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Saint wanted to see Octavius laugh, see him relax, see him run, see him fuck with abandon. He’d be a wild, brilliant creature. If he just relaxed and forgot all the rules keeping him chained, he might enjoy their last few weeks on this earth. He’d have to take his head out of his ass first though. Which didn’t seem likely anytime soon.
“I knowhurt, and he’s hurting,” Jay remarked, also watching him approach.
“Yes, he is.”
That hurt went back a long way. But more recently, Raiden was the problem. Saint didn’t care for the Brotherhood per se, but it seemed as though this Raiden had been undermining them for years and using Octavius’s feelings for him to do it. Saint despised manipulators.
“Saint.”
His name pierced his thoughts, rudely interjecting, but also tickling a shiver down his spine that wasn’t unpleasant.
“Don’t look over, but there’s someone in the woods.”
Saint looked. And at first, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Dusk light gave the air a strange orangey hue where it touched the trees. Mist lifted off wet branches. And there, among the mist, where it swirled, someone was trying very hard not to be seen.
“Jay, I’m going to get out of this car. I want you to pull away and keep on driving. Understand? Just keep going. I will find you later.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.” Saint opened the car door and climbed out. He took one last glance at Jay’s angry, fearful face through the window and closed the door. Jay pulled the car onto the road. Its taillights blinked, and then it vanished around a corner.
“Mikalis?” Octavius whispered, stopping beside Saint.
“Yes.”
“How does he keep finding us?”
Saint shook out his hands and rolled his shoulders, readying for impact. “He’s my sire. He’ll always find me.”
Saint hadn’t fed, not enough to fight Mikalis alone. He should have snacked on a motel guest when he’d had the chance. He glanced sidelong at Octavius, who did seem a little steadier than he should, considering all they’d been through. The sneaky prick had gotten blood from somewhere.Do not drink from the vein.Rule broken. Just a few more to go and he’d be down in the dirt with Saint.
“What?” Octavius gave him a double glance. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No reason whatsoever.” The sneaky little wolf.
“Whatever you’re smirking at—”
Octavius vanished midsentence—or more accurately, the briefest of shift in air currents indicated something was wrong before Mikalis tore Octavius from the spot beside Saint, and in less than a second, slammed him into one of the trees skirting the edges of the gas station. The tree crumpled and toppled forward, cracked in half at the trunk. Octavius knelt at its base, clutching his middle.
Where was Mikalis?
Saint spun, searching the tree line for movement in the shadows. In his peripheral vision, he noticed a few of the gas station staff emerge from the store to gawk at the fallen tree.
If Mikalis didn’t care about witnesses, then Saint certainly didn’t. He dropped his fangs. “Come on then, you want me? Show yourself!”
There was a blur to his right. He braced, and Mikalis slammed into him, as though a great hook had latched on to his back and tugged him through the air. He struck glass, heard it shatter, then landed inside the store against a stack of canned goods. The shelf buckled, cans rained. Saint reeled, stumbling as he doubled over, and then he saw Mikalis’s shadowy blur surge forward under the bright convenience store lights. Saint snatched him by the neck. The act of getting his hand on him yanked him into physical form. Saint swung him around and slammed him to the ground with enough force to buckle the concrete floor.
Mikalis hissed and lunged, breaking out of Saint’s grip. Teeth snapped. Saint recoiled, avoiding those deadly daggers, and staggered backward. If Mikalis managed to sink those fangs in and deliver a shot of venom, it would all be over. Broken bones, Saint could heal. But he couldn’t heal an envenomed heart.
He stumbled into another rack of goods, and stretching, he popped a few bones back into place.
“You’re weak, Saint.”Mikalis’s voice filled his head, not unlike Octavius’s little skill. But Mikalis’s voice was a thousand times louder.
“I don’t suppose you’ll go easy on me?”
Mikalis shimmered into solid form in the middle of the aisle in front of him. His blue eyes blazed, his jaw-length curled hair somehow managing to look windsweptandstyled. He was as viciously handsome now as the day they’d met, long, long ago. He’d come to Saint as a god then. And nothing had changed. Mikaliswasa god. But not one of the good ones.
Mikalis started forward, walking casually, as though he wasn’t about to tear into Saint and have his ashes rain all over a no-name convenience store.
