Chapter 12
Rykr’s Home, Earth
The demons were gone. The fiends were fucking gone. It was hard for him to grasp. Rykr had never felt so grateful for anything in his life, but he also felt a niggling at the back of his neck. Why did it feel as if this wasn’t the end?
He sat on the beach with sand sinking under his weight as he watched the sunrise with Lucy sitting in front of him. Her back was cradled against his chest, exactly where she should be.
It was perfect except for one thing. The damned warhorse that had manifested in his mind was irritating the hell out of him. It fought for dominance, for freedom. He and the warhorse were going to have issues. He clenched his jaw and commanded it back.
Lucy laughed as she turned to look up at him. “You need to learn to work together, Rykr.” She stood to gaze down at him, her pretty green dress trailing in the sand as she planted her hands on her hips. “He’s a part of you, a manifestation of you in beast form. I don’t really know how else to explain it. You need to stop making Godlike demands of him. He will have all your arrogance, and he’ll also need freedom to run.” He stared up at his beautiful smiling female.
“We’ll see.” He smirked, standing.
She laughed and shook her head before eying him. “My beast needs to see him, Rykr.” Her pretty cheeks flushed, and he wasn’t sure he liked that particular look.
His body tensed. “Tell me you’re kidding, Lucy.” The look in her eyes said she wasn’t. It all seemed so wrong, forcing a demand from his lips. “What the hell am I supposed to do when the beast is dominating the fuck out of your warhorse?”
She bent at the waist, laughing, and he couldn’t help but still, basking in that sound. A decade was too long to go without hearing it. A minute was too long.
Eirykr. His father’s telepathic knock made him grit his teeth. He’d shared the news of the demons as soon as he could speak, but he figured they’d all give Lucy and him some time before they started the third degree.
Yes?
There’s another video.
He stiffened and then moved into the house with her hand in his. They were through the living room to his laptop in seconds. She’d kept up easily, which meant her speed was already increasing to match his.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
After a series of keystrokes that took too damned long, the video his cousin Niall sent started playing. There wasn’t much in the area of the video. It looked like it was recorded on a small laptop camera.
David was seated in a leather desk chair in a dimly lit room. Bookshelves filled the wall behind him. He leaned back, drumming his fingers somewhere out of sight. “Eirykr, I wished to send my congratulations on your bond with the lovely Lucy.”
Rykr felt a growl rumble in his throat. He didn’t like her name coming out of the demon’s mouth. Her soft hand slid over his arm as she watched the scene play out with him.
David tilted his head. “Please tell her it was my utmost pleasure to have found a way to return her power.”
Rykr sat and pulled his shocked mate into his lap as she said, “He’s lying.”
David wasn’t done. “Consider it my mating gift to you both. Please enjoy the life I’ve given you, and know that my kind and I have no animosity towards you or your Guardian family. Unless, of course, you choose to make us an enemy, which would be very… unfortunate.”
The male’s black eyes flamed with blue when he grinned. Another male crossed behind him, and Lucy gasped when the newcomer turned his head and winked into the camera. The demon mark was visible on the male’s neck.
The screen went black a second later.
He turned to Lucy, fury riding him. “Who is he?”
She shook her head. “He was mortal. I didn’t feel any power from him at all. And I don’t remember a tattoo.” She swallowed. “He’s the waiter from Slake who brought us drinks last night.” Her fingers fluttered at her stomach.
He covered her hand with his. She was shell-shocked, and that fact alone blurred his vision to red.
“How could he find a way to give me my power back?”
The dread he felt didn’t exactly ease either of them. The problem was that no one knew what David was truly capable of.
He reported it to his father while comforting her. He felt her scanning her entire body as if she were tainted somehow. He knew the feeling. “It’s okay. Era and Sirena are on their way.” The healers were about to descend along with all of their families.
He messaged his father. The other male is a waiter at Slake.
We know. We’re already looking into it, and we’ll be there soon. Before you ask, Niall wasn’t able to get anything from the video. Not where it came from or how it was sent to him specifically.
Rykr definitely felt the dread now. What if the demons had been in contact with David? He said he couldn’t find me, but that could have been all a misdirection.
I was thinking the same thing, his father replied.
He had to force his hold to stay soft on his female, even though his muscles were clenching with the need to hunt David and kill him. The implications were far too vast. The demons would know all the locations he’d been to. The Guardian manor. Lucy’s house. His family. Everywhere. Rykr stood up and set Lucy back in the chair gently, remembering the sensation that something had been in his home earlier when his focus had been on Lucy.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to check something.” He moved to the room he’d set up as an office but rarely used. He slid out a drawer as more fury filled him. He’d put the cursed medallion in there, spelled in place after his meeting with David in the cave.
“Mother fuck.”
A crisp white note sat in its place.
Best not to leave dangerous artifacts lying around. I’ll take this as my payment for your female’s power. Have a lovely life. Do not seek us out and you will have no need to fear us.
D
“It was all a fucking game. He played me the entire time.” Rykr growled. The male had been in his home, with powerful people guarding the place and his mate inside.
Lucy snuggled in front of him, wrapped in his arms. “We’ll figure it out.”
They were going to fucking have to.