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“You got it.”
The wards were still down.
Good. It made Maddox’s race up the stairs easier.
The door was open when he reached the sixth floor. Since he’d never been inside the building before, he’d been worried about picking the right one. He ran straight toward it, coming to a screeching halt when he went a few feet past the open threshold.
The first thing he saw was Evangeline. She was curled in a ball on the floor. A ring of diamonds surrounded her, with a barrier that extended past her torso.
It was a cage.
Cilla had trapped his mate in a cage.
The growl tore out of him, followed by a snarl of a wolfish demand: “Let her go.”
Evangeline’s head jerked up, hope and despair fighting a battle on her lovely features. Considering she had to have been a witness to the way Cilla launched Colt through the sixth-floor window, no wonder she couldn’t express how happy she was to see him. She was probably terrified that he would be next.
Not gonna happen.
As soon as she saw him, Cilla rose up from the couch, folding her hands primly in front of her black and white suit.
“Maddox.” She waved. She actually waved. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“Let. Her. Go.”
Cilla smiled coyly. “You don’t honestly think that Alpha nonsense is going to work on me, do you? It never worked when we were kids, and I don’t think we should start now. Mates must always be on an even footing. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“No,” snarled Maddox.
“No?”
He gestured at Evangeline, enraged that Cilla would dare put his mate in a cage. “I would never think my mate is my equal. My Evangeline is so much better than I was, than I am, than I’ll ever be. And you took her from me!”
The smile slid off of Cilla’s face. Her expression went stormy. “She’s not your mate, Maddox.”
“She’s always been my mate.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?” he snarled. “You’re nothing to me now that you’ve crossed the line and caged my mate.”
“Nothing?” Cilla recoiled as if he had slapped her in the face. “I used to be your best friend.”
“When we were kids! If you were my friend, you never would’ve tried to hurt the woman that I love. And, for that, I’m sorry, because you used to be my friend, Priscilla.” The fury inside of Maddox was surprisingly controllable because, for once, his wolf wasn’t fighting him to be more vicious than the man wanted to be. To his beast, there was hierarchy, and there was pack, and, most importantly of all, there was the mate bond. No one—absolutely no one—could be allowed to fuck with the mate bond. “The laws are clear. You tried to take my mate from me. Whatever your reasons, whatever you thought you were going to do… it doesn’t matter. You took my mate. You have to pay for that.”
With a scoff, Cilla held her hands up. “You say that now. But she’s not your mate.”
The bite on Evangeline’s neck said otherwise. “Cilla, stop this shit. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
She lifted her chin, unafraid. “Do you see my diamonds, Maddox?”
How could he miss them? “You turned them into a cage for my mate. Of course I see them.”
“There’s so many of them. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Do you know how long I had to work for that many diamonds? What I had to do? Diamonds don’t come cheap, but it was worth it if I could have you.”
Maddox froze. A fresh wave of that dark stench—pure fucking evil—rolled off of Cilla, stretching out toward him, unfurling past him as he reached for Evangeline’s huddled form. “What are you talking about?”
“For years… almost fifteen years now, I scrimped and I saved and I whored myself out for anyone with a diamond. Lone witch, they called me, all because I worked on my own, saving every gem I earned. Diamonds amplify a witch’s power, I’m sure you know that. And I needed as much strength as I could get if I was going to create a bond.”
