Rysten was the first to move, taking a single step through the door. He watched her with caution. Like she was a wild animal.

And maybe she was, but it was too late for his caution now.

Or his pretty words.

“Why don’t we go back to the room, love…” His voice trailed off when she started laughing. It began as a low husky sound. Not quite as cold as she had been in the past, but the callousness was still there.

“Do you really believe that will work on me now?” she asked him, a very self-assured smirk applied itself to her lips.

If they didn’t know it yet, they were in deep shit.

“I assumed you wished to claim your next mate,” Rysten said carefully. He didn’t declare himself it, but he insinuated.

“There lies the problem,” the beast said. She brought her arms up over her head, cracking several joints in her body. She arched into the stretch, completely and utterly naked, only covered by a thin film of black. “You make too many assumptions. Just because she is young does not mean she cannot make choices for herself, yet you only listen when I am here.”

Oh shit. I knew where this was going, but for once…I didn’t really disagree.

“We do not mean to make decisions for her—”

“War,” she interrupted like Rysten wasn’t speaking at all. From the doorway, Laran straightened a little, but did not approach. “Do you wish to come with me, or join your brothers?”

She sounded almost bored in how she asked it, but I don’t think the tone was fooling anyone. She was giving him a choice, while telling them she was leaving.

“Join my brothers?” he asked slowly. He was much better about teetering the line of respect.

“For the hunt,” she supplied. He stayed still as stone, watching her with a troubled gaze.

“Don’t make me do this, Ruby,” his thoughts pleaded. He still didn’t know we could hear.

“And you, Famine? Would you wish to join me?” the beast continued, giving nothing away.

“She intends to run,” our other mate projected.

They thought they could stop her. She found this amusing.

Almost as much as the tick in Julian’s jaw. At this rate, he would crack a tooth if he continued to clench so hard.

“Very well,” she said after several seconds passed. “I’ll be on my way, then.”

A hidden smile crossed her lips as she took her first step forward and Rysten dived.

In the blink of an eye, she slammed the palm of her hand into his sternum and he went flying—straight into the mirror.

Silence filled the air until the other three registered what had just happened.

They exchanged uneasy glances, as if deciding who would try next.

Of course, with their size, the three of them couldn’t all enter the bathroom and expect to fight. And while they may be born and bred warriors, the beast wasn’t above playing dirty.

Allistair stepped forward and smiled, but there was nothing gentle in it.

“Little succubus,” he murmured, “do you wish to play?” His voice brushed against her skin, but she wouldn’t be thrown by his persuasion so easily. No matter the promise it held.

“Very much so, my golden one,” she purred back, smirking with more than feminine sexuality. Allistair raised a hand, palm open, as if to offer an olive branch. She cocked her head and laughed a dark sound. “But I think we have different games in mind.”

He lunged for her at the same moment she ducked. Spinning, she skated just beneath his grasp and landed a kick at his back. Allistair, too, went flying. He crashed into the bathtub, his head banging the porcelain as he did. A crack appeared and a chunk of it fell, but he looked unharmed.

The beast smirked down at him, feeling the last two enter the bathroom while she did. She couldn’t see them, but she felt them. Their power. Their emotions. Their very essence called out to us. To her. She turned with a well-aimed punch to the jugular, only to hit the palm of Laran’s hand. He wrapped his fingers around her fist.

“Don’t make me do this, Ruby,” he said, trying to pull her in. Claimed mate or not, he would try to stop her. What they all failed to see was that that’s why we were in this position to begin with. I gave, and gave, and gave. I did what was asked of me. I walked away from my old life.

But I would not walk into my new one as a prisoner.

Rysten made the first move when he tried to physically subdue her.

She had washed her hands of whatever happened next, long before the first punch was thrown.

Using power I hadn’t known I possessed, the beast looked up at him and leaned forward. Taking a light breath, she exhaled slowly, forming a small “O” with her lips.

Blue smoke saturated the space around him and he inhaled upon reflex, not realizing his mistake until it was too late.

“Kneel,” she commanded.

And Laran—the Horseman of War—one of the most powerful beings on this world and the next—fell to his knees before his queen.

He released her hand as if compelled by whatever spell she put on him and lowered his head in respect. She gave him a glance that no one would see. It was as close to affection as this creature could possibly get.

“You did not wish to harm me, War. I will not punish that,” she murmured, just a hairsbreadth above a whisper. Laran groaned but did not move. She had full control over his actions. For how long, I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling we were going to find out.

“Please don’t maim any of them. They’re rather pretty how they are,” I told her. The beast let out a cold laugh.

“I have no intentions of hurting that which is mine,” she replied.

“Ours,” I corrected.

She shrugged. To her, the semantics didn’t matter. We were two beings in one body; some things were bound to be a bit difficult.

Only one now stood between her and the door.

The only one who had yet to speak.

But his silence spoke more than words could.

“Do you think you can stop me, Death, where your brothers could not?” she asked him.

He stood tall and impenetrable. His clearly defined muscles stretching beneath the thin cotton shirt. The fitted black lounge pants really accentuated his assets.

While I admired his physical traits, the beast appraised him with cool, calculating eyes. Out of all the Horsemen, he would be the hardest to get past.

Not only was he the strongest, Death was the most resistant, fighting his own attraction and the inevitable claiming.

The thought alone infuriated her, but she kept that fire close. Contained.

“Why?” he demanded, not answering the question. “Why are you doing this?”

He should have known better. His bare feet padded across the marble floors, staying just out of her reach. Circling her, but not attacking.

The beast cocked her head and watched him closely.

Trailing him where he walked was an almost invisible silver mist. It clung to his pores, brushing against his skin, filling the air with something not sweet…but sharp. Painful.

Kama.

He was giving off kama.

Did he even realize it? Did he know that he was provoking her?

They liked to talk like we were the ultimate predator. Yet, they seemed to have such a blatant disregard for these things. I was a succubus and the beast, in full transition. I wanted sex and blood and all things unholy.

But her? There was only one thing she wanted more.

She had waited twenty-three years to be let out of her cage and she had patience in spades because of it.

“I am a queen,” the beast replied. “But you four seem to have forgotten that along the way. I do not exist to be put in a cage because you have deemed me too powerful. You were created to balance me, were you not?”

He didn’t answer, but his unreadable features were slowly cracking under pressure. He liked to pull his emotions inward and bury them. To wear a mask as cold as the marble beneath her feet.

But even marble could break.

“How would you like to be put in cage? Locked in a room and told what to do? Because that’s exactly what you did to us.” She motioned to her own naked body.

“That was not the intent,” Julian said slowly through clenched teeth.

“Intent matters not,” she replied. Another fissure appeared in his armor, his emotions leaking through. He was not afraid of us. Of her. But he did feel other things.

Anger. So much anger. Unlike us, who felt fire in our belly. His wrath was cold. Desolate. All-consuming.

And right now, she was the cause of it. He wanted nothing more than to tie her up and show her what a monster he was. To lock her away from both worlds, prophecies be damned. Earth and Hell be damned. He wanted to show her what a true mate could bring and make her forget about all the humans that ever thought they could keep her. To purge them from her memory. To let her feel the bite of his teeth and the crack of a—

A barrier slammed into me, closing me off from his emotions. Julian tilted his head to the side and examined her closely.

“Ruby isn’t fighting you,” he murmured, more to himself than anything. “Why isn’t she fighting you?”

Could he feel me in his mind? Could he sense that the beast did not hold me prisoner in my own?

She cocked her head and smiled. “There is much to be done before we return home. She knows that.”

He narrowed his emerald eyes, the anger within him seeping through.

He didn’t understand. None of them would. It was up to us.

I would transition and claim my mates, but the beast knew things I didn’t. She could teach me things they couldn’t. Make me stronger. We shared this body, and for once, our interests overlapped, even if the reasoning wasn’t exactly the same.

“It’s the transition. Ruby wouldn’t run,” Julian replied. “She knows she’s safer—”

“Stop telling me what is safe!” I snapped mentally. Julian blanched like I’d struck him, and the beast smiled.

“You see, Death, I am not the only one that is tired of this. You chafe against the inevitable. You impose where it is not your duty. We want a partner. A mate. Not a bodyguard.”

Without preamble, she bolted through the door, faster than Death could stop her, but not so fast that he couldn’t react. She made it to the living room before he appeared in front of her, walking out of the shadows.

“There’s nowhere to go and you cannot teleport,” he said. Like that would stop her. Had he learned nothing? “Stop this, Ruby—”

“Why?” the beast asked, her voice turning cold. “So you can chain me up? Lock me away?” she asked mockingly, and his face darkened. He took three large steps toward us, his presence filling up the space. In his chest was a tempest of emotions, so strong, so thick that I could drown in them if not careful.

Still, she let him closer. Close enough his shirt brushed against her bare breasts. They pebbled against the friction and the ever-insistent fire burned. She looked up at him with a challenge because we weren’t the only ones that had shit to work on here.

Julian stared down at her, silver particles falling from his skin. She leaned forward and inhaled deeply, a frenzy starting in her chest. His pupils dilated. Another fissure in his carefully composed mask exposed as his hard cock pressed into her belly. Her lips brushed up the hard contour of his jaw, the stubble doing deliciously wicked things to my imagination.

A growl started in his chest as he reached out and grasped her hips, pulling her closer. His control was so very close to snapping. She had every intention of letting him unravel so that we would have to put him back together. “You want me, Death?” her breath whispered across his skin, promising what was to come. “Come and get me.”

The words had hardly left her lips when his hands tightened. Just as with Laran, she breathed out a heavy blue fog that he foolishly inhaled.

His hands went slack as if by command and she easily stepped out of them.

“That’s a nifty trick,” I said.

“I’ll teach you how to do it. How to do everything, once I take care of them.”

The other three Horsemen had recovered and spread themselves around the living room. Slowly closing in around her.

They muttered words in a language neither of us understood. First Laran. Then Allistair. Followed by Rysten. And Julian had regained his composure. A thread snapped around them as the four moved closer.

Binding. They were trying to bind her.

I wasn’t sure how that possible, given what they were. None of them possessed powers to bind someone. Allistair could make me want to fuck him till I died. Laran could kill me using every element known to man. Rysten could inflict any disease on me. Julian could hold me, my spirit, between here and the veil, never allowing peace.

But none of them could bind me.

It shouldn’t be possible, and yet, that is what they were about to do.

Laran withdrew a blade and sliced open his palm. Power that was not my own crackled through the air. He passed the blade to Allistair. She looked up at him with destruction in her eyes. Allistair was her second mate, but they had barely spoken on it because of the circumstances in which it came about. I could tell not by his eyes, but by his emotions, that he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to force some kind of binding on me.

But when the beast looked at him, she was not forgiving or understanding.

He sighed under his breath in frustration, but at least had the balls to look at her as he brought the knife down. Blue blood splattered the carpet and the air popped around her, almost like a vacuum. She could hear nothing but them and their whispers as it slowly rose to a chant.

Rysten took the knife next, his eyes speaking an apology that his mouth would not say. She stared back at him defiantly and he cringed as he slashed his hand. Blood swirled, moving to form a circle around her. All it took was one and the binding would be complete.

She moved to knock the knife away and hit an invisible barrier.

I grimaced, but she was not perturbed. The beast had an ace up her sleeve that no one, not even I, had realized.

She felt for his presence and called to him.

They could not stop her. No one could.

Not when she had her familiars.

From down the hall a wild screech rang out as twenty pounds of fur and fury launched itself towards us. Bandit had been waiting and answer the call, he did.

He leapt through the barrier that was meant for her, and she leaned down for him to scurry up her arm.

She summoned a circle of flame around them and forced it outwards. The two magics clashed together at the edge of the circle and the fire swayed. They were strong. Strong enough that without Bandit she might not have been able to do it.

His claws pricked her skin, the sharp pain filling her with a sociopathic sort of calm.

She ground her nails in the palms of her hands and the sweltering heat within us snapped, sending a pulsing wave of fire at their circle.

The blood incinerated, and the binding broke as the flames of Hell consumed it all. The Horsemen were thrown from where they stood by the immense power that erupted from within her.

She stepped out of the blood circle and I made note of the magic they had used.

Magic that I had only seen once before.

Magic that demons could not use.

My attention focused on the scene before me as she looked over her shoulder and blew them a kiss. Blue flames burned at their clothes, but the Horsemen were unharmed, albeit furious as they watched her.

None more so than Death.

“If you want us, then you will earn us.”

She turned back to the wall of glass and took off at a run.

It exploded on impact and melted before it could cut her skin. The wall of glass that had kept us in was ultimately the weakest point, allowing us our freedom.

Stark naked, she jumped from the third story of the apartment building and landed with a victory cry from Bandit.

Without a glance back at what we’d left behind, the beast and Bandit walked into the shadows of New Orleans and she whispered into the dead of night, “Let the games begin.”