They’ll know exactly how to punish you. How to hurt her.
They wouldn’t choose death. No, not at first.
They’d choose to make an example of him.
The other Empyreal was strong and he fought dirty. But Kyan had watched with cool detachment when Logan and his friends sparred. He had studied them, learned how Logan got blindly invigorated, how he went for the kill. So Kyan was able to block the punches, even if the impact bruised, splintering a bone in his forearm, cracking across his jaw.
Kyan let him get in the hits. He wanted him exhausted. He wanted Logan to feel like he was winning, and to stoke the archaic wildness Kyan had tamed. The one that the myths gotright.
It hadn’t been easy for him as a boy with this much power inside. When he’d transformed so young, his Empyrean power had almost shielded it. Calmed it. But the reliance on only letting himself feelanythingdeeply when he transformed had corked it all, turned that long-ignored power and emotion into a self-destructive numbness, now a thing capable of decimating.
As Logan struck, and struck, Kyan felt something shift inside, some strange precipice in his chest warming, tightening, like there was a place there for him to tip into. Not quite his Empyreal, but familiar enough, distracting enough, it gave him pause.
It gave Logan a moment to drive the knife he’d removed from an ankle strap deep into Kyan’s abdomen.
‘No!’ Nicole’s outrage was a near scream, echoed by the dog’s thunderous bark.
‘Stay there!’ Kyan ordered, fighting against the hot rush of blood and adrenaline. He grunted as the knife was ripped out and red spattered across the grass.
Blood? On this sacred grass?
That thing in his chest started carving him out, searing hot and feral as a star—
‘Damn it, Kyan!’ Nicole cried.
He knew she wanted to intervene, but not this time.
When he glanced back, the dog had her leg in a gentle bite to stop her. As if it knew the importance of this moment.
She’d saved him once.
He needed to prove to her – to himself – he could do the same.
Logan took another shot, a cracking punch across Kyan’s jaw that yanked a tendon in his neck like a live wire.
‘Pathetic,’ Kyan snarled as the Empyreal managed another quick stab to Kyan’s abdomen. That rage kept building and building. But he didn’t try to disarm Logan as he slashed for Kyan’s neck, jerking away only enough to stop it slicing the artery. ‘Using a knife instead of your own hands.’
Before Logan could get another slash, Kyan grabbed his wrist and broke it.
He kicked hard between the man’s legs, throwing the blade aside, and Logan dropped onto his knees, face contorted in pain. Kyan slapped him across the face, a purposeful action, hard enough Logan spat his own blood on the grass.
Then the Empyreal threw himself into Kyan, but not to take him down, to clip him out of the way as he ran for Nicole.
Nicole
SHE DIDN’T HAVE A MOMENT TO RUN, AND SHEDIDN’T NEED IT.
Before Logan could take two steps, Kyan had pinned him to the ground like an animal, knee in the Empyreal’s back.
Kyan’s – hermate’s– eyes were dark with fury. They burned with the wrath of a long-smothered epic warrior, born in magic and love and forgotten nobility and stripped of it all, only to have it collide again with him now, in a feral sort of vengeance.
‘Did you think I didn’tletyou track me here?’ Kyan asked. His voice had sunk to a timbre that shivered over her skin.
Surprise cut through Nicole’s worry.
Logan’s eyes narrowed as he thrashed, his powerful body straining.
‘You think you’re a good hunter?’ Kyan asked. ‘I’ve been hunting you since we were given these missions. I knew you would come to Ireland, so I found out where you were staying and chose a car rental place near your hotel. Iletyou see me so you could follow. Iletyou get close enough, and talk enough, and stab me enough that I could get my hands around your throat.’ Kyan knelt down, close to Logan’s ear, but Nicole could still hear the violence in his voice. ‘I played you like a fucking game offidchell. Threaten mymate, and youdie.’
