Hell Kissed: A Rejected Mates Romance (The Rejected Realms Series Book 1)

by A. K. Koonce

  I hate to admit I’m at a disadvantage, but I’m not likely to come out of this without injury… or… you know… alive.

  This was not how I pictured my death.

  I mean… it’s not like I had it planned out, but I hoped it’d be less humiliating than being stripped naked and accidentally making a sexy, hot Viking come on himself before being tortured by skeletal giants in a holy temple.

  Yeah… not exactly how I would have planned my final moments, but it is what it fucking is, I guess.

  “Please. Just let us go. We were only passing through.” The plea falls flat, and I see the moment my time is up.

  Lunging forward, the giant man grabs hold of my arm again and yanks me forward, making me stumble and try to catch my balance before he’s dragging me across the icy floor. With another jarring grip, I’m dangling from one arm as he boldly removes me from the cell I should be all too happy to escape.

  “Get your fucking hands off of her,” Torben warns, suddenly much more possessive of me than he was a moment ago when it seemed he couldn’t wait to get away from me. He should be happy. This ‘princess’ is no longer his responsibility.

  The men ignore him completely, and the hellfire spitting from his eyes tells me he’s not used to being dismissed.

  These assholes have done more than strip him bare. Whatever holy water they injured him with has disabled his magic… or at least temporarily suspended it. They made this godlike being vulnerable, clearly uncovering a weakness even he didn’t realize he had.

  His growl bounces off the old stonework and the cage rattles when he throws his substantial strength into the glacial bars. The room shakes from his force.

  But it’s no use. Without his magic he’s no better than a caged lion.

  And I’m on my own.

  I don’t let him see the fear in my eyes. Or at least… I try not to let him see it.

  But the way he gazes back at me, with fury and passion and so much fucking anger, tells me he’s more observant than I gave him credit for. He’s possessive and protective. I see it clearly now. Somehow Torben seems to be able to look into my soul with a single-minded intensity that makes me squirm.

  I think I’ve lived my entire life without ever truly being seen. But Torben? He sees me. Every piece. Even the ones I’d rather hide.

  What he does with those pieces, however, is still a mystery. We’re little more than strangers, barely acquaintances. And if the ice giants didn’t make him look like a saint in comparison, I’m pretty sure he’s my enemy more than he’s my savior.

  But beggars can’t be choosers, and all that shit. Torben is the safest bet I have to get out of here.

  Not that his presence is currently doing me any good.

  Fear ripples off me in suffocating waves, and I only get one more glance at the predatory man roaring in his cage as I’m hauled out of the room.

  My wrist aches, my body feels bruised and battered as I trip and fall on the rough stone steps that lead out of the dank basement. I’m dragged up and up until I’m shoved before the leader of the giants.

  He stands mysteriously tall on a platform, just steps above me. His hand shadows across my face as he holds it over my head.

  “You will be tried and found innocent, or you will be tried and found guilty. May your life be cleansed and your soul be counted.” Each word reverberates back to me as it bounces off the hard, shiny marble.

  And then I’m pushed to the edge of a large basin of water. A layer of ice lines the surface and I’m shoved closer and closer despite my thrashing arms and legs. I lash out at solid legs and only a single cracking of bone indicates I’ve hurt one of them at all.

  My reflection peers up at me from the icy well of water. Blonde hair lines my face in stringy dirty locks. Blood mars my features, looking more like ink against my blue lips. I’m shoved harder. The basin of water is larger than it appeared. It could serve as a tiny swimming pool for humans or a foot bath for the giant beings. With one hard kick, I’m thrown forward, forced over the edge.

  A scream threatens to rip from my lungs, but I barely draw a breath before being shoved under the frigid water.

  Ice cracks around me, slicing up my exposed flesh at all angles. A large hand covers my head and forces me down, unwilling to let me surface. The water stings at my skin as I descend lower. The last picture rolling through my mind is my own broken image, lost and battered looking.

  How has my life come to this?

  Somewhere I made a wrong turn, because this can’t be the end I was destined for this whole time.

  It just can’t be.

  I won’t fucking let it.

  My legs kick hard. I near the surface, but long skeletal fingers push to keep me under. Burning sensations explode in my lungs, and I flail helplessly while my wolf snarls and snaps, her fury barely heard above the sound of swishing water in my ears.

  Pain strikes through me, my throat begging for a breath. My numb fingers fumble against many hands, but I can’t surface.

  I can’t make it.

  I am completely and utterly fucked… and not in the panty soaking, toe curling, blissed out, screaming kind of way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ash in the Frosting

  Rhys

  Spots break out across my vision as the lack of air sends my head into a spiral. I barely have time to think, let alone come up with a plan to get myself out of this situation before my lungs use up the last of their reserves. Nails dig into the bony fingers encapsulating my head, but they don’t make a dent in the frozen assholes holding me down.

  For one glorious second, my mouth breaks the surface, and I drag in the gulp of air my lungs are starving for, but then I’m thrust back under the water.

  What. The. Ever loving. Fuck!

  I can’t think. Can’t breathe. Can’t so much as scream for help or mercy or curse the shit out of the murderous bastards trying to ‘cleanse’ me.

  My head aches as my wolf growls the most menacing sound into my mind, but her strength wanes, her power feeling as numb as my lips.

  I can’t reach her.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

  Between the oxygen deprivation and the flood of magic that fills the water, my head spins dizzily.

  The holy water bubbles against my skin, sending tiny tingles skating along my limbs. For every minute that passes, the magic increases until it’s burning me like I’ve been tossed into a hot vat of boiling water.

  I grit my teeth, needing to scream against the pain that’s slashing like a million tiny knives slicing over my flesh. It traces its way up my legs, across my thighs, cutting over my stomach before my arms are being tortured by the same sharp torment.

  Images of my life race past me, and I wonder if this is it. I’m dying. This is the movie everyone always talks about when they say ‘my life flashed before my eyes.’

  And what I see is almost more depressing than the fact that I’m enduring a slow, agonizing death as I drown.

  Alone.

  Just the way I lived.

  I see Mary and Bea. I see the pack and Alpha Morganson. But mostly I see Kyvain and his friends, taking little pieces of my soul every day of my life. Their torture was slow. Each act, each bullying word carving away at me until I was left half a person. Until I was forced to listen to my wolf and harden myself against the world. Until I was so broken by their actions that I’d come to expect their daily harassment as routine.

  All I ever wanted was to belong in the world.

  A pack.

  Friends.

  A family. That word haunts me. It’s everything I want and yet nothing I have.

  Maybe that’s why I followed Latham and Aric and even Torben up this gods forsaken mountain with nothing more than a whisper and a prayer. Against my better judgment, I wanted to trust them when they said they’d take me to the mother I spent a lifetime wondering about.

  Every year that passed lessened the hope in my chest that some day my parents would come back for me. That the
y cared. But with one word about my mother, the embers reignited and burned steadily… just like the candle on my tenth birthday that I refused to blow out until my mother came for me. I didn’t even know if she was alive—or if she wanted me if she was—but I’d created a whole story for her in my head. The delusions we tell ourselves as children can sometimes be cruel, even when they’re well intentioned. I can still see that flame flickering away as I waited, watching that candle burn to nothing but ash in the frosting.

  Pale blonde hair floats around my face as my skin draws tighter and my lungs beg for a breath. My hands lower as my feet slowly stop kicking.

  I drift for a tiny moment, finally finding a place where those nightmarish hands can’t touch me.

  I can’t hold out much longer.

  No. Fuck this. I’m not going out this way, and if I do, my tombstone will tell the world I went down the fighter my wolf always told me to be!

  I thrash and kick and claw and swim.

  My chest expands until I’m positive I’m going to explode into a million shards. Or have a heart attack first.

  Fury ignites inside me, and I push myself harder.

  The pulse thrumming through my veins slows as I grow warmer and warmer.

  Overwhelming magic pours from me as I beg the Fates, the gods, the stars, anyone who will listen, for help.

  I’ve been told about myths and gods my entire life.

  One of them, any fucking one of them would be helpful in a time like this.

  Echoing screeches hiss through the main hall of the temple. They’re muted at first, growing louder the closer I draw to the surface after the many hands clawing through the water slowly disappear one by one. Energy as pure as lightning bolts through me and whips out with the force of a tornado when I emerge from the water.

  My wolf nearly breaks through my skin in her eagerness to shift and defend.

  It’s all I can do to keep her back. With weakened arms, I pull myself from the pool and collapse onto the smooth marble.

  I’m still just trying to get my lungs to stop hurting so badly, but all around me ice giants drop to the ground as all the life is sucked from their tall, skeletal bodies. Their faces bunch in horrifying screams and their gleaming bones lose their luster. Ice melts across the ground, dripping from their dying forms. Everything they’ve created out of snow and ice starts to disappear, running in rivers across the slick floor.

  “Rhys!” Torben comes roaring up the stairs, finally freed in the chaos. “Princess!” His sharp bark is punctuated by a growl, his fist flying into one of the storming giants who tries to stop him from reaching me.

  The giant cracks beneath Torben’s strength, and he falls hard with a thunderous sound, but another rises in its place. The two of them are so close to me, but I can’t feel any sensation in my legs or hands.

  I physically tremble to help him. It only gets worse when an enormous skeletal hand lashes out, bones slicing across the patch of hair I’d just admired not long ago. Rage burns inside of me as crimson colors drip down Torben’s golden chest. My magic strikes out in an instant. It doesn’t make sense, but the giant screams that same dying sound, like a rabbit caught by an owl in the dead of night. It pierces me with the sharp reality that somehow I’m the one doing that to him.

  Fear tangles with my rabid rage, and it booms out of my chest in waves of power.

  One by one, they fall to my magic.

  Silence cuts in.

  Torben falls to his knees next to me. His warm palm pushes along my spine, but I can barely feel his touch as he helps me to sit up.

  “Are you okay?” His jade colored gaze travels over me with dark intensity, trying to assure himself that I’m still in one piece.

  “Yeah,” I manage to croak past the rawness in my throat and the dull ache still left in my chest.

  “Let’s get you out of here.” He helps me stand, but I’m slower than he is as we make our way to the entrance.

  My feet give out on the last step of the podium. I hate how weak I feel. I can’t feel much of anything at all from the cold, but I feel that pathetic feeling rising up in my chest.

  “You’re okay,” he murmurs against my neck on a hot breath.

  And I feel it.

  I feel his words whispered across my skin in tingling waves.

  Large arms band around me, one under my knees and the other a strong bar behind my back. Holding me against his chest, he makes it to the door in giant steps that would have taken me triple the energy to keep up with.

  His heat washes into me, blanketing me in his hellish magic. It hurts but it’s also bliss that sinks down and warms me to my core.

  I’ve never been so happy to see the sky in my life as we burst through the iridescent veil of the temple. Wind lashes out at me, pulling at the very breath in my lungs. He bends at the waist and holds something up. It looks like a battered piece of trash, but upon closer look…

  “Loki!” I snatch the small cat from him and try my best to warm the icicles clinging to his fur. He blinks in a daze at me and lowers his little head onto my stomach.

  I’ll murder those big ass fuckers all over again for hurting him.

  My fingers push through soft fur as reassuring purrs rumble through the hellcat. I snuggle into Torben’s chest, absorbing his warmth and letting him be strong for me right now. The amount of magic or power or energy or whatever it was I expended in there wore me the fuck out, and between that and my lack of sleep, I’m practically a dead woman in his arms.

  “You scared the shit out of me back there,” Torben growls, the rumble vibrating against my cheek where it lies against his chest.

  “Sorry,” I murmur, truly needing sleep. The darkness hangs heavy over us, officially making this the longest day of my life. “I’ll try not to get murdered next time.”

  Torben huffs a small laugh that startles me so badly I stiffen in his arms and pull away far enough to look up into his face. Thick scruff lines his angular jawline, and his long hair lightly brushes against my bare arm with every step he takes. Mirth flares in his eyes, lighting the green from jade to something so much brighter for the briefest moment before they harden again.

  I know. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

  This golden god isn’t as soulless as he wants me to believe.

  There’s something in Torben that is damaged the same as I am, and that dark part of him calls to me like a siren’s song.

  Who hurt him the way society hurt me?

  I don’t know why, but I want to rip whoever it was to shreds. I would though. He doesn’t deserve this pain.

  It’s not hard to understand why he keeps mountainous walls in place around himself. He’s guarding himself, trying to keep other people out… or maybe he’s just trying to keep himself in.

  I know that feeling. The one that says you won’t get hurt if you don’t let anyone get close to you.

  For years it was easy to convince myself I was better off alone.

  It’s easier not to get hurt when you don’t care about anyone.

  It was how I survived being adopted by a pack who didn’t want me. But being alone makes for a dull and lifeless existence. Bea splashed color into my monochrome existence, yet now Latham, Aric, and even Torben are adding to the canvas and promising me a masterpiece on the other side.

  “It’s only going to get worse from here,” Torben says, his face pinched like only part of him is truly concerned for me. There’s a war playing out behind his eyes, and I wish I could decipher where the lines are drawn. Or what each side is fighting for.

  “I have nothing to go back to.”

  The truth hangs over us like a dark cloud, but he knows I’m right. All that waits for me back down this mountain is betrayal, a pack I never truly belonged to, and the position Kyvain all too generously offered me.

  “I refuse to be a whore.” The softest whisper leaves my lips, but Torben hears it. His arms tighten around me to almost crushing levels, but I don�
�t complain.

  I find comfort in it, interpreting it the way I need, whether Torben means to offer me protection and solace in his arms or not.

  I close my eyes as my head lolls against his massive shoulder and heat washes over me from the rapidly appearing man I know has just popped into existence.

  “Oh fuck!” Torben chokes out, and I realize I must look dead in Torben’s hold. “No…”

  “She’s breathing, you unobservant asshole,” Aric helpfully replies. “Just look at her tits. They’re moving.”

  A blush blooms in the arches of my cheeks as I realize Aric is ogling my nakedness. My gaze snaps open and levels on the smirking man with molten eyes.

  I’d say Aric’s a perv, but really, he’s just raw. I get the feeling he doesn’t get a lot of contact with other people in Hell. He doesn’t have a filter or awareness of someone who’s constantly performing for everyone around them.

  He’s entirely himself.

  And that’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in anyone I’ve ever met.

  Latham hurriedly magics me a large tee-shirt that I wiggle into as best as I can while being pressed against the giant who refuses to put me down.

  I hope he never does. I hope he carries me around like his lap goddess for the rest of his immortal days.

  “We were trying to get in, but…” Latham’s eyes darken.

  Aric’s glower is as dark as midnight. “The fuckers took you to the one place we couldn’t go.”

  “Technically there are entire realms you can’t go.” Torben’s smirk is thoroughly amused as he steals the weary eyed house cat from my arms and carefully hands it to Aric.

  Aric’s lips curl as he takes the thing like it might possibly explode in a fiery ball of fur if he’s not careful. Honestly, Loki might. If he was fully conscious that is…

  I swallow hard at that thought.

  “As much as I love this bromance, can we go?” I glance over Torben’s shoulder, worried those icy skeletons are going to stomp through the snow and actually succeed at killing us this time. “I’m not sure if I actually killed them or just temporarily took them out.”