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)
“Watch it.”
“You’re not yourself, Legend. Just fucking think.”
“Stop.”
He grips my head. “Dig deeper!”
“I said stop.”
He presses tight. “Break past that fucking treachery in your mind!”
“Creed.”
“The bond is not real!”
My hands are on Creed’s throat before I even know I’ve moved them, fingers closing like iron traps, nails digging in where the skin is soft under his jaw. He makes a sound halfway between a curse and a laugh, shock sliding off his face, then pain when I clamp down harder.
Creed’s eyes flash white for a second, then red with effort. His hands slam at my wrists but they’re useless, blunted by a panic I can’t deny. Behind me, Knight’s voice is a strangled roar; Sinner curses and lunges; and I feel them like weights trying to drag me back from the ledge I’m teetering on. Knight’s forearms wrap around my shoulders as Sinner’s grip catches at my belt.
“Let him go!” Knight snaps, but my fingers only close tighter, a promise of breaking.
Creed’s face goes pale, eyes searching mine for the flicker of the brother he’s always known.
“Legend,” he starts, but I don’t want his words.
I snarl at Creed, struggling, every muscle trembling but refusing to give. “You don’t get to stand there with your dead eyes and tell me she isn’t mine. I—I feel her.” Don’t I? “I taste her in my fucking blood.” Can’t I? “Every moment I’m with her, the bond grows stronger.”
“Which is why you need to stay away!”
“Never!”
Silver rushes in, hands lifted, panicked. “Stop this! Shackling him in this state will rip him apart, it won’t heal him, it will—”
“Shut up, Silver,” we all bite out together, the words lashing like whips, silencing him when he stumbles back.
“You can’t take her,” I hiss, voice scraping like stone. “You can’t have her—”
He coughs, a laugh-rasp. “I’m not trying to have her, Legend. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Liar,” I growl, and the mad white thing behind my eyes flares.
“Knight,” Silver warns. “You have to do something—”
“Damn it, Legend!” Knight screams, and then his Ethos, born of his mating bond, rises. Claws break through his flesh and dig into my palms until sharp talons are seen through the other side of my arm.
Whiter blond hair slips into my view, and I snap my teeth at London.
She signs. “Sorry about this, Ledge.”
Her hands swipe before my face, and with each movement it’s like a fist to the fucking face, her power slamming into me like a sledgehammer.
It connects with the back of my head, then another blow lands across my temple, a thud that knocks the oxygen out of me. I try to jerk, but the room closes in like a fist, taking all the fight I had left until I’m just a bag of bones.
Creed’s face is the last thing I see, close and small and terrible. He watches me with an odd, almost tender amusement, as black spots begin to claim my vision.
“We will find the answer, brother,” he whispers, hand finding my shoulder as he bends in front of me. “We will erase her from your mind, I swear it.”
Over my dead body…
…
“Legend.”
My eyes snap open, my heart slamming into my ribs. I drag my head toward the door, catching the black painted fingernails curling along the frame, and vanishing around the corner.
Haide.
Fucking finally.
I stagger to my feet, swaying, the sedation pulling harder at my veins, dragging me toward that false horizon where she waits.
The hall blurs around me as I stumble forward, bare feet dragging across stone. Sconces flicker dim along the walls, smoke curling like shadows that reach for me as I pass. My hands scrape the plaster, leaving smears of blood where glass had cut me earlier, and I don’t care. All I care about is her. Finding her. Holding her.
A flash of movement catches my eye, and my pulse pounds in my temples at the sight. Long black hair my fingers ache to tug on. Leather clinging to her body like armor I want to tear at with teeth. My breath rushes out of me in a broken gasp, and I lurch forward.
“Haide!”
She vanishes, and I chase. Down the stairwell, deeper into the belly of the house, toward the smoking room. My treacherous mother’s favorite chamber, once upon a time.
A place where the air tastes of sugared wine and smoldering resin. Warm and intoxicating, but too sweet, too deliberate, as if meant to disguise something darker underneath. Smoke curls in lazy ribbons, coiling around carved beams and golden fucking spears, clinging to my skin like a lover’s hands.
The light in here isn’t natural, pouring from lanterns that drip with wax, each flame caged in crystal as if even fire bows to the opulence of this house. Velvet drapes sag heavily over the windows, hiding the demonic smoke that protects the outer walls, and trapping the perfume of the space, sealing it until the air itself feels drugged.