Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“You lie, brother.” It has to be a lie.
Creed’s stare never wavers. “You’re being fooled. Trapped.”
The moment he says it, the bond pulls—hard enough to make my chest ache like it’s splitting down the center. He’s wrong.
I can feel her.
He’s fucking wrong.
“She is my mate.” My jaw snaps, spit and blood stringing the air.
Creed’s gaze dips to the black river running from my nose down my chest. “You’re bleeding into a place none of us can reach. That bond is a noose, not a tether. It’s tightening and it won’t stop until it’s drained you dry.”
“I will end you if you try to keep me from her.” I stagger. My spine groans but I rise, inch by brutal inch, until I’m upright again. My vision blurs, but I don’t look away. “She. Is. Mine.”
“Breathe, Legend.” Knight snarls, restraining me, my body thrashing in his grip. His glare cuts to Creed like it could flay him open. “You. Explain. Now before I help him hurt you.”
Creed slowly shakes his head. “Knight.”
“No,” Knight argues back. “I know the feeling of a partial bond. Of thinking my mate is gone or hurt or that someone dared to take her from me. I felt my Ethos rage. My mind slip and body weaken. I know the power of a mating bond. You don’t. So start fucking talking, brother, or I’m done hearing about this.”
“Too much information might—”
“Say it.”
Creed is quiet for too fucking long before he finally speaks.
“Don’t forget what I can do.” Creed leans forward, bringing himself inches from my face, and speaks slowly. “I’ve been inside your head, brother. I’ve dug every corner of your mind since you brought that girl back here. I know where you hide things. I’ve walked the corridors you’re too fucking weak to see right now, but I see. I know. And it is my job to fix this. Fix you.”
“I am not broken. I am missing half of my god damn soul!” I rage.
“Exactly!” He screams back, shoving to his feet as he looks around. “How do you guys not see it?”
“We can’t fucking read minds,” Knight snaps, and there’s a tremor in it that’s part anger and part bone-deep fear. He’s up in Creed’s face faster than I can blink, like he wants to tear the truth out of him with his bare hands. “Tell us everything.”
Creed straightens, eyes glittering. “I will tell you what you need to know,” he says, calm as a razor. “Not what you want.”
“Fuck that,” Sinner spits, the words like a match. He steps forward, yanking London with him. “Shield us.”
London’s eyes snap to mine before going to her mate’s.
Knight gives a curt nod, and then their lips are moving, but their words become wind in my ears.
There is no sound, just the anger on my brothers’ faces, and the horror that follows.
Every head snaps in my direction.
London’s hand lifts to her mouth, her eyes going wide.
The wind’s whistle disappears with the clear sheen that covered my family.
“You’re lying,” Knight growls, eyes on me.
“I’m not lying.” Creed’s voice is silk over steel. “I am trying to save him. You saw what she did back there. She is getting stronger while he gets weaker!”
“Really?” I cough a laugh. “She saved our asses and you’re blaming her for that?”
Creed crouches before me. “How?” he prompts. “How did she save us? As far as we know, she’s not supposed to have any true powers, remember? So if she does, if they manifested or were there from the beginning, she is hiding them. Why would she do that, Legend? Yet you’re the one who couldn’t even use the ones you were born with the other day. You can’t portal. You can hardly fucking stand. Why is that?”
I glare and he comes closer.
“When you brought her back here, how did you do it, Legend?”
“Hitched a ride on good old Benny boy,” I mention London’s best friend. “Dragons guard that place, you know.”
“A place where no one is allowed in or out. Yet she can. Think. How else did those soul-eating fucking flowers get here? She brought them. And who knows where else she put them? She was born to exile and when the island lost its anchor, it needed a new one…and then a royal walked its soil for the first time.”
“I went to claim what was given to me by the gods.”
“No. You took something that was never supposed to leave that place, and it took from you in return. Now we are dealing with the consequences of that. She is playing us. That Isle’s Kiss? How else would it have gotten here? Why are these deaths all related to the island…to her?”
“I don’t care.”
“I do!” Creed rages. “She has found some sort of workaround. I know it. And when I figure out how, I will prove it and I will cut that fake bond from your chest before I let it claim you.”