Desire Unchained

“Yeah,” Wraith muttered. “Me, too …” He trailed off, frowning. “Something’s not right.”

Kynan kept his eyes on the warg, mainly to keep them off Gem. “Ciska, where did the warg come from?”

She used her red, whiplike tail to gesture at the Harrowgate, which was invisible to Ky’s human eyes but which he knew existed between two polished marble pillars on the far side of the emergency room. “I heard a noise, looked up, and saw him in the middle of his change.”

Wraith crouched next to the beast and laid his hand on its head. “Oh, man,” he whispered. “Oh, shit. I know this vibe. His thoughts …” His palm smoothed the fur between its ears in a way Ky swore was almost loving.

“Wraith? What is it?”

“It’s Shade,” he said. “This werewolf is Shade.”

Chapter 7

Blackness swirled around Shade, pinning him down as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He tried to roll over, but something more solid than the oppressive darkness was restraining him. He groaned. If he opened his eyes and found himself in Roag’s dungeon again …

“Shade, man, wake up.”

“E?” Shade dragged his lids open as far as they’d go, which wasn’t much. He peeked through slits at Eidolon, who was unbuckling the straps holding him down. Shade looked up at the chains and pulleys hanging from the dark ceiling, and felt a rush of relief. UG. He’d made it to the hospital.

Wait—why didn’t he remember anything, and why had he been restrained? How long had he been here? Where was … Runa!

Panic flared, but dimmed when he sensed her life force through the bond, sensed that she was safe, if angry, in beast form.

“What happened?” he asked, and shit, his throat was sore. He felt like he’d swallowed a spiny hellrat. Whole. And backward.

“Ah, well, looks like you got yourself mated.”

One hand came free, and he reached up to rub the telltale ring around his throat. “Wasn’t intentional.” When E’s brows rose, Shade shook his head. “I’ll explain later. Why am I strapped down?”

“You aren’t. All done.” Eidolon helped Shade sit up and offered him a cup of water, which he refused.

“You gonna tell me what happened?” And why was he na**d? Even his necklace was missing. Man, he was sick of waking up in strange places with no idea how he got there. Someone had laid a set of scrubs on the chair beside the bed, so he dressed while his brother ignored the question. “E? You’re freaking me out.”

“What do you remember?”

“Not much,” he said shakily. “I remember chaining Runa up.” Right after that, he’d hiked a few miles to his mother’s cave, something he did out of respect, making sure no other demons had set up shop, but that was a secret he kept to himself. “I entered a Harrowgate, and … and that’s all I remember.” He swore. “How long have I been here? She’s probably starving. I need to get food to her.”

“Runa’s your mate?” At Shade’s hesitant nod, E asked, “Werewolf?”

“How’d you know?” Sure, the fact that Shade had locked her away on the night of a full moon was a dead giveaway, but the way E was hedging, not meeting his gaze … it wasn’t like his brother. Something was seriously wrong.

“Last night, you stumbled into the ER. Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely, now that you mention it.” He struggled to put together the fragments of memories floating around in his head, like the one of him stepping out of the gate and into the reddish light that allowed for day-dwellers to see inside the hospital as well as those who lived in the dark … but after that, the image broke apart like smoke in the wind. “It’s pretty much all a blank.”

“That’s because the moment you exited the Harrowgate, you turned into a warg.”

Shade froze as he tied the drawstrings on his pants. “That’s a joke, right?” When E didn’t crack a smile, Shade inhaled sharply. “E, come on. We’re immune to the lycanthropic infection.”

“I’ll be sure to remind you of that tonight when you’re doing tricks for Milk Bones.”

Shade couldn’t swallow. Could barely breathe. Seminus demons were not prone to “turning.” The only way his species could become part of another species was to be born to it. Like Wraith, who was a full-blooded Seminus but also a vampire. Under the right circumstances, had Shade been born to a werewolf, he’d be a pure-blooded Seminus who would crave Kibbles and Bits three nights out of the month. But you couldn’t turn into a vamp or a warg.

“Tell me what happened, Shade. Where have you been for the last couple of days?”

Shade sank down onto his bed before his knees gave out. “Hell, E. I was in hell.”

A long silence dragged out. The familiar, muted blips of hospital equipment had nearly calmed him when E finally spoke. “You said your mate is chained. Where?”

“My place.”

E nodded, knowing exactly which place. “That’s why you changed so suddenly. The time difference between Central America and New York. All it took was stepping out of the Harrowgate. You completely missed the transition period.”

Yeah, Shade had seen a were or two shift from human to beast and vice versa, so he knew they didn’t just poof into shape. Apparently, he had. He must have been one pissed-off puppy once his shift was complete.

“Did I hurt anyone?”

“There were a few scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious.”

“Bro!” Wraith strode into the room and yanked Shade into a bear hug.

“Someone was a little worried about you,” Eidolon drawled as Wraith released Shade.

“Like you weren’t.” Wraith punched E in the shoulder and turned back to Shade. “Now, big bro, you have some explaining to do. Starting with what the f**k you were thinking getting yourself bonded.”

Shade shook his head. Which felt like it had been whacked with a baseball bat. “Trust me, that’s not where I need to start.”

“Where have you been?” Wraith crossed his thick arms over his chest, obscuring the raunchy phrase on his T-shirt. “We know you were in pain, and we know you were shielded.”

“Shielded? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I couldn’t feel you. Wondered why you guys didn’t come rescue me.” Roag would have been smart enough to install a damping spell around his castle to keep demons inside from sending out telepathic pleas for help, as well as to weaken the waves of misery that would be felt by those sensitive to it.

“Wraith nearly came out of his skin, he was so stressed.” E made it sound like he hadn’t worried, but the puffy shadows beneath his brother’s bloodshot eyes said otherwise. “Everyone here was worried about you and Skulk.” His voice lowered. “She is okay, right?”

“No.” Shade’s chest tightened around the empty hole Skulk’s death had left. “The ambulance run we went on was a trap. Skulk and I were taken by Ghouls.”

The temperature in the room plummeted as his brothers went dead still.

“Skulk?” E’s voice was barely a whisper.

Shade couldn’t say it. Not with the way his throat had closed up.

“Ah, f**k,” Wraith rasped.

Eidolon said nothing, merely closed his eyes and hung his head. He’d be offering up a prayer in the tradition of his Justice demon upbringing, a prayer asking for fair judgment of her soul and a satisfactory return to a new physical body.

Shade, whose religious upbringing had been less fundamentalist than Eidolon’s, wasn’t sure what to believe about the state of Skulk’s soul, but like many demons, humans, and vamps, Wraith didn’t pray to anyone or anything, and curses began to fall from his mouth, nasty invective in several different human and demon languages.

“I’ll kill the bastard who did it, Shade. I swear to you, I will mount his head in the specimen room.”

More curses spilled from him as his rage gathered. Wraith had two switches—I-don’t-give-a-f**k and I’m-going-to-kill-something—and any intense emotion threw one of them.

A voice screamed inside Shade’s head—Roag’s crackling, hoarse words saying that Wraith had been his target, not Skulk. “We’ve got to find him first.” He patted his shirt out of habit, seeking a pack of gum.

“Tell us everything,” Eidolon said, and Shade braced himself for their reactions.

“I woke up in a dungeon. Runa was with me.”

Wraith scowled. “Runa? That human you were boning last year?”

“Yeah. She’s not so human anymore. And now I’m bonded to her.”

“Why? How?”

This was so humiliating. “We were forced into it. By someone who knew about my curse. Someone who wants us all to suffer.” He patted his shirt again. First chance he got, he was putting in an order for a damned vending machine in this place.

“It was a vampire, wasn’t it?” Wraith asked.

It was a logical conclusion, given what had gone down between vamps and Seminus demons thanks to their father’s insane indiscretion. The vampires considered what he’d done to be the worst kind of offense, and Shade had to agree. What kind of sick bastard raped a woman during the transition between human and vampire, impregnated her, and then used his gift—the same gift Shade had—to keep her body alive so the fetus would grow, until she gave birth? He’d violated her repeatedly during her pregnancy and kept her in what had to have been a hellish stasis, not quite human, not yet vampire.

Not surprisingly, the female had gone mad, and Wraith had paid the price. Eventually, so had their father, once the vamps caught up to him.

“I wish the fiend responsible was a vampire.” He realized his hand was still at his chest, but he was rubbing it instead of patting for gum. The hole Skulk had left hurt, and talking about it only made it ache more. “It was Roag.”

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