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CATO
“Okay, kings of the shit heap…” The creak of our cell door had to be intentional—nothing sounded that screechy and obnoxious in this day and age unless the fuckers left it unoiled on purpose. “On your feet.”
My eyes peeled open at the rustling around me, and I tipped my head back against the sandstone wall with a sigh, watching Aedan and Geralt shuffle to their feet. Naked and cuffed, same as me, they stretched their muscular limbs, their taut torsos and toned backs, twisting and arching and groaning—but they waited.
Neither made a move for the open door.
As alpha of the alphas, I dictated when we moved and where.
Centuries under our belts together, we might have been blood brothers, sons of the apocalypse and destiny, but the group hierarchy remained intact no matter what miserable realm we found ourselves in.
My gaze cut to the ten humans in black uniforms waiting for us on the other side of the salted iron bars. The shitstain with lifts in his boots—to put him on par with his six-foot-plus cohorts, of course, the sin of pride alive and well here—loitered in the doorway brandishing a cattle prod, demonic and Enochian sigils alike carved into the metal. Too young for his station, too weak to wield the unlimited power gifted by this prison, he tapped his prod at the metal frame with a sneer.
“You wanna fuck a magpie or not?”
My eyes narrowed, and I ground my teeth. We all thought Hell was degrading, but there was quite literally nothing worse than being controlled and corralled by fucking humans.
Ten days ago, the largest volcano on Ether Island erupted. Not catastrophic, mind you, but the rupture on this Pacific Ocean jewel cracked the hellmouth inside, opening an unsanctioned door between Hell and Earth, and from it spilled the dark legion. A trickle of the thousands upon thousands camped out at hellmouths across the pit clawed through magma and fire, eager to raid Earth, taint it, desperate to satisfy our Lord Lucifer’s distaste for humanity.
There were rules, of course, for demons who wished to walk among humans. Lucifer had signed treaties and all that nonsense.
But to the legion—
Human contracts, human laws, meant so little.
Drunk on imported fae wine and high on bloodlust, the boys and I joined the chaos division. We beat demons and other hellions aside to burst through—to taste the human world after a few decades in the pit.
Unfortunately, humanity had gotten its shit together since our last gruesome visit.
Somesupernatural species had revealed themselves to the world at large—fucking vampires, spoiling it for everyone—and allies were made.
In short, they were ready for us.
Not expecting us, sure, but Ether Island had been a hub for supernatural elite and human crime lords for centuries. Prisons occupied the southern tip of the forested island, while debauchery of the highest order reigned up north. A paradise on Earth for all manner of sinful pleasures.
And they didn’t need some marauding demonic legion spoiling that for them, apparently. Demons craved dominion. Hellions just wanted to feed on blood and screams and fear.
As sons of leviathans and aristocratic demonesses, we three fit somewhere in the murky middle. There hadn’t exactly been a plan. Drunk, high, bored, we saw an opening and took it, stabbing and shoving and fighting our way out.
We barely breached the shoreline with its crystalline blue waters before we were hit with human infantry and air strikes, spells to peel flesh from your bones and mages thirsty to prove themselves. Wolves the size of bears and dragons with eternity in their scales. Salt, holy water, and demon traps in the sand.
Fucking waste of time, this raid.
As our human escort glared on, I fiddled with the golden cuffs snapped around my wrists. Those captured alive had been collared, the insignia and magic in the metal binding our demonic sides—akin to declawing a lion, I suppose—and brought to Ether Island’s high-security male supernatural prison. Housed in the old holding cells underground, we waited, on their timeline now, as humans hauled dribs and drabs of the legion back to the volcano and forced them through the hellmouth.
Clawing through the lava had been… something.
Doing it sober would be such a headache.
Another thunderous clang of that silly little cattle prod to the bars of our cell, followed by a purposefully deepened: “Move!”
Tiny man with a tiny cock—had it not been for these cuffs, I’d gut him first.
Instead, I eased off the ground and stretched my stiff limbs, ass asleep, then took a few moments to crack my back and jaw while my blood brothers held their ground. Our human captors recognized us as a package deal from the start, like many in the legion. Sometimes the only way to survive the raw wilderness of Hell was to ally up—and blood bonds were a very permanent means to that end. Fortunately for us, we’d never fallen out.
Escaping a blood bond—nasty business.
While they realized that we needed to be housed together or no one would get any sleep, all eyes initially fell on Geralt to call the shots. I glanced his way as I strolled through the boxy prison cell with a hole in the corner and not much else. With long hair icy white as Lilith’s heart, skin black as a suffocating smoke, Geralt was built like a mountain, largest of the lot with his leviathan side’s lethal claws locked in place. Many failed to realize, both in the legion and beyond, that it wasn’t brawn that made a king.
