“It regards Suki.”
His entire body locked up as his heart lodged in his throat, his maps forgotten as he pushed away from the table and rounded the end of it to take a step towards her. “Is something wrong with her?”
Gods, the thought that it might be had him aching to teleport, a need to see her rushing through him that was so powerful he found it hard to remain where he was and await her response.
“No,” the blonde-to-blue-haired female said, a regal edge to her voice that only enhanced the sharpness of it. “She is in good health. Due to you, I imagine.”
The female looked around, curling a lip at the dusty tomes that filled the bookcases lining the black stone walls, accounts from his ancestors that covered thousands of years. Her brown-to-blue eyes fixed on the table to his left, or more specifically, the oil lamp that was being used to weigh down and help illuminate his charts. A look of disgust filled them.
This was how he had feared Suki would react to his world, but she had taken it in her stride, hadn’t seemed at all fazed or horrified to find it was only as advanced as the human world had been hundreds of years ago.
“Suki seemed rather pleased with herself after you left.” The cutting edge to her sharp tone told Tegan what he could already sense in her. Suki had been happy, but this female felt quite the opposite for some reason. “She regaled her sisters with tales of you and accepted their congratulations.”
He frowned now. “Congratulations?”
“Yes.” She nodded serenely, an edge to her smile that he didn’t like, because from where he was standing, it looked as if he wasn’t going to like what she was going to say, and she was going to enjoy that far too much. “I sent Suki to you because the poor girl was lacking confidence and wasn’t contributing enough to the clan. She has been so desperate to prove herself worthy. I took pity on her. She wanted a challenge and I issued her one.”
Her eyes narrowed with her cold smile.
“You.”
Ice slithered down his spine. “Me?”
She nodded, so regal and calm she could be a queen. It hit him that this was the leader of Suki’s clan.
“I failed to seduce you once. You rejected me and that stung.” She practically hissed those words, her veil of calm failing for a heartbeat before her vicious smile returned. If she wanted him to be sorry that he hadn’t fallen for her charms, he couldn’t be. He didn’t remember her at all. She glared at him and tipped her chin up. “So when Suki showed me how much she wanted to be a good clan member, accepted by her sisters and valued by the whole family, I pointed her in your direction. If she could seduce you, feeding the clan with your strength, she would finally believe in herself.”
That ice invaded his blood, turning it to sludge in his veins as he reeled, struggling to take in what she was telling him. He didn’t want to believe her, but Suki had told him herself that she loved her family and the way she had spoken at times had made him see that she desperately wanted to be accepted by them.
She had wanted it so badly that she had tricked him.
She had played him.
Rage surged, obliterating the ice as that feeling took hold and shook him.
“She used me?” He hated the sound of those words spoken in his voice, hated how his heart throbbed madly in his breast, pain spreading outwards from it with each beat, as if it pumped poison rather than blood through him now.
He couldn’t believe her. He didn’t know her. He knew Suki.
That line of reasoning faltered as his mind whispered that he did know Suki and that meant he knew how much she adored her sisters and family, and how devastated she was that they were cruel to her. She wanted them to accept her.
Had she really wanted it so badly that she had used him?
“I am surprised the young succubus succeeded so easily when you had been so resistant to my own charms.”
He frowned at the black flagstones and muttered, “Suki never charmed me.”
Her snide tone lashed at him. “Didn’t she?”
He didn’t want to be rattled but he couldn’t stop his mind from running back over their time together, picking out all the moments where he had felt so close to losing control, when her beguiling eyes had been bright and enchanting, goading him into letting go.
No.
It wasn’t her charms that had made him wild. It was the fact she was his mate.
His fated one.
“Suki has been struggling to fit in, poor dear. Now she has succeeded in seducing you, a demon king, she will be regarded as one of the strongest members of our family. I can feel the power of you flowing through my veins too, through the connection every member of the clan shares. Everyone will benefit from what Suki has done.”
That rage he had tried to restrain broke its tethers again and he growled as the pain grew deeper, so intense that he could barely breathe as it assaulted him, ripping at his strength. He fought to deny the hurt, the thoughts that this female was speaking the truth and Suki had used him, but they cut him like a thousand blades and he couldn’t stem the bleeding.
His ears rang as he struggled to figure out what was real and what had been a lie.
What they had shared was real.
Wasn’t it?
The female moved closer and cooed, “That wounded look doesn’t suit one born for war like you were. You’re a warrior. A king. Are you going to let a female treat you with so little respect?”
No. He wasn’t.
He launched at the succubus, grabbed her by her throat and hauled her off the ground by it, growling at her as pain pushed him deeper into his demonic nature, had his muscles straining against his skin and his bones aching to grow. He flashed enormous fangs at her and tossed her aside, breathing hard as he wrestled with himself.
But it was no use.
Because deep in his heart, he already knew the truth.
Suki had used him.
“Leave,” he gritted and turned his back on the female, because he was damned if he was going to let her see how deeply this was hurting him.
She picked herself up and moved closer instead. “What Suki did was just in her nature. A succubus seduces. It’s what we do. You mean nothing to her. You were a game to her.”
He growled as that word struck him hard, sending his heart reeling this time.
“A game?” He turned on her as his rage got the better of him, his muscles expanding as his wings unfurled from his back, knocking against the table and columns, and his horns curled, twisting around on themselves.
She nodded.
“She set out to seduce you and feed from you to prove herself… to elevate herself. She knew you were a demon king and you were strong, and she knew I had failed at seducing you. It was the reason I chose you as her target.” The female grazed fingers around her throat, over the marks he had placed on them when he had seized her, her expression cold and emotionless. “I gave her a chance to succeed where I had failed, and she took it, and you fell for it. Gods, for all I know, she might continue the charade until the crown is secured.”
She laughed, the sound of it scraping out his chest, leaving him hollow as he snarled and staggered back a step, his legs weakening beneath him as his mind spun.
“What succubus wouldn’t want to be a queen too?” She grinned at him, a vicious one that had him snarling and baring fangs at her because she was enjoying watching him suffer, driving a thousand more blades into his heart to rip it to shreds. “We do love money.”
Money.
The way Suki’s eyes had lit up when she had seen his collection of plastic flashed across his mind and drove another blade through him.
“It would go against clan law of course and we would have to exile her, but I wouldn’t blame the girl if she wanted to make an attempt to seize hold of your kingdom.”
Tegan sank against the table behind him.
He was a fool.
He recalled the other succubi who had been with her in Underworld when they had met. He remembered the
m talking, grouped together and glancing at him. Had they conspired to bring him to his knees all to help Suki prove herself?
Was that all he was to her?
Just a means of proving herself so her sisters would love her.
What about his love? Did that mean nothing to her?
He grabbed one of the wooden chairs beside him and roared as he hurled it across the room. It hit a bookcase and shattered under the force of the impact, and the female tensed, drawing his focus back to her.
He turned a glare on her and pushed away from the table as his body grew, limbs lengthening as the pain reached a new crescendo, obliterating everything but the rage that was now a living thing inside him, a writhing and vicious beast that demanded his absolute obedience.
He flexed his fingers, his claws like talons as he stalked towards the female.
She swallowed and backed away, fear flickering in her brown-to-blue eyes before she recovered and stood her ground.
She still reeked of fear.
“Leave,” he snarled.
She bowed her head and edged backwards towards the open doors. When she reached them, she paused and he braced himself, waiting for her final blow, one he could see coming as her eyes lifted to lock on him, her smile cold and victorious.
“I must go. There will be a celebration for Suki.”
Tegan roared at her and kicked off, hurtling towards her and filled with a black need to cleave her head from her shoulders as payment for twisting the knife she had already plunged into his heart.
She teleported before he could reach her and he slammed his fist into the door, sending it flying off its hinges and clattering along the broad hallway.
He breathed hard, fighting to calm himself even when he knew it was impossible. Nothing he could tell himself would change the way he felt, the rage that blazed inside him.
The succubus was a bitter old bitch, angry because Suki had succeeded where she had failed, and he was a fucking fool for thinking it was real.
When it had all been a game to Suki.
He roared again, grabbed the other door and ripped it from its hinges. He snapped the thick wooden panel in two and hurled it after the other door, his chest heaving as he watched one piece of it smash into the black wall on the left of the wide corridor and the other collide with it as it fell.
His senses sparked, warning someone was coming and they were coming at a pace.
Tegan teleported on a black snarl, because he didn’t want anyone to see him like this and he definitely didn’t want to see anyone. He landed in his bedroom in his private floors of the castle and seized the phone he had placed on the dark wooden bedside table.
He gripped it hard, the urge to destroy it blazing inside him, but all of it bled out of him as the screen came on to reveal the picture of him with Suki.
He stared down at it, dazed and hurt, unsure what to feel as he gazed at her beautiful face now.
He sank to his backside on the bed and opened the gallery, thumbed his way through all the pictures of her as he tried to convince himself that it had been real.
But he had seen the way the succubi had looked at him when he had wished Suki goodbye and promised to see her again.
He had seen the way those same succubi had smiled at her when he had stepped away, just before he had teleported.
Tegan leaned forwards, sickness brewing in his stomach for the first time ever, a feeling that felt as if it was going to destroy him as he clung to his phone and the fragile belief that it had been real.
She had called him fucking stupid once.
He stuck his head between his knees and half-growled half-groaned.
Had she meant that? Had the fact he hadn’t been able to see through her ruse to the truth amused her?
Gods, he hurt so much.
He had never known pain like this. He had been wounded on the battlefield countless times, had been close to death several of those, feeling his life draining from him and sure he was going to die.
But it had never hurt like this.
Those wounds had never been as deep as the one on his heart.
That left him feeling as if he was broken in a way he would never heal.
He teleported on another pained and furious snarl, grabbed the nearest object as he landed in his study and hurled it across the room. Rage consumed him, a darkness that obliterated all awareness, all feeling but the black need to destroy. He unleashed it all on the room, smashing the furniture, tearing at the bookshelves, and battering the walls in a desperate attempt to vent his rage.
It gripped him harder instead and he was in the next room before he was aware of what he was doing, was ripping apart every book in his precious collection with his bare hands, until a mountain of paper lined the broken pieces of furniture that littered the floor and his hands were bleeding.
Until his sanctuary resembled the chaos whirling inside him.
He sank to his knees amidst the debris, threw his head back and roared as his heart broke.
Because the one who was meant to be his, never would be.
His life had changed when Edyn had died, and he had thought things couldn’t get any worse for him, and then his life had changed again when he had met Suki, and for a brief, wonderful moment it had felt as if it couldn’t get any better.
But this was worse.
So much worse.
Now, his life was over.
Because how was he meant to live without his heart?
CHAPTER 27
“There’s a demon at the door for you, Suki.”
Suki didn’t even catch a glimpse of the succubus who poked her head into Suki’s bedroom to deliver that message. She teleported immediately, heart racing, excitement rushing through her veins at the thought of seeing Tegan again.
Only it wasn’t Tegan standing on the doorstep.
It was another demon.
His black horns and leathers, and onyx hair and eyes said the burly male was from the Second Realm.
“Is something wrong?” She stepped forwards, her heart stuttering to a halt in her chest as a thousand scenarios ran through her mind, reasons that ranged from terrifying things to completely possible and normal.
Like, maybe Tegan hadn’t been able to get away from the castle today, but he wanted her back at his mansion and had arranged for this demon to take her there, where he would meet her.
Which was better than Tegan was in trouble, hurt or worse, and this demon had come to deliver a devastating blow to her.
The man just held his hand out to her, his eyes impassive, not giving anything away. She focused on him to reveal his aura. It was flat, muted shades of grey and other dark colours that gave her nothing to go on. He wasn’t feeling anything as he waited for her to take his hand.
She slipped hers into it and squeezed her eyes shut as the world dropped from beneath her and she plummeted into the darkness.
When it receded, it wasn’t the mansion looming before her.
It was an imposing black castle, like a Disney logo gone gothic mixed with a dash of Lord of the Rings. Sauron would be happy in such a dwelling.
The main bulk of the castle stood several storeys tall, but massive obsidian towers reached up from it, stopping at various heights, some of them capped with square or conical roofs, while others were flat. On the flat ones, golden light flickered and shadows moved around. Guards.
Beyond the castle, black mountains rose, cragged and sharp, perfecting the terrifying image of the building.
Her heart started at a pace again as the demon pushed her forwards. Her sneakers scuffed the black flagstones as she stumbled along, feeling dazed as she stared at the castle.
And a little frightened.
If she had known she was coming to such a place, she would have dressed. Her classic red Converse were worn and dirty, her blue jeans shorts rode a bit high for decent company, and she had tossed on a loose black T-shirt with a cute bunny on it and the words ‘Go to Hell’.
She hadn’t figured s
he would actually be going to Hell today and she wasn’t sure the people milling around outside the castle would find it particularly amusing. Judging by the way they were all looking at her as she strode towards the massive arched entrance ahead of her, they didn’t find anything about her amusing. They looked as if she disgusted them for some reason.
Probably because she was a succubus.
Two demons stationed on either side of the door, their hands resting in front of them on the pommel of the broadswords they held point down, glared at her as she passed.
She was tempted to flip them off, but a feeling suddenly hit her.
One that wasn’t her own.
Pain.
Tegan was hurting.
The fragile bond that had been building between them over the last few days they had spent together, a cause of fascination she had enjoyed studying, relayed his pain to her, had her heart seizing again as she looked at the demon beside her.
“What’s happened to Tegan?” It was strange saying his name for the first time.
She had avoided it, desperate to maintain some distance between them.
Now she couldn’t bring herself to call him Solid Twelve.
Because she no longer wanted any distance between them.
The demon didn’t answer. He marched her past the guards and dread built inside her as she walked down the imposing wide high corridor, heading towards a huge set of closed black wooden doors at the far end of it.
The closer she got to those doors, the stronger the pain beat inside her.
Had the demon brought her here because Tegan had been injured? Or perhaps he had been punished for something?
Her?
She hated the thought that he might have been punished because of their relationship. He hadn’t talked much about whether demons were allowed to have a relationship with a woman who wasn’t their fated one. They placed a lot of value on their fated one though, and her research on demons had turned up that they could only breed with that woman. With the fate of their species depending on breeding with their mates, it was possible that Tegan had gotten into trouble for wanting her.
Seduced by a Demon King Page 29
