sister’s wrath. Without hesitation, his hand wraps around Rhys’s bicep and he tugs her roughly forward. She has to stumble to keep up with his long strides, and I smirk to see the little thing seethe.
“You don’t have to manhandle me to go inside. I’m pretty sure I was the one who demanded we come back for my cat.” Without a care for the bruise that will be left on her flesh, she wrenches herself out of his grip with more strength than I gave her petite little frame credit for.
I can’t help the smirk that lifts my lips.
Striding forward with the confidence of a goddess, she bends, giving us a perfect view of her pretty little ass. I’m still staring at the rounded curves when Aric marches forward with the intent of kicking in the door.
“No!” Rhys screeches, straightens, and rushes Aric with another tiny sword in her hand that she procured from a plastic rock sitting on the front stoop.
Humans are weird. Get bigger swords and better hiding places, for the love of the gods.
Sick amusement crosses Aric’s face as he stares down at the brandished ‘key’ Rhys told me about earlier.
Not like any key I remember.
“It’s going to take a lot more than this toothpick to kill me, kitten.” Aric flicks the metal with his index finger.
“For fuck’s sake!” Rhys grumbles and shoves the man out of her way. “I’m not trying to kill you, I’m trying to unlock the fucking door. What is it with you guys and modern-day locking systems?”
Stabbing the tiny sword into the handle of the door, like wounding it will make it open before us, Rhys shoves her shoulder into the door and it does in fact creak open on hinges that could use some oil.