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They didn’t make it far.
Snarling, Roan shoved Ozias hard and sent him hurtling through the air to crash into the debris of a burnt house. Whirling, he slashed at Casimir with his claws. The vampire fell back, burned gashes torn across his chest. Ruhl surged forward, but even the wolf wasn’t fast enough.
Wrapping his arms around me, Roan shot into the air, taking me with him.
22
THE DEMON
Mine.
We had mine.
No one would take her from us now.
On the ground, the giant men and the vampire regrouped, while the shadow wolf spun and snarled, torn between chasing me and protecting his wounded charge. In my grip, our treluria twisted.
A memory from the broken one told me how she could try to escape us as smoke and shadow.
“Don’t shift,” I growled. “Won’t hurt them more if you don’t shift.”
She stilled in understanding.
I sped over the burning city and out onto the open plains, leaving the giants and the vampire behind. Threatening those men didn’t satisfy the way it should have. Neither did wounding that vampire. Our treluria would be upset if I needed to fight them. She wouldn’t trust us if I harmed them more than I had already. I knew this, and the broken one was sure of it. But she was ours. Nothing and no one would stand in the way of that.
In my arms, she was breathing in a fast but steady rhythm, which pleased me. Not only because it meant she was keeping herself calm, but because it meant she’d fed enough recently. She would need strength for when I mated her.
Irritation rose then, but not from me. The broken one wasn’t fully asleep. Hints of him came from the depths of my mind, drifting up like the murmurs of an angry dreamer on the edge of waking. I’d ripped control away from him in order to protect her, locked him away for his own good so he wouldn’t interfere and risk her. But still he was fighting me.
And he didn’t like the idea of taking her. Not unless she wanted that.
Yet that was nonsense. Of course we wouldn’t take her if she wasn’t willing. We would kill anyone who dared try such a thing. But our treluria would be willing. More than willing. Didn’t he understand that?
He doubted me. Emphatically.
My teeth ground, the jagged points scraping against one another. The broken one was foolish. Our treluria only needed to understand and then she would agree.
She was ours.
Theirs too, the broken one whispered.
I pushed him down harder, just as he so often tried to push me away.
And he went. After all, I was stronger than him. I always had been. I allowed him to push me down only because I chose to tolerate his needs.
But now we needed to mate our treluria and complete our bond with her. Only then would she be truly safe.
Far away, he murmured again of how the strange one named Ozias had bonded her too.
My irritation grew. I did not wish to tolerate his words any longer, and thus, I pushed him so deep down, no whisper of him remained.
Up ahead, a crumbling tower of stone stood atop a hillside. An outpost long abandoned and left to rot in the elements. But it was tall, with only one spiral stairway up its side, most of which had eroded to nothing now, and gave a view of the terrain for miles around. No one would approach without me seeing them nor be able to reach us at the top.
Except perhaps that vampire.
I dismissed the thought. The vampire was wounded. Even if he could find us, he would not dare confront me if he wished to survive, and thus he did not matter.
Here, our mate would be safe.
