My Guardian Gryphon (Sanctuary, Texas Book 5)

by Krystal Shannan

  A frown darkened the pixie’s face, making my hands clench. There was so much about Rose no one had questioned. She took in all supernaturals who needed a home, and she gave them sanctuary. No one had ever thought to ask why…

  “Above everything, even the prophecy, keeping the Sisters out of Xerxes’ hands was Rose’s first goal. She was truly afraid of what might happen if he succeeded in taking any of them. That is why she fought. That is why she traded herself for Gretchen.”

  “What if she’s dead?”

  “It is likely. Though I think she must’ve wounded him as well or our town would be overrun by now. Instead, we have quiet streets, and Calliope has said there are perhaps only two or three Djinn still hanging around.”

  “What do you think they are they looking for?”

  “Weakness.”

  The Pixie’s words echoed in my mind, a haunting warning of what was coming. Our fight had just started.

  Chapter 22

  XERXES

  I stood silently, grimacing as my girls bandaged my abdomen. The slash marks from Rose’s talons were an inch deep and stung like a bitch. Any other wound would’ve already healed, but these would take weeks. They would bleed and seep and burn. I could take the pain. I’d had worse.

  What I couldn’t comprehend was Rose’s carelessness. She’d shown up to save that slip of a woman. In the overall scheme, one Sister wouldn’t have slowed her little prophecy down by more than a few decades. Instead, she’d thrown herself into the fray so that fucking Gryphon could steal my prize right out from under me, literally. Even if I did get the wench pregnant, it would be years before the child would be a threat to this precious world or any other, but Rose had always been a big-picture kind of girl.

  Tension twisted in the back of my neck. I rubbed it and winced. Roshanna’s talented mouth on my dick was distracting me from most of the pain as Lily was taping over one of the especially deep gashes.

  “Forgive me, Master,” Lily said, bowing her head. “I caused you discomfort. Should I fetch a whip?”

  I caught her chin between my thumb and forefinger and raised her face until I could see her dilated eyes. My little half-masochistic-half-sadist wanted to be punished, needed it. She’d thumped my wound on purpose, hoping for some attention from my whip.

  “Go to the play mat and kneel there until I return.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Do you want us to bandage her, too, Master?” Iris glanced up at me hesitantly from the floor at Rose’s side. My brother’s wife was equally carved. Her clothing hung in long, torn strips around her bloodied body. I’d gotten the upper hand in the compound, and Cal had teleported in and out, slicing up her legs with the dragon steel blade until she’d shifted back to her human form, unable to stand upright with so many wounds incapacitating her.

  Plus, there was the poison. I hadn’t told Cal, but the dagger he’d been given was coated in a film of dragon fire. The chemicals or magick or whatever anyone wanted to call what happened inside a fire-breather Drakonae were deadly to Lamassu. Dragon steel—the hardest steel on earth or Veil—was melted and purified for the first time beneath the heat of a dragon’s breath, but during the later smelting and shaping, most of the residual poison was removed. To truly have a poisonous weapon, a finished steel sword had to be held in the fire of a Drakonae for a few seconds.

  “No, don’t touch her.”

  “What about the dagger in her chest?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “If you pull it out, she’ll bleed to death in a few minutes. I need her to last longer than that.” Rose’s heart still beat, slowly, but it continued to do my work for me— pumping the poison through her body. Every thump thump weakened her more. Finally I had the great Rose Hilah in the palm of my hand. She hadn’t told me where the portal dagger was. In fact, she’d seemed surprised that I thought it was in Sanctuary. Imagine that. Her good little soldiers weren’t sharing everything with their great leader. I’d stabbed her, slowly and carefully, making sure the tip of the knife nicked her heart before shoving it the rest of the way in at an angle I knew wouldn’t kill her right away, knowing the blade of the knife itself was slowing the leak inside her chest.

  Lamassu were resilient. Her self-healing abilities would keep her alive long enough to give me the pleasure I’d been cheated out of so many thousands of years ago.

  Iris bowed and backed away from Rose’s still body.

  Then she helped me into a fresh shirt, and buttoned it, leaving the top one undone just the way I preferred.

  I ran my hand through my damp-from-a-shower hair and shuddered, feeling my balls tighten as my body prepared to climax. I reached down and grabbed a handful of Roshanna’s long, silky black hair and pounded her mouth, shoving my dick halfway down her throat. She gagged softly, but continued to massage my balls with her talented fingers as I shot my cum straight down her well-trained throat.

  Once I finished, she licked my dick clean and tucked it carefully behind the zipper of my slacks. She pulled the zipper up and fastened the buckle on my leather belt, all the while licking her lips. When she finished, she bowed her head.

  “Thank you, Master.”

  “You did well and pleased me. You’re dismissed, Iris, you too.”

  Roshanna rose from her position on the floor at my feet, and she and Iris scurried through the side door of my suite into the small adjoining room they slept and lived in.

  “Cal.” I spoke loudly, making sure the Djinn on the other side of my suite door heard me. “Enter.”

  The tall Djinn appeared a moment later. He also had bathed and changed clothes. His cream colored tunic and pants were free from the bloodstains that’d covered us both from the fight outside Sanctuary.

  “Report?”

  “The camp was all but destroyed, Master. The remaining Djinn are patrolling the town, looking for an entrance to the vault you said would be within the city limits, but as of the last update I received, there has been no success locating it or the portal dagger.” Cal kept his voice even and calm. A difficult task when he knew the news he delivered was not what I wanted to hear. Rose hadn’t given me anything, regardless of the cutting and stabbing and torture. The bitch was tougher than she looked.

  “Fetch Rahim to carry her. We’re going to the tomb.”

  “Yes, Master.” His reply carried the slightest sigh of relief.

  The dagger wasn’t going to walk out of Sanctuary on its own. There was time. Their barrier was down and many had died, for nothing. Their leader was bleeding to death on my floor. Soon the town would descend into chaos. It was only a matter of time before they revealed the location of the vault, and with it, the dagger she was determined to keep from my grasp.

  Cal blinked away, returning a few seconds later with younger version of himself. Rahim was Cal’s brother. Both men stood at an intimidating six-and-a-half feet tall with dark hair and shoulders that could carry grown men without a second thought. They were strong and quick and loyal to a fault. Though that probably had everything to do with the fact that I had their sister and youngest brother locked away safely in a quppa box.

  I did love a tightly knit family. Emotions made people weak. Family made them even weaker and easier to manipulate.

  “Master.” Rahim bowed low.

  “You take her, and be careful not to jostle the dagger next to her heart.” I waved at Rose’s body.

  “Yes, Master.”

  Cal stepped forward and extended his hand, waiting for me to clasp his wrist before we would teleport to the tomb where I kept my own brother chained and wasting away, one millennia at a time.

  I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, and then we blinked. Space folded around us in a rush of color and speed that made my stomach jump. Then we were there, in the dark tomb beneath what used to be the grandest city on this fucking planet—Babylon.

  It had truly been one of the greatest wonders of the world. I’d felt the smallest splinter of remorse when I’d betrayed the city to the Horde.
The poison I’d provided them had killed my entire race, except for Rose and Naram. Those two crafty Sentinels had evaded the barbarian soldiers and stolen the Sisters out of the temple without a sound.

  Cal lit several torches on the wall, pulling one down to light the way. I crossed to the half of the palatial room that housed my dying brother. Rahim followed silently, blinking with Rose closer and closer and closer, working hard to keep her body steady in its precarious position.

  “There.” I spoke clearly, allowing my voice to carry through the large room. Walking to them, I knelt down and wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the dagger in her chest.

  Rahim stepped back to stand next to Cal a few feet away.

  “Naram, you should drag your decrepit body out here to say goodbye to your mate.”

  “Fuck you, brother.” Naram’s shout was more forceful than I’d expected after seeing him last time. The food from my last visit must’ve really helped raise his energy level.

  “She’s the one that’s fucked.” I pulled the dagger from her chest, and Rose moaned softly, opening her eyes to meet my gaze directly. “You will die beneath the city you loved so dearly and with the man you loved more than anyone else on the Earth, but he will live on, seeing you rot and decay until only your bones remain to remind him of what he lost. Of what he could not save.”

  “You’re a bastard,” she whispered, fighting for breath, fighting against the blood that would slowly drown her. The poison from the dagger would hinder her natural healing abilities.

  Chains scraped the floor across the room, and Naram’s beastly form advanced slowly, each step a painful effort. The shackles had long since created sores on his ankles and paws. His head hung low, also chaffed and bloody from the dragon steel collar around what used to be a well-muscled neck. Now, he was thin and weak, hollowed from malnutrition and atrophied from limited movement.

  “Rose.” He strained against his chains, leaning into the shackles and re-opening old wounds. Desperation strained his gaunt face in his futile effort to reach his mate.

  I’d had Rahim place her just out of reach. The need to touch her, comfort his mate, hold his wife—everything inside him was driving him further over the edge of madness.

  “I couldn’t feel you.” Rose’s voice broke with emotion. “Why couldn’t I feel you? I felt the connection between us die thousands of years ago.” A sob tore through her chest, rattling through her liquid-filled lungs like a pinball in an arcade game. She coughed, spewing blood onto the floor. “I would’ve kept looking. I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh, it doesn’t matter now.” Naram knelt on the floor, stretching his lion’s neck as far as he could. Not far enough. She still remained at least three feet from even feeling his breath on her face. He shifted to his bedraggled human form and stretched his arm toward her—still unable to breach the distance between them. “I love you, Rose. You are mine.”

  “And you are mine.”

  I rolled my neck back and forth, enjoying the show of pathetic emotion. The torture on both their faces had been well worth the wait and effort of keeping Naram chained and on the edge of life for all these years. He’d died on the inside the day I told him I’d killed Rose, and now he would die a little more each day. Every time he looked at her body, he would blame himself for not being enough.

  My brother’s downfall had been hoping he could get through to me, but Rose…Rose had been a worthy adversary, and a frustrating one. This was my reward, and I reveled in it. In the smell of her blood staining the floor. In the scent of death hanging over her like a shroud from Tartarus, waiting to carry her to the afterlife.

  She would trouble me no longer. My vengeance was complete. What they’d taken from me was irreplaceable, and now Rose was balancing the scale with her death. Once Naram joined her in the underworld, I would focus solely on conquering the humans, one pathetic country at a time.

  All would bow to me on Earth.

  Then all would bow to me on Veil.

  Even those fucking Drakonae pricks who thought they were invincible. Just because they’d taken down the Blackmoor dynasty didn’t mean they would have a shot in hell against me and my army.

  Once the time arrived.

  Once my children were born.

  Chapter 23

  GRETCHEN

  Nothing hurt. My body was healed. Bailey’s blood and Bella’s pixie dust had done their work. I should be fine. I felt fine. I felt like I could jump off my bed at any moment and run from the room.

  But I didn’t.

  I just stared uncomfortably at Bailey and her mate Erick. Pulling the covers up to my neck, I shifted to my side and stared at the wall instead. Bailey looked like she wanted to talk. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to forget.

  Forget the pain. Forget the terror. Forget how stupid I’d been for leaving Alek’s house. Forget how stupid I’d been for not listening to Rose’s warnings, to all of their warnings. Even Alek had said it was dangerous, but I hadn’t listened. I’d ignored them all, and I’d paid the price.

  Those men, that man. Everyone who’d touched me had hacked a piece of my soul away. I didn’t hurt because I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

  And I didn’t want to.

  I’d pulled away from Alek like he was diseased. I’d seen the pain and hurt in his eyes, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. He couldn’t fix me. No one could fix me. No one could take away this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, this ball of blackness and guilt that twisted and rolled and threatened to overtake me.

  “Give it time,” Bailey said, her voice soft and tender in the silence of the room.

  She didn’t know anything about me. Time? Really? Time would erase the memory of those men’s hands on my body, of them using me and hurting me and torturing me for their pleasure and amusement? Really? Time. That’s all.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I promised Alek we’d stay till he returned.”

  I threw the covers off my body and sat up. “Get. Out.” My voice sliced through the small room, surprising even me with its ferocity.

  “If you ever want to talk, I’ve been there.” Bailey continued like I hadn’t just shouted at the top of my lungs. Like my outburst meant nothing.

  “You don’t know what I went through.” Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. No. No. No. I didn’t want to feel it. I couldn’t. It was too hard. It was better to be still and silent and feel nothing. Why wouldn’t she just let me feel nothing?

  “I was raped, too. Tortured, beaten, hunted. The list goes on, Gretchen. So yes, I do know a little about what you are going through.” She whispered something to Erick, and he left Bailey’s side and slipped out my bedroom door, leaving just the two of us…alone.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget it. Tell me how to forget it. How to not feel their hands sliding up and down my skin. How not to feel where they slapped me. How not to feel the—” My throat closed up, and I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I deserved what I got. I ignored everyone’s warning.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Bailey’s voice struck like a whip.

  I flinched and turned away from her again. Tears poured uncontrollably down my cheeks again. “I snuck out. I left Alek’s house. I left the safety of the castle. I didn’t believe that it could be as bad as they said.”

  Bailey moved to sit beside me, careful to keep her body from touching mine. “No one deserves what happened to you. Don’t ever think that. Not for a single moment.”

  “You could make me forget.” I turned to meet her intense gaze. “I just need to forget. I can’t live like this, with this.”

  “You can’t heal if you forget.”

  “I don’t want to heal. I want to forget. The Protectors make the men forget us when they leave here after the joinings. How is this different?”

  Bailey’s mouth tightened, and her gaze dropped to the floor. “Influencing someone takes something away. Magick always comes with a price. Erasing trauma could erase more t
han you want to part with. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “That’s my choice.”

  “No.” Bailey’s voice firmed again, becoming harsher, less comforting and more insistent. “I can’t do it anyway. I’m not strong enough, and I haven’t learned how.” She stood from my bedside and walked to the door. “Plus, you have something I didn’t have for a really long time.”

  I scoffed, flopping back onto my pillow.

  “You’re not alone.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and I choked on the angry words I wanted to spit back at her. Alone. I might not be alone in this exact moment, but I would be. Another crisis would come and what happened to me would be old news. Unimportant. Irrelevant. But I didn’t yell or scream. I just let the deadness inside me swell and quiet the pain.

  Just because she wouldn’t help me—couldn’t help me—didn’t mean the other Protectors would refuse me as well.

  The door opened and closed. I could smell him before he rounded the foot of the bed and stepped into my line of sight. “Can I get you another blanket?”

  “No.”

  “I want to hold you.” His brown eyes begged for permission, but I couldn’t. The thought of anyone touching me sent a sliver of terror down my spine like the sharp tip of a blade being dragged slowly from my neck to the curve of my lower back. I could still feel the blade. I had felt it, but it hadn’t been steel. It’d been the tip of a talon or claw, and it’d reminded me of Alek and our night—that one wonderfully perfect night, forever trapped and locked away in the back of my mind—but now…now I couldn’t…I couldn’t let him touch me.

  I didn’t want him to see my fear. I didn’t fear him, but I was terrified of what my memories would do to him. How they would hurt him. Make him feel guilty. He didn’t deserve to feel guilty. No matter what Bailey said, I knew what’d happened to me was my fault.