AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She’ll get over it.” He wouldn’t, but Joelle would. “No one feels the mating bond with us unless they have demon blood.”
“An unproven opinion with incomplete data. Also, who says she doesn’t have demon blood?”
“She can’t. Have you seen her powers? They come from something good, something pure.”
“And our magic doesn’t?” Alys sounded as if she wanted to strangle him.
“You bring pain, and I bring destruction. She’s pure light and healing energy. Have you ever heard of a demon who canheal? Besides, the Order stole her from her family like they did a dragon. I’ve asked, and he’s the only one of his kind alive except his father. They steal originals. Why would they have taken her, kept her, used her when they could’ve grabbed one of any thousands of demon hybrids? She’s notlikeus.” No matter how much fate taunted him with the hope of a fated mate.
“Fine.” Alys made it obvious she felt anything but fine. “You don’t mind crushing her because you need to match with another demon hybrid? Then why didn’t you hook up with Yulia, the rival king’s daughter who they basically threw at you? Did her choosing her daddy’s general over you hurt you so badly that you’ll lash out at any other woman? Or do you think you’re too good for Joelle? Because whatever lie you’re telling yourself to avoid your mate, it’s not true.” She folded her arms over her chest. “How do you plan to fix this?”
“I’ll take her back to her family.” He put the emphasis on the last, hoping to remind her of priorities. Getting Alys back had been his focus for two years. Now, the kingdom had to come first.
“You mean her pretend family?”
“Alysa.” Her birth name, the one from her original family, rolled off his tongue. “Adopted family means as much as blood. I would hope you feel that way.”
“Not everyone’s as lucky with the people who take them in as I was. You, Mama, and Papa love me as any blood kin would—more because you and our mother gambledeverythingfor me.”
“Joelle’s brother seems to care for her.”
“He and his witch lover will lock her up again. What makes you thinktheycan protect her? Their Senate fell because they murdered their own leaders, some of them in supposed safehouses. We found tech in everything from tonight’s party—the party that the witches planned more than the humans.”
She was right. Joelle wouldn’t be safe with them. He didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want to put her through the despair that every other important woman in his life had suffered, but he couldn’t send her into harm’s way either. Yet staying away from her would be the only way to protect her from himself. “I’ll figure something out.” As soon as he could think past losing her as a mate.
Alys shook her head. “She’s not one of your mistresses who you can screw and send on her way with expensive jewelry or a designer purse.”
“I wouldn’t treat her like that.”
“No, you’ve done worse by casting off your virgin mate like she’s nothing.”
“Virgin?” His brain stalled on the word. What the hell had those two talked about in the short time they’d spent alone in his office?
“You said she spent her life imprisoned by the Order, chained and tortured for years so you do the macabre math in your head.” She paced the room. “You better pray to the gods that she’s a virgin because you don’t want to consider the alternative.”
White noise filled his head, blurring his vision and making his magic prickle in the air around him like an ugly incoming storm. He already planned to tear everyone in the Order apart for anything and everything they’d done to Joelle, but this? “I can’t…” His voice broke, going rough as his powers choked him, and he struggled for the constant control that kept everyone safe.
“I’m tired of hearing you say that you can’t. You’re the prince to the Maronov dynasty, the sole blood heir to the throne.” She didn’t bring up her adoption often, but when she did, it meant Alys had moved beyond angry into relentless. “I’ll call my therapist to ask for a trauma-sensitive referral for Joelle, someone loyal to our family who wouldn’t betray her privacy to anyone including you. Nita and I will take her home with us.” She headed out the door.
He hurried after her, not willing to let her end this conversation. Not with that little bombshell. “To your tiny apartment above the bookshop?”
Her clunky heels rang against the steel stairs. “It’s warded up the ass with hellhounds patrolling below. She’ll be safe there.”
His every instinct warred with what she’d said, and his mind rushed to create new plans with backup strategies for each, but everything fell away when his gaze landed on Joelle standing outside his archives, clutching her phone to her chest, and staring at him.
“What happened?” He hurried forward, forgetting his good intentions to leave her be. “What’s wrong?” He needed to touch her, to reassure himself that she hadn’t been hurt.
Her haunted gaze scared him. She pressed her lips together, and the tremble there made him want to hurt whoever had done this to her. “During the party…” Her voice sounded small. She inhaled, seemed to steady herself. “The Order ransacked my brother’s penthouse. I can’t go home.”
ChapterTen
Joelle didn’t want to think about what could’ve happened if she had stayed at the penthouse as she’d been supposed to. Her body shook, and she hugged herself to stop the shivers without success. If the Order had found her…
Alexei pulled her into his arms, and as irritated as she was by his earlier callousness, she didn’t yank away. Not when his hug felt warm, solid, and steady in her world that was anything but. He stroked her back, the earlier buzz of whatever tug he had on her powers rising to push through the shakes. “Tell me,” he said.
The story spilled out of her, no matter how she’d promised herself five minutes ago that she wouldn’t rely on him again, wouldn’t hope for something he couldn’t give her. “Nita fixed my phone so that I could call my brother. He said that when they got to the penthouse, someone had gone through room by room, tossing things and ripping apart furniture while they searched.”
“For what?”
