by Tessa Cole
“Fucking hell,” Sebastian said, his voice cutting through the darkness. “Don’t kill her.”
Titus stiffened, and his attention jerked to Sebastian standing in the doorway. He wore a pair of dark blue pajama pants that hung low on his hips and nothing else, giving me a spectacular view of his sculpted arms and torso and the swirl of black glyphs tattooed on his pale skin. Behind him stood Cassius with his angel glow blazing, his smoke curling around him, and fully dressed in a black T-shirt and fatigues as if he’d slept in his clean clothes.
“Get off her,” Cassius commanded.
“Seireadan?” Titus’s grip relaxed a bit, but he didn’t let go or get off me. “Is she yours?”
“No,” Sebastian said.
“But she smells like you.”
“Because she borrowed my clothes.” Sebastian took a slow step closer to the bed. “You bled all over hers.”
“I said, get off.” Cassius’s smoke thickened.
Titus bared his canines and growled low in his throat. “No, not until I know I’m free.”
“You honestly think I’d enslave you?” Sebastian asked, taking another step closer.
“Deaglan did,” Titus growled.
“I said. Off.” Cassius shoved Sebastian out of the way, snapped a fire whip around Titus’s throat, and yanked him off the bed with a vicious jerk.
Titus hit the floor with a heavy thump, the comforter tangling around his legs and tugging me half off the bed toward him. He grabbed the whip with his hands as if it wasn’t made of flames, tore it apart, and lunged at Cassius, who snapped up another whip. But Titus tackled him, using his massive body to slam Cassius against the marble floor, throwing off Cassius’s strike.
“Jeez, stop,” Sebastian said, jerking out of the way of the two men and activating a glyph on his left forearm that curled from his wrist past his elbow, snaking in between other glyphs. “Deaglan betrayed me too.”
Cassius shot a blinding spark into Titus’s face. The big man flinched and Cassius managed to shove him off him with the help of a fire blast into Titus’s chest. The bandage-made-of-sheet around his gut burst into flames and turned to ash, and my pulse stuttered. Cassius was going to ruin all the hard work I’d done last night, and there was no need for them to be fighting. Titus just needed to know he was safe.
More flames roared around Cassius’s hand and I scrambled from the bed, agony blazing through my chest.
Titus’s fingertips extended into thick claws with razor-sharp tips unlike any claws I’d ever seen on a shifter. He jerked his hand back to slash at Cassius, and I grabbed Titus’s wrist.
“You’re free,” I said, praying my words would be enough to stop him since there was no way I was strong enough to hold him back.
He jerked to me, snarling, and I pressed my palms around the ragged scar on his wrist. “I promise. No one here will hurt you.”
My throat tightened. Those were the words Cassius had said to me when he’d rescued me. He won’t hurt you ever again. You’re free. Behind him, the burning tent and cart had lit up the twilight sky, brighter than the blazing sunset, a fiery announcement that Cassius’s justice had been served.
And now I was trapped again.
Titus’s eyes narrowed and he growled low in his throat, making Cassius tense and flick his wrist, reforming his whip.
“No,” I said to Cassius then locked gazes with Titus. “You’re free. I swear.” And I know how afraid you are to hope, and of the thousands of times you’ve dreamt of this moment. You’ll be completely free just as soon as Sebastian breaks the leash spell. But I couldn’t mention that, not until he’d calmed down, because with his current fury, I doubted he realized being bound to me had been an accident.
“You are, Titus,” Sebastian said, also not mentioning the still-active leash spell, his hand still on his glowing glyph. “Deaglan betrayed me too.”
“Try to take me back and I’ll kill you,” Titus snarled, his voice low and dangerous, his gaze locked with mine.
“That would mean I’d have to go back.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sebastian drop his hand from his arm and release the power in the glyph, its light going out. “Not happening.”
With a growl, Titus jerked his wrist out of my grasp and sat back, conceding the fight, but the tension didn’t leave his body. He remained a predator, ready to pounce the moment he sensed danger… or weakness.
“If I’d known Deaglan had you, I would have come for you.” Sebastian crouched beside me, his bare shoulder brushing mine, sending an inappropriate shiver of attraction through me. “If I’d known you’d ended your hibernation…”
“I’m not sure I would have trusted you,” Titus said, his body language saying he still didn’t trust him.
I inched away from Sebastian, but Cassius sat up on my other side and I couldn’t put as much distance between me and Sebastian as I wanted. Cassius’s gaze jumped to my neck and the muscles in his jaw flexed at what he saw.
Thankfully he didn’t say anything — although it was clear he wanted to — and I fought to keep my shallow breaths even for fear Cassius would notice that I was in pain, too. That would only make it harder for me to look in control… which I wasn’t. I was trapped—
Focus on Titus. Not the spell.
“You were seriously injured. Do you remember what happened?” I asked. Maybe a change of topic would help him relax. Especially since it was clear that right now there was no way he was going to let me put my hands on him to finish healing him.
I swept my gaze over him. Thankfully he didn’t have a single burn from Cassius’s fire, not even on his hands, which meant the plan for a little healing top up and a quick shift was still possible… if I could convince him it was safe.
“No.” Titus snagged the comforter beside Sebastian and covered himself with a surprising amount of modesty for a shifter. “Deaglan’s leash spell weakened and I broke it. Then I ran. I thought I’d found a portal out of Faerie, but if you found me…” He glanced at Sebastian.
“No, you’re out,” Sebastian reassured him, his voice quiet and calm as if he, too, saw that Titus could snap again at any second. “We’re in the mortal realm.”
“You left Faerie?” Titus asked, surprised. “With Enowen?”
“No.” Sebastian’s expression grew grim. “And it’s a long story, which—”
“Which you can talk about later. We need to deal with what’s going on right now,” Cassius said, smoke curling from his hands. “You said Deaglan is the leash spell guy and he’s the one in charge of the men who attacked us? What do we know about them?”
Sebastian opened his mouth to say something, but Cassius cut him off.
“And I don’t want an argument.” The light in Cassius’s eyes flared. “The JP is helping you deal with them. The sooner those guys are off the streets, the sooner your friend is safe.”
I glanced at Sebastian, afraid of his response. Last night he’d said he’d work with Cassius, and now Cassius had actually offered assistance instead of taking over — which was a huge concession for Cassius — but there was still a chance Sebastian would go back on his word… or mention our deal.
“I was going to say before we all deal with Deaglan, we need to address the most immediate problems. Breaking the leash spell between Titus and Amiah and getting proper protection spells on Titus.”
“What?” Every muscle in Titus’s big body tensed and the pulse in his neck picked up again. “You said I was free. I broke that spell.”
“Technically you only disconnected it and when Amiah here—” Sebastian jerked his chin at me and Titus’s gaze returned to mine, making my heart stutter at the intensity in his eyes along with the fear that I was magically bound to him. “When Amiah saved your ass with her healing magic, it latched onto her.”
“So you lied,” Titus said, his voice low. “I’m not free.”
The panic I really needed to ignore surged, making my breath pick up. “Neither am I.”
And I needed to
be free. I had to be free. Now. Please now. Never again.
Something dark and sad flashed across his expression, as if he could see the fear threatening to overwhelm me.
“You’ve both got the prisoner end of the spell, so it’s sucky for both of you.” Sebastian stood and headed to his office across the hall. “Let me get my resonance charm and fix that.”
Titus’s glare softened a bit, but he didn’t look away and I couldn’t tell if it was because he thought I was a fellow predator or prey… probably prey.
That, at least, was Cassius’s assumption since he tugged on my elbow, urging me to put some distance between me and Titus. “Why don’t you get off the floor?”
“How about I finish healing you first?” I said to Titus. “Why don’t you shift then shift back and we’ll see what’s left.”
“No.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“I’m not comfortable with you dealing with those men while you’re injured.”
“I don’t care what makes you comfortable,” Titus said, which made Cassius tense and more smoke curl from his hands.
“Titus, please. It’ll only take a few minutes.” And it’ll distract me from our situation.
“What will?” Sebastian asked as he strode back into the bedroom carrying a small wooden box.
“Titus’s healing. If he just shifts and shifts back, I’m sure there won’t be much left.” Why were people, particularly the men around me, so difficult? It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what I was doing.
“Yeah, no.” Sebastian nudged Cassius with his foot. “You should move.”
Cassius glared at him. “I’m not moving.”
“You don’t want to be too close to this and I really don’t want to argue with Amiah about you being hurt. Especially when it’ll be your own damned fault,” Sebastian said as he cocked an eyebrow. “Do you?”
Cassius’s fire flared, dancing over his forearms before sinking back under his skin, but he moved a few feet back.
“Don’t change the topic,” I said as Sebastian took Cassius’s spot, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside me. “What do you mean, no? It’s Titus’s decision.”
“And Titus is just as capable of doing the math as I am. He shifts into a thirty-foot dragon. He’d barely fit in this room and he’d break all the furniture.” Sebastian opened the box and pulled out a thin coin with a complicated glyph etched on its surface. “I like my furniture.”
He said it so nonchalantly his words almost didn’t register in my brain.
“You’re a dragon?” I asked.
Titus couldn’t possibly be a dragon. Dragons were one of a few types of shifters natural only to the fae realm and they’d been rare to begin with. And while I hadn’t spent any time researching dragons, all reports I’d heard said they were extinct.
“I didn’t think there were any dragons left,” I said. Which was the stupidest, most insensitive thing I could say if he really was a dragon.
Titus harrumphed, but I couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or not. I supposed I could see it, his unusual gold eyes unlike any shifter I’d ever seen, his wild intense energy similar to a wolf’s or a wild cat’s and yet more ferocious. If I really looked at him, there was a sense of barely contained power radiating around him, as if his human form was too small to hold in all his energy.
“The last dragon died half a millennium ago,” Cassius said.
“No, the last dragon went into hibernation half a millennium ago,” Sebastian corrected.
“The last dragon was leashed half a millennium ago.” The rage and darkness I’d seen in Titus’s eyes when he thought he needed to take a hostage returned.
Sebastian’s expression turned somber. “Never again. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Titus said. “The Heart has awakened and the other courts will eventually learn I’m still alive. They’re going to come for me.”
“Which is why I need to separate you and Amiah.” Sebastian held out his hand with the coin resting in his palm. “Both of you take my hand, palm over mine.”
I set my hand on Sebastian’s, our fingers brushing as my palm settled over his, sending another unwanted shiver of attraction sliding through me. I wished he’d never teased me by asking for his payment with sex. Or that he’d put a shirt on before running into the room. Now I couldn’t keep my eyes of the mesmerizing swirls on his body, or the lines that disappeared past the waistband of his pants. All I could think about, when I managed to not think about being trapped, was having sex, as if that one teasing suggestion had shattered over a hundred years of restraint.
But it hadn’t just been the suggestion that he wanted sex, it was the other times he’d propositioned me on top of learning that my hopes and dreams and the whole reason I’d been waiting had been a lie.
Titus laid his massive hand on top of mine, fully encompassing it and making my wrist look small and fragile in comparison to his. I was captured between his warm rough hand, and Sebastian’s cool smooth one, a strange mix of hot and cold. Another shiver taunted me at the thought of being embraced between them. Essie had more than one mate. Why couldn’t I have more than one lover?
Which — oh my goodness! — wasn’t something I should be thinking about. Especially about Sebastian, who didn’t really want me, and Titus, who was a complete stranger.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “It’s just a little magic,” he said, thankfully thinking my shiver was because I was afraid. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
“It didn’t sound like just a little magic last night or just now when you told me to move,” Cassius said. “Which is it?”
“Maybe I just wanted Amiah to stay the night.” Sebastian flashed me a wicked grin, and I bit down on the desire swelling inside me. “Maybe I just wanted to get close to her.”
All a game. Just a game. He isn’t interested.
“So she is yours?” Titus growled.
“I’m not anyone’s,” I said before Sebastian could continue teasing me or reject me again — and I wasn’t sure which response would upset me more. “Can we get on with this? I have things to attend to at Operations.”
“Please,” Cassius added. “The sooner Amiah is safe, the sooner we can go after those men.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “One of these days I’m going to find an angel with a sense of humor.”
“We have a sense of humor,” Cassius said. “You’re just not funny.”
Sebastian snorted. “You keep thinking that.”
Before Cassius could respond, Sebastian closed his eyes, and set his other hand on top of Titus’s.
Icy blue-white light rippled over the back of his hand and cold nipped just under my skin. He didn’t activate any of the magical glyphs tattooed on his body which meant what he was doing was pure, fae sorcery, channeling raw magic from his core realm, Faerie, and weaving it into his spell by only the force of his willpower. Which was a lot more dangerous than using his essence to power the spell — in glyph form — already on his body. Too much magic too quickly and he could burn up. And given that Titus and I were connected to the spell, he could burn us up as well. I suspected the charm helped mitigate some of the dangers by focusing his power, but I had no idea by how much.
Cassius shifted and sparks danced over his forearms. He’d noticed that Sebastian wasn’t using a glyph either, but he sucked in a quick breath and managed to quench his flames before something in the bedroom caught on fire. His angel glow, however, continued to blaze bright, revealing his worry.
The cold nipping under my skin turned to sharp, painful bites and crawled up my forearm to my elbow.
Across from me, Titus tensed, his hand on top of mine trembling and his gaze focused solely on me. The rage and fear had returned to his eyes, and for a second, a blink of an eye, it felt as if I was his lifeline, the only thing holding him in place. As much as he was participating in Sebastian’s attempt to break the leash spell, he still did
n’t trust the fae. I didn’t know if he trusted anyone.
I tried to reassure him with my eyes that it was going to be okay — afraid that if I said anything I’d break Sebastian’s concentration. Sebastian was many things, but I’d yet to see him be malicious. Of course, I had very little experience with him. We’d only really met a few weeks ago, and before then, I’d only heard comments from the main team about buying hard-to-find magical items from him and his questionable morals.
The tendons in Sebastian’s neck flexed and he rolled his shoulders, the soft glow emanating from his skin rolling down his body in a gentle wave. But instead of looking more relaxed, he looked worse, the light dimming, giving his complexion a grayish hue before flaring back to life.
“There you are,” Sebastian whispered, and his cold magic swept into my chest and contracted around my heart.
I gasped, the sudden breath slicing pain through me, and fought the following whimper, afraid that if it looked like Sebastian was hurting me, Cassius would interfere. And I couldn’t let Cassius interfere. I had to be free.
The cold burned, no longer just stinging bites, but a full-body burning, bringing with it a pressure that made every breath with my cracked ribs agonizing. The darkness of unconsciousness swelled at the edge of my vision, and I fought to hold on until Sebastian was done. Surely it wouldn’t be much more. Surely I was strong enough to hold out—
No. I was strong enough. I wasn’t weak. I’d never be weak again.
I ground my teeth. Across from me, Titus’s whole body was also tense, his breath quick gasps. He growled low in his throat, and his pupils slitted as his dragon strained to rise to the surface.
“Seireadan,” he hissed, his voice thick with warning.
“Just… a little… more,” Sebastian gasped. “There.”
The pressure snapped into a pull, ripping at my insides with a pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, tearing a scream from my clenched jaw. The darkness in my vision swelled and tears streamed down my cheeks. Far off in the distance, Titus roared, the sound filled with agony, and someone else cried out.
