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A deep roar shook the room, one she recognized. Hope and fear collided inside her, crashing through her senses with more force than any magic.
Alexei.
ChapterTwenty
Alexei tore through the guards on the ship, letting rage drown out the fear for his mate. Had he arrived too late? Would she still be here? He’d come as fast as he could. Already, several small boats sped away from the ship, the passengers dressed in hooded rain slickers. Noxx could be among those leaving, and the possibility infuriated him, but Joelle had to be his sole priority.
He’d tried a low-profile assault on the Order while keeping her safe, and what had it gotten him? No closer to stopping the havoc those humans caused, and he’d lost his mate.
He wouldn’t fail her.
Not again.
Throwing one guard over the ship’s edge to the churning waves below, he beat another down with the man’s own gun. He brought death to those who would harm her without regret, without remorse. Blood slicked his skin, but still he didn’t stop or slow. He couldn’t until he found her, held her, claimed her.
Gunfire blasted, and he took cover, ripping a tank from the wooden boards beneath him to hurl into the shooters. Wind whistled through the open portals and endless railings, sweeping grit into his eyes. Sea spray stuck to him, plastering his tactical uniform against him. A vivid flash of torn cloth caught around a pole caught his attention.Peach. Joelle’s pretty jumpsuit that had looked like summer and sunshine. They’d cuffed her, kidnapped her, stripped her.
Fury burned beneath his skin, coaxing his powers to the surface. No, he wouldn’t unleash them fully, not if doing so meant risking her. A careful, controlled annihilation of the Order operatives onboard would have to suffice.
Heading below deck, he shoved his way along the cold corridor, the dull steel spattered with the humans he ripped through one after another. A couple fled, screaming surrender against the pounding of boots on metal grates. Those cowards could wait. He wouldn’t waste time with a chase. Not with Joelle in danger.
A slender guard tossed a grenade, and Alexei flipped it back at the man, slamming the hatch on his attacker and holding it shut with his body weight and demon-blooded strength as theboomdetonated from the other side of steel. The stench of smoke and burned flesh gagged him, the taste of metal sliding over his tongue. His ears rang with a blaring tinny sound that he couldn’t shake, but still he moved from door to door, checking each room until he found one that wasn’t empty.
The stink of decay and bleach burned his nose and made him sick. The dead had been piled here, one atop another and abandoned. A woman had been propped against a folded bunk, her sightless eyes open. Blood pooled in her lap where a finger had been severed. A sparkling earring to match the one sent by the Order hung from her right ear.
Kyle’s mom. Damn.
His chest went heavy with grief and guilt. Kyle would be gutted. At least he’d be able to tell the guy that he would be a vengeful prince, if not one capable of saving his mother.Add yet another tragic failure to his royal shortcomings. His cousin’s goblin crown with its golden thorns that bled the ruler made sense. Alexei carried all his people’s suffering as their leader. Once he saved Joelle, he would find Kyle and help the man avenge his mom’s death.
Anger chased misery, a heady cocktail that tunneled his vision to cutting through the guards without mercy. He let out a warrior’s roar, one that shook the grates beneath his feet and the pipes running over his head. Guards with half a brain fled, paid mercenaries who’d likely never seen a demon prince in full battle mode.Weaklings. Given the tight space, he hadn’t even unfurled his wings or horns. They knew nothing of demon wrath, but they would.
“Alexei.” Joelle’s scream cut through his bloodlust and haze.
Hope sent his heart hammering and his pulse thrumming in his head. Hehadto get to her. No one would stop him. He reached for the next guard, pounding him into the wall.
Where had her voice come from?Zeroing in on the sounds above the ringing in his ears, he could make out a humming of electricity, the steady swell of waves, and shouted orders that came from behind a door to his right.That one.
Trying the knob, he brought up his gun as he pushed. Four men surrounded Joelle, all with guns pointed at her. Cuffed and barely covered in a hospital gown, she struggled to shield a bigger body strapped to the table below her. Her skin glowed a steady blinking of symbols, dimming with each glimmer. Someone had knocked the braided crown in her hair loose, and her long strands tangled around her, sticking to her and coated in sweat and blood. He hoped to all the hell dimensions that it wasn’therblood.
The man closest to her aimed a gun at her head. “Put the gun down, Maronov. Or she dies.” The bastard would die first. Alexei would make sure of it.
Lowering the pistol to a cart, he slowly raised his hands. Foolish humans. As if he needed more than magic to take them out. Right now, he would get them to move their weapons off Joelle and onto him as the bigger threat. Then he could figure out the best method to give them slow, painful deaths without endangering her.
“Alexei.” Her hushed whisper cracked on a sob. “It’s Kyle…they’ve, she…”
He put the unspoken pieces together.Kyle.She protected Kyle, trying to heal him.
“It’ll be okay, angel.” He kept his tone level, using his businessman-in-charge voice despite the gore covering him.
“It’s a trap,” she said through her tears. “I’m so sorry I—”
He stopped her there. “You did what you believed you had to for our people. We’ll talk about it after.” After he got her and Kyle away from here.
“Kneel, Maronov,” the guard beside her said.
“I kneel for none but my mate.” He needed a strategy, but how to shake the room apart and flood it with lava without Joelle being hurt? Could she heal burns that severe? Could he reach her before the molten fire ate away the table holding her and Kyle?
The asshole pressed his gun to her temple. So much for dying first. The man had earned a long, drawn-out execution. Alexei calculated the timing of the rack and trigger pull, the possibility of getting to her or igniting the man before the gun went off. His chances didn’t look good for anyone. He could play along for now.
