The bond between Sorcha and me snapped taut, a visceral pull that nearly dropped me to my knees. Her fear slammed into me, sharp and raw, and my vision went red.
“You fucking keep her alive. I’m on my way.”
I didn’t think or breathe, instead I sprinted. The SUV was parked twenty feet away, but I moved faster, the world a blur aroundme. Rage coursed through me, pounding with every step, every heartbeat screaming one thing…mine.
Draugr was already moving, his longer stride cutting in front of me. He slid into the driver’s seat as I wrenched the passenger door open, teeth bared, my chest heaving. “Get in before you tear someone apart who isn’t the enemy,” he snapped, but his voice was steady, the one tether keeping me from losing myself completely.
The door slammed, and we shot forward. Tires screeched, the SUV fishtailing before Draugr wrenched it straight. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms as I tried to cage the fury boiling inside me.
“Keep your head,” Draugr barked, his voice like steel, eyes cutting toward me. “If you lose it before we get there, you’re useless to her.”
“Useless?” I snarled, the word ripping out of me. “They want to hurt my woman. They’re trying to take her from me; I will kill every last one of them.”
Draugr’s jaw flexed, a vein ticking in his temple, but his hands stayed steady on the wheel, knuckles white against the leather. “Save it for when we arrive,” he growled, voice clipped, commanding. “If you lose it now, you waste it. You burn it out. And then what? You show up useless, and she pays for it. Is that what you want?”
The words hit like a blade to the ribs. My body jolted, every muscle straining against the seatbelt as the SUV roared down the road. The fury didn’t leave, it couldn’t, but it shifted, compressed into something sharper, something I could wield instead of something that would destroy me before I even reached her.
“She’s mine,” I snarled, chest heaving, the bond pulsing so hard it felt like my ribs might crack around it. Fear and adrenaline surged through me from her end, her fear was raw, desperate. I could taste it, feel it crawling under my skin like live wires. Every second she wasn’t in my arms was a second too long. “I won’t lose her.”
Draugr didn’t flinch. His gaze stayed on the road, predator calm. “You don’t let anyone win when it comes to your mate. Ever.”
That word…mate, wasn’t just truth, for a vampire it was law. And hearing it in Draugr’s voice, the quiet conviction that came from centuries of blood and loyalty, snapped something inside me back into place.
My hands unclenched from fists, though they shook with the effort. My nails were already slick with my own blood, crescents carved into my palms from how hard I’d been digging in. I flexed them once, twice, forcing my breathing into something that didn’t sound like an animal ready to tear through a cage.
His words cut through the haze, just enough. Just enough to keep me in the seat instead of ripping the door off its hinges and sprinting toward her like the feral beast clawing inside me demanded.
I leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees, eyes burning holes into the road ahead. “They don’t get to win,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. My voice was a rasp, shredded by the rage I was holding back by the thinnest thread.
“No,” Draugr agreed, his tone like iron. “But only if you make it there intact.”
But fear, that was the part I couldn’t kill. The thought slithered in, insidious and poisonous. What if I was too late?
What if the SUV had already been forced off the road? What if the bond I felt between us snapped not because she fought me, but because she was gone?
My chest tightened like a vice, my heart hammering so hard I thought it would split my ribs. I could see it in my head, vivid as a nightmare. Sorcha, her broken body, her scent of wildfire and defiance snuffed out.
And I knew with a certainty that chilled me to the marrow that if that happened, I wouldn’t survive it. Not truly. I might keep breathing, keep fighting, but it would all be hollow. She was my mate. My soul was already anchored in her, bound tight, and if she was gone…
Draugr must have felt the shift in me, because his voice came again, rough but steady. “Focus, Lucien. Fear feeds them but rage will kill them. You know which one you need.”
I bared my teeth, the growl tearing from my throat like gravel dragged over stone. He was right. He always was when it came to war, but this wasn’t war. This was worse as this was personal.
The SUV screeched around a bend, tires spitting gravel, and then I saw it, there were headlights skewed across the road, Troy’s black vehicle slammed sideways against the guardrail, sparks of crushed metal glinting under the moon. Shadows moved around it, too many to count at first, their forms jagged and wrong, glowing eyes cutting through the dark.
Fucking Demons.
The sight detonated something inside me. The fear vanished, replaced by the kind of violence that blacked out thought.
“Stop the fucking car.” My voice was a rasp of steel.
Draugr slammed on the brakes, and before the tires even finished screaming, I was out, the door torn from its hinges as I launched into the night.
The bond screamed inside me, Sorcha’s panic a raw, keening pulse that drove me forward like a spear.
The first demon lunged, a gaping maw slick with black saliva, and I hit it mid-charge, my hand ripping through its throat, bone and sinew crunching as black blood sprayed across my chest. I didn’t slow.
Another came from the left, claws raised, and I caught it by the skull, slamming it into the pavement hard enough to crack stone. It shrieked, twitching, until I snapped its spine with a twist of my wrist.
