by Katee Robert
Rylan, thank the gods, seems to understand. He touches my jaw. “Relax. Let me do the work.”
Yes, that’s what I need. I made a sound of assent and give myself over to all of them. Malachi smooths his hands up my thighs, pressing them up and out, splaying me open. “Her clit, Wolf.” As Wolf snakes his hand around my hip to stroke my clit, Malachi picks up his pace until he’s pounding into me. Rylan doesn’t take quite as punishing pace or depth, but as he starts fucking my face, I have to relax completely and let him lead. I have to submit. I have to become a receptacle for their bodies, for my pleasure. Wolf’s clever fingers stroke my clit. This time, they aren’t backing off. All three of us are cascading toward one inevitable ending.
The feeling inside me rushes higher, pressing against something invisible holding it in place. With each thrust, it surges. Again and again. Higher and higher. More and more.
Something tears deep in my soul as it ascends. It feels like someone shoved their hand into my chest and wrapped it around my bloody heart, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until it bursts from my chest in a rush that has me crying out around Rylan’s cock.
Glass shatters. A great pressure pushes against my skin. In the distance, I think I hear screaming.
And then Rylan curses and he’s coming down my throat. I drink him down without thought, sucking on his cock even as he begins to ease away. Malachi shudders between my thighs and then he fills me in great spurts that have me moaning. Holy shit, what is happening? He barely moves out of the way before Wolf flips us, pinning me to the bed as he drives into me. I’m too loose to do anything but take it, and I have the distant thought that even this feels amazing. He pulls out a bare second before he comes across my back and then he slumps down beside me.
For a long moment, only the sound of our ragged breathing filled the room.
Then Malachi gives a choked laugh. “It worked. It fucking worked.” He pulls me up and kisses me hard. “You did it, Mina.”
I barely have the strength to cling to his shoulders as he pulls me into his arms and grabs someone’s shirt to wipe down my back. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. The blood ward is gone.”
Wolf stretches and his fingers feather along my thigh. “He’ll have felt the rebound of it shattering. It’ll put him out of commission for at least a few hours.”
Him. My father.
I shiver in Malachi’s arms. My body doesn’t feel like my own. My skin is so sensitive I simultaneously want to shove him away and also rub myself all over him. “I don’t think I can walk.”
“You just got fucked to within an inch of your life. No shit you can’t walk.” Wolf laughs. “That was work well done, if I do say so myself.”
“Malachi.” For the first time since I met him, Rylan sounds…shocked. “Do you recognize what she is?”
I twist to look at Rylan. His eyes are still blazing silver and he’s staring at me like I’m a poisonous snake that just slithered into his bed. It stings, but I try to rationalize my response; it’s not as if he liked me to begin with. I take a shaky breath. “What am I?”
“Seraph,” he says the word like a curse.
“A seraph?” Wolf throws himself onto his back and laughs so hard he has to clutch his stomach. “Our little dhampir is a fucking angel.”
Seraph.
Malachi’s arms tighten around me. “Are you sure?” He doesn’t sound particularly happy about this, either. When I look up at him, his expression is tight.
“Can’t you feel it?” Rylan rubs his chest. “Focus.”
Malachi goes still for a long moment, but it’s Wolf who speaks first. “Fuck.”
I look from one of them to the other. “What? What are you talking about? What’s going on?” My body has started to feel more like my own now, but the strangely light feeling inside me is still there. I clutch Malachi’s arms. “Malachi?”
“A long time before I was born, the seraphim were hunted to extinction by the other supernatural creatures.” Malachi’s arms tense around me. “Or so everyone thought.”
I’d heard of seraphim, of course, but I thought they were just another fictional part of the human’s religion. No one ever talks about them as if they were real. “Why?”
“Among their abilities is one that links them with their partners.” Once again, it’s Rylan who answers. “It might have started out as some kind of mating bond, but they used it to create courts of supernaturals around them. A seraph could do whatever they wanted to a bonded supernatural and that supernatural couldn’t fight back, couldn’t harm them in return, couldn’t break free. Vampires, in particular, are susceptible.”
“I heard they had godlike powers.” Wolf sounds uncharacteristically serious. “There’s a reason they scare the shit out of the humans, even if history has defanged them out of sheer self-preservation.”
I start to pull away from Malachi, but he hugs me tighter to his chest. His voice lowers, deepens. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The longer she lives, the stronger the bond will grow.” Rylan scrubs at his chest as if he can dig through flesh and yank the bond out by its roots. “The best bet we have is to scatter and get as far away as fast as we can before she calls us back.”
What they’re describing is a monster. If I’m a seraph, that means I’m a monster. The only thing I’ve ever wanted is freedom, and if what they’re saying is correct, then freedom is the very thing I’ve stolen from them. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s not your fault.” Malachi climbs off the bed, taking me with him. “Can you stand?”
“Yes.” I’m not sure if I’m lying, but I lock my knees to ensure I stay on my feet when he releases me.
Malachi points at the other two vampires. “Don’t move.”
Rylan shakes his head as Malachi leaves the room and looks at Wolf. “Run. This is going to be your only chance.”
Wolf sits up and eyes me. “Nah, I’m good. This is the most excitement I’ve had in centuries.”
“It will be your downfall.”
“You’re all doom and gloom. Look at her.” He waves a hand at me. “Think, Rylan. I heard the stories of seraphim, too. The bond is annoying, but only in the hands of a tyrant. Think about what else she’ll be capable of if she lives long enough.”
“You’re making some large assumptions.”
I wrap my arms around myself and try not to shake. “Rylan’s right. You should leave. I don’t want…” My breath hitches. “I know what it’s like not to have your freedom. I don’t want to do that to you.”
“See.” Wolf laughs. “Not so tyrannical, is she?”
Rylan seems unmoved. “People change.”
“Then run.” Wolf shrugs. “Me? I’m tired of being hunted. Cornelius only has two other kids; neither of them have managed to pop a baby vampire out and become heir. With her seraphim blood, I’ll bet she’s just as fertile as her mother was.”
I blink. “Um, what?” I realize what he’s suggesting and shake my head. “It’ll never work.” Sometime over the history of vampires, the tradition began that in order for a bloodline vampire to officially become heir, they had to procreate to prove they could continue the line should it fail elsewhere. That was back when they were slightly more plentiful, when three of the bloodlines hadn’t been pruned down to one or two vampires. My father still holds to the tradition, but I’ve never really worried about it too much because it doesn’t affect me. “I’m a bastard.”
“Only because you didn’t have a recognized magic until now. If you show up with a baby and start flashing seraph magic about, all we have to do is kill him to take over the colony.” Wolf grins. “That’s my kind of fun.”
Rylan shakes his head. “She’s right. It’ll never work.”
Malachi walks through the door, my suitcase in hand. “Sounds like the beginnings of a plan.”
“More like a dream.” Rylan looks at me and then away, as if he can’t stand the sight of me. “We have a narrow window to get out of here unscath
ed. Let’s not waste it. We’ll deal with this later.”
Guilt clamps around me. I want to be happy that I was wrong, that I really do have magic, but the price seems too high. I never wanted to tie these vampires to me, not in a way that defies their free will.
I never want to be my father.
I slowly dress in the clothes Malachi hands me. No answers have presented themselves by the time I pull on my boots. “Rylan’s right. You should leave me. If there’s some kind of geographical limit on this—”
“There’s not,” Rylan says flatly. “As long as you’re alive, there will be a pull on us to return to your side.”
I spin on him. “This was your idea. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t set out to trap you or bond with you or whatever the hell has happened. Stop looking at me like this is my fault.”
He opens his mouth and I half expect him to cut me down with a few icy words. Instead he sighs. “You’re right. Sorry.”
I blink. Holy shit, that was an actual apology. I glance at Malachi, but he looks just as taken aback as I am. He gives himself a shake. “Get dressed. We leave in two.”
Rylan and Wolf blur out of the room. I take a deep breath and turn to Malachi. “You—”
“Stop telling me to leave you behind. It’s not going to happen.” He dresses in a pair of jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt. Malachi pulls me into my arms, which is right around the time I realize I’m shaking again. “Not because of a mystical bond, either, so get that out of your head.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.” That was exactly what I was thinking.
He gives me a squeeze. “We’ll figure out a plan once we get out of here. Give me that long, okay?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
His lips curve. “Would you rather I toss your over my shoulder and just take you with me?”
Kind of.
Except, no, I wouldn’t. I wanted a choice, and now I have one. Really, there’s only one option. If my father realizes what I am, he’ll try to kill me. Or, more likely, he’ll try to break me so he can use me to boost his own power. Neither option are good ones for me. At least with these three, I have a chance. Hell, I have more than a chance.
First, we have to get out of this house.
Two minutes later, we’re at the front door. Malachi tosses my suitcase to Wolf and hefts me into his arms. When I start to protest, he gives me a look. “Seraph or not, you can’t keep up.”
Damn it, but he’s right. “Okay.”
He looks at Wolf and Rylan. “Where to?”
“New York.” Rylan glances at the sky. “We can get there in half a day or so, and even if he sends his trackers, it will be difficult to find us amongst that many humans.”
Malachi nods. “Lead the way.”
He moves as a quick lope across the grounds, not quite blurring. When we reach the edge of the property, Wolf leaps over the seven foot iron fence as if it’s nothing. Rylan follows suit. Malachi hesitates and then we’re airborne. He tenses as we pass over the top, but nothing happens. The blood ward really is broken.
He gives that rusty laugh of his when he lands on the other side. “Freedom.”
“Not quite,” Rylan says.
“Close enough for me.”
We take off into the night, the cool air whipping against my face. I look over Malachi’s shoulder in time to see flames licking through the windows of the house we just abandoned. They spread preternaturally fast, consuming the roof in giant bites. Something gives way and a piece of the house collapses. There will be no rebuilding that particular cage.
Malachi and I really are free. Or as free as we can be while my father still lives.
I open my eyes, resolve settling over me. No matter what else happens with these three men, one thing is certain.
For us to be safe, we have to kill my father.
And I have to be pregnant before we can do it.
Thank you so much for reading the first part of Mina’s story! I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please consider leaving a review.
Want to know what’s next for these four? Their story continues in the next book, where they’ll be racing against time to get Mina pregnant and established as heir to her father’s bloodline. To make sure you don’t miss the release announcement, sign up for my newsletter!
About the Author
Katee Robert is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and romantic suspense. Entertainment Weekly calls her writing “unspeakably hot.” Her books have sold over a million copies. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, children, a cat who thinks he’s a dog, and two Great Danes who think they’re lap dogs.
www.kateerobert.com
