Beast

by Sophie Oak

  She giggled again. She was losing it. “I don’t think I can handle another one, Ashton.”

  “It’s Ashley, sweetie,” her new friend said. “And I’m really surprised you’ve made it this long. You have some kind of crazy metabolism.”

  Kaja wasn’t sure what the pretty blonde was talking about, but she seemed so nice. Everyone was being nice to her. “I will have to tell the machine at home that I like these drinks. And when it is rude to me from now on, I will make it pay.”

  Ashley regarded her. “You should. Those machines can really get you. Today, my mirror told me my hair didn’t look good. Bastard. Bad programming. It’s supposed to be supportive. It’s supposed to tell me I look good.”

  “You do look nice,” Kaja offered. In the few weeks she had been on this plane, she had noticed that women liked to be told they looked pretty. She liked it herself. “My mate tells me I look nice.”

  Ashley smiled, but it seemed a bland thing. “Does he? He never really noticed with me.”

  “He tells me often, though mostly when I am naked. He likes me to be naked. A lot. He gave me the option of coming to this place naked. I did not think it was a good idea. You vampires seem very attached to clothing. Alana is always trying to buy me more clothing. And shoes. I only have two feet.”

  Something Ashley had said skittered at the back of her brain. What had she said?

  Oh, her mind was foggy. It had felt good just a minute before, but now there was a queasy feeling in her stomach.

  “I thought she had four.” Jeremy, the bartender was staring at her. He didn’t look so nice now. “I saw the press coverage of the freak.”

  “Shanimal,” Ashley said with a frown. “She’s a shanimal, not a freak.”

  Kaja hated that word. The room was starting to spin a little. “I am not a shanimal. I am Kaja. I am Dante’s.”

  He’d said it. She was his. She wasn’t going to let these vampires make fun of her. She was the consort of Dante Dellacourt, and more than that, she was a good person. She was worth respect with or without her fur.

  “Yeah, I know that’s what he told you.” Ashley sat forward. “You’re different than I thought you would be. I’m actually really sorry this is happening to you, but you should know that I’m Dante’s mistress.”

  Kaja felt a growl deep in her throat, but she couldn’t force it out. “You are not.”

  She pulled out one of the tablets that vampires seemed to always have on their persons. “I’m really sorry, but this is who your husband really is.”

  A video started. There was her Dante and this woman. He lay back and allowed her to service him. His cock gradually became long and thick. He finally ordered her to climb on top of him.

  “He never lets me do that,” Kaja grumbled. “I told him it would be fun.”

  Ashley’s mouth dropped open in apparent surprise.

  “This was before we were married. I can see the date stamp. I know when we were married.” And beyond that, it was so obvious to her that Dante wasn’t engaged in the sex. Oh, Ashley was very attractive, but he didn’t even tie her up. He couldn’t be too involved. This was how Dante had sex when he wasn’t in love.

  Dante loved her. Some silly video wasn’t going to make her question that. She’d felt it in her bones.

  “Fine. How about our afterglow? Maybe that will convince you he isn’t what you think he is.” Ashley turned the volume up.

  They were talking. It penetrated her brain. They were talking about Dante finding a consort. His father had demanded it. Ashley told him to find someone unsuitable.

  Kaja turned and smiled at Ashley. “Oh, I know this about my husband.” She groped for the proper words. What had Susan called him? It seemed like the right word for him now. “He is a dumb-ass.”

  He was. He’d gotten caught in his own trap. He’d sought out a consort who would horrify his family. And she’d managed that. He’d sought a consort so unsuitable no one would question him when he set her aside. He’d found the perfect one. No one would say a word against Dante if he found her someplace far away to live.

  He could never let her go. She was half of him.

  Kaja bet he’d never expected that.

  Kaja tried to get to her feet. It was time to find her gorgeous, sexy, dumb-ass husband and explain a few facts of life to him. She wanted to be on top from time to time. It looked like a nice position, and she refused to accept less than his ex-mistress. “I do not know why you seek to hurt me, but this will not work. I know he makes foolish plans from time to time. I was the odd plan of his that worked out. And I will fit in here. I will make sure of it. And if you come near my husband again, you will find out how quick I am on four feet. I am not allowed to eat anything that speaks no matter how stupidly it speaks, but Dante never said anything about maiming. I will maim you.”

  Of course, she would have to be able to walk first. She grabbed onto the bar, trying to hold herself up. Where had Dante gone? She couldn’t feel him anymore. She couldn’t focus long enough to even make the attempt.

  “How much did you give her?” Ashley asked. Her voice sounded far away to Kaja. “Gods, Jeremy, if you’ve killed her, Chalen will have both our heads.”

  Ashley’s arms went under her shoulders. Kaja struggled to move. She was beginning to understand that she was in trouble. “I do not want to be killed.”

  She felt so weak. What was happening? Did they talk to the demon? Had they given her his elixir? It had made her weak before, but now it made everything fuzzy, and her limbs were limp and useless.

  “I’ll take her. I’m stronger than I look.” Jeremy picked her up. “And I’ve carted more than one druggie out the door. Security won’t think anything of it. I want my payout in cash. I’m going to have to leave Dallas. If my boss ever finds out what I did, he’ll pull my fangs out of my head, and that will be the nice part of my day.”

  Her world had upended. Her mind sought Dante’s but found only fog. She started to drift in and out of consciousness.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was being placed in a large hovercar. A man with cold, dead eyes looked down at her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dellacourt. My name is Chalen Palgrave. I think you’re going to like your new accommodations. Well, until the vivisection begins. Then you might not think it’s so nice.”

  The car took off, but Kaja was out once more.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dante felt older as he walked out of Julian’s office. He’d only been in there for an hour and a half, but he would have sworn he’d aged ten years.

  It was really happening. After all these years, the fight was finally here. Torin would come after Beck and Cian, and he would have the Vampire Council’s support. Well, maybe not their support, but they would look the other way if it meant royals once again had full access to consorts.

  Torin was going to be the acknowledged king of the Seelie Fae, and Beck and Cian would be the rebels. Dante was having a hard time processing it.

  And Chalen Palgrave was trying to kill him.

  Simon Roan walked out behind Dante, a grim look on his face. “Mr. Dellacourt, I understand that you don’t trust me, but I’m your best bet to stay unharmed until such time as this misunderstanding with Palgrave can be fixed.”

  He didn’t want to fix the misunderstanding. He wanted to eviscerate Palgrave.

  “Roan really is the best,” Julian said. “I’ll vouch for him. Use him as a bodyguard for a while until we deal with Palgrave. He’s insignificant compared to ensuring the safety of the true Seelie kings.”

  Dante wanted to growl his frustration to the world. He didn’t need this shit with Palgrave while his cousins were in danger. “I didn’t kill Kinsey Palgrave and neither did my cousins. If they had, I would have heard about it. If I had killed Kinsey, I damn straight wouldn’t hide it. And, if I’d killed him, it would have been because he was doing something he shouldn’t have.”

  Julian walked out, closing the door behind him. “According to my sources, K
insey Palgrave went to the Refugee plane and didn’t come back. He received a message from someone. I managed to find a record of the call. I have excellent government sources. They’ll tell you they’re all about privacy, but there’s very little on this plane that doesn’t get recorded somehow. It’s fuzzy. I can only make out a blonde woman telling him to come pick up a consort. Kinsey left shortly after receiving the call. Am I correct in saying there was a hag stalking the kings?”

  Julian’s sources were utterly impeccable. Dante bit back a little bit of bile. He could still see the hag. “You’re right. She’s dead now.” He’d had a hand in killing her. “And she was blonde. Her name was Liadan. She was sent by Torin to kill the twins. When she couldn’t manage that, she caused trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the hag was responsible,” Julian said. “She would be strong enough to kill a vampire. It doesn’t matter now. I doubt Chalen will listen to anything I say. You need to get your consort and get back to the Dellacorp Building. Let Roan handle Palgrave. You need to figure out where to stash the kings until I can get them to the Unseelie plane. I’m in contact with King Fergus. He’s offering them asylum.”

  “In exchange for what?” Dante wasn’t stupid. The last thing he wanted was to walk his cousins into an ambush.

  Julian’s lips turned up. “He’s my uncle, you know. King Fergus married my mother’s sister.”

  No. Dante hadn’t known that. The Unseelie were very secretive. “Are the twins part vampire?”

  Now Julian was full-on smiling, but the fangs he showed off gave it all a menacing feel. “Worse. They’re half-Unseelie-royal, half-royal-vampire, and all symbiotic twins. Lachlan and Shim are more dangerous than you can imagine. And they’ve matured past an age where they must bond. I could smuggle a mate off the Seelie plane, but they insist on only one.”

  “That’s insane. They can bond with any bondmate.” Dante thought about how fast Beck and Ci would have taken a mate. They might not have loved her the way they did Meg, but they would have done it.

  Julian shook his head. “They’ve dreamed about this one for years. Don’t you think my uncle has offered up any female who could bond? He’s promised the Planeswalkers a multitude of riches if they would bring him a bondmate his sons would accept. But they want the princess in the tower. That’s what they call her. They insist that Beck and Cian Finn hold the key to finding her and bringing them into their true power.”

  As Meg had brought Beck and Ci into theirs. Dante didn’t want to think about what kind of powers the Unseelie princes would gain from bonding with the perfect mate.

  Julian stared at him. “Please trust me when I tell you my uncle will do anything to save his sons. The Seelie kings are in no danger.”

  It was almost too much to take in. He nodded at Julian. His mind wasn’t made up, but it wouldn’t do any good to argue now. He would discuss it with his cousins.

  He knew Julian was right, but it rankled. He wanted to wrap his claws around Palgrave’s throat and not stop until the fucker’s head popped off. But Kaja had to be his first concern. He had to get her home to the safety of his family’s building. Once he had her back in the penthouse he would set security on her ass. At least six. A full unit. Then he could take care of Palgrave and decide what to do about his cousins.

  A worried looking young man strode up to Julian and spoke in hushed tones. He had to go up on his toes to reach his master’s ears. Julian’s face went stone-cold, his eyes darkening with every word the young man spoke.

  “Show me,” Julian said.

  The younger man held up a tablet, and within minutes, Julian was cursing a blue streak.

  “What?” Dante asked. If there was going to be trouble in The Club, he wanted to get Kaja out as soon as possible.

  Roan was on high alert, his every muscle rigid. “What’s going on?”

  “Your consort is gone,” Julian said flatly, every word a knife to Dante’s gut. He held out the tablet. “Do you know this woman?”

  Ashley. Fuck. He’d sent her a very nice note and a large check, but it looked like she hadn’t appreciated being given her walking papers. “She was my mistress until I got married.”

  Roan cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find she has ties to Chalen Palgrave. I saw a picture of her in his office.”

  A fucking spy and now a kidnapper. He’d never had the best of taste in women until he’d met his Kaja. “Where would he have taken Kaja?”

  “Not to his penthouse,” Roan said. “I suspect he took her to his company headquarters. It’s one of the reasons I broke the contract. I suspected he wanted to hurt the consorts, both yours and the queen. I’ve spent very little time there. I know the main office, but again, I think he’ll avoid it. If we call the cops in, it would be the first place they would look. Palgrave has a couple of different arms. Some of the small divisions are in other buildings across the city. Can we look up the building plans?”

  Julian whispered something to his employee who turned and took off running. “I’ll do one better. I can get you a guide.”

  Dante didn’t want a guide. He wanted that gun Meg carried around. It was still buried where Kaja had hidden it.

  While everyone else kept talking, Dante closed his eyes and tried to find her. Acting on pure instinct, he opened his mind and called to her.

  Nothing at first. He practically screamed in his head and then a tiny whimper. If he hadn’t felt it before, he would have blown it off as an incidental sound, but now he grabbed on to that one tiny sound and held on for dear life. He focused, stepping away from the rest. Her mind was cloudy, unable to think in a clear pattern.

  She was afraid. He heard one thing play in her drug-addled brain over and over again.

  Dante.

  She wanted him to come for her. His whole body ached at her fear. He wanted to kill Chalen Palgrave, but more than that, he wanted to comfort her. He’d brought her to this plane where she would never be accepted. He’d brought her to this.

  Hush, sweetheart. I’m coming. I am going to be there, and you’re going to be fine.

  He forced his own panic to a much deeper place, one that Kaja couldn’t feel. She needed him to be calm. She was alone and scared and had no idea why she couldn’t think straight. Dante knew. He’d been to enough parties in college to recognize the drugs they had given Kaja. He sent out soothing thoughts.

  He got a flash of white—so white. All the lights were white, and the man was white, and she was in a cage. The entire vision was so disorienting, Dante felt his stomach churn. Kaja was handling the drugs well. Gods, how much had they given her?

  Dante opened his eyes. And then narrowed them because he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Meg?”

  The Queen of the Seelie Fae stood there dressed outrageously in a red leather bustier and what Dante worried was a thong. She was wearing stilettos that added at least four and a half inches to her petite frame.

  “Does Beck know you’re here? Gods, Meggie, he’s not just going to spank you this time. He’s going to go crazy. You go and change into something decent right now. Do you understand me? I do not have time for this. You will change, and you will get in the car I’m going to call for you, and you will go back to my house. You will not step foot outside the Dellacorp building, or Beck won’t be the only who spanks you.”

  Meg’s eyes went wide, and then she fell to her knees in a perfect rendition of a slave’s pose. She turned her face up to Julian, and there was a placid smile on her lips. “Oh, he’s lovely, Sir. Is he my new Master? You promised to find me one. He’s so commanding.”

  Roan elbowed him with a shake of his head. “Take another look. She doesn’t glow, Dellacourt.”

  Fuck him. Roan was right. This girl looked like Meg, but she didn’t have Meg’s glow. This Meg was a vampire. It was so odd to see her like this, but it was only fair. After all, according to Meg, she’d met Dante’s human self when she was on the Earth plane.

  Julian placed a hand on Vampire
Meg’s head. “Sorry, Megan, he’s taken. But I will pair you with a Master when I find the right one. I need your help for another reason. I need to know how to get into the Palgrave Industries building.”

  Her familiar face went blank, and her eyes cast down. “I’m sure they’re closed at this time of night, Sir.”

  “Yes, and you, you clever and bratty little sub, know just how to get around that, don’t you? You know how to get in and how to do it very quietly, so no one knows you’re coming.”

  Her auburn hair shook. “I am not allowed to do anything illegal. I remember everything you said to me after the last time you bailed me out of jail. I am a very good girl.”

  No, she wasn’t. She was lying. Even Dante could see that.

  “You’re a masochist is what you are, Megan.” Julian gently pulled her head back. “If I didn’t already have a couple of beloved slaves, I would take care of your discipline on my own. I’ll leave it to Master Leo. It’s not going to go well for you, but I might tell him to allow you to come if you fess up right now. Otherwise, you’ll be on the cross for hours with no relief.”

  That threat had her talking. “It was just a little raid. You don’t understand, Sir. Palgrave Medical is running horrible tests on bunnies and monkeys. I just snuck in and freed a few of them.”

  Julian hauled her up from her slave position. “Megan here is a bit of a protester and part-time criminal.”

  “I am not a criminal. What they do to those animals is criminal,” she protested.

  “You were in the medical facility?” Dante asked, making connections. “Is it very white? With cages?”

  Vampire Meg nodded. “It’s a terrible place. They keep it so cold. They don’t even understand that animals need soothing colors, too.”

  “I don’t think soothing colors mean much to animals who are being tested on, Megan.” Julian sighed as though he’d gone over this with her before.

  Tested on. That fucker had his consort in a cage. Chalen Palgrave meant to treat her like a beast to experiment on. Dante’s heart raced, but something dark opened inside him. If Chalen Palgrave wanted a beast—Dante would give him one.