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“So what’s the plan?” he finally asks. “He won’t let us go. Jeremiah is literally psychotic. He’s had a taste of your power, and we can’t leave him alive. Not that I’ll shed tears over that, but we kill him, and we also run the risk of killing his harem by default. They have to go through withdrawal, and if they’ve been tethered to him for too long, quitting cold turkey might fry their brains. You only saw two, but I can promise you, there are at least fifty somewhere within this cave he’s made a home in.”
“This place is barely big enough for one.”
“This is just for one. There are probably fifty other rooms just like this one for all of his women. It’s an old trick to put the women in their own separate dwellings to temp down jealousy and keep them mindless, never letting them chip away at his thrall when they have no deep emotions.”
I huff out a breath. Why can’t my life be simple? Just one thing could go right on occasion. I don’t have to be tested at every corner.
One of the women returns, her eyes never glancing in my direction, as she grabs a red silk robe meant for a man from the couch. Ah, come on. Seriously? Could he be more cliché?
She walks back out without a backward glance, but I hear a squeal of surprise, and suddenly I see a woman and man walk in. Two very familiar faces.
Simone and Hank.
Slade’s people.
Relief instantly fills me.
I see the girl who had the robe now over Hank’s shoulder and unconscious, the robe no longer clutched in her hand. Simone is dragging another woman behind her.
She gives me a cold smile. “Well, what have you gotten yourself into now?”
Hank starts moving toward the back of the cave, pushing around like he’s searching for something near us.
“Just get us out before that creep from hell gets back,” Dice says, thoroughly relaxed now.
Her cruel eyes drift to him. “Nothing personal, incubus, since you’re actually the first thing to entertain me in far too many centuries to count, but I can’t pass up this opportunity,” she says, her eyes shifting back to me as an uncomfortable warning tingle spreads in my spine.
“Two of our girls went missing a few weeks ago,” she goes on, gesturing at both the downed women. “Slade will accept this as a consolation prize when I tell him I lost track of you in the woods while under a beetle attack.”
My spine goes completely stiff, and Dice releases a humorless laugh, shaking his head as though he can’t believe this.
“You followed us?” I growl.
Her eyes never leave mine. “My orders were to locate Gavin and kill him if he touched you in any way.” She moves closer to the cage, her gait predatory. “Nothing personal. It’s not because Slade wants you. I love the ruthless way he fucks me—” An ill-timed, and completely embarrassing, feral growl escapes me when she says those words, causing her lips to curl in a taunting grin. “—but that’s not what this is about. I’m not that kind of woman. I just simply can’t stand you, the self-righteous bullshit you represent, or the fact everyone wants to keep you alive at the risk of everything else, regardless of the fact you only get yourself in trouble and never actually help. You increase our chances of dying more and more with each day we sacrifice resources and valuable time to save your precious little ass.”
Hank doesn’t even pretend to care as he continues his search against the wall.
“So petty jealousy is going to cost me my life, even if it has nothing to do with Slade,” I remark coldly, taking a step back, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a pointless round of begging.
Obviously this tension between Slade and I is not very discreet.
I’ll blow this place to hell before I let Jeremiah near me.
“No, Ella Ice,” she says with a dark grin. “I’m not jealous. I just resent the hell out of your very spoiled existence.”
She backs away, grinning the entire time, as though she’s waited her entire life for this very moment.
Then Hank moves through the wall, and I watch as she grabs the other girl and follows him before I slam my fist into the iron bars. Reinforced with impenetrable magic, they don’t even budge.
“Slade’s going to pop her head off her shoulders like a zit,” Dice graphically states the second they’re gone. “Then he’ll rip off that crusty cum nugget’s dick and feed it to gators or something. Should make for an entertaining evening. I’ll bring the popcorn if you get us out of here.”
Really?! I thought I came up with crusty cum nugget!
Sooooo the least of my concerns right now.
“Slade won’t kill his people for abandoning us here,” I tell Dice absently, trying and failing to distract myself from the truth of Simone’s words still lingering in the air.
“Dice, can you get out?” I ask him quietly, staring at the doorway.
