I wasted no time and zoomed through the house until I found a door leading below. I galloped down the stairs and moved to my left, where I heard a female cry. I opened another door in time to see Anil straddling Billie on the ground in a windowless room. She punched at him, her legs kicking beneath him.
I wasted no time in shoving him off of her. I grabbed Billie’s hand, helping her to her feet. She looked relatively unharmed now, and I assumed she used healing magic. I grabbed the sides of her face. “You okay? He didn’t…” I trailed off, not wanting to say the words.
She shook her head quickly. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
I slumped my shoulders in relief but didn’t relax too long as the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I spun around, punching Anil in the face several times like a prized fighter before he could even think about casting any magic on me.
He teleported out of the way and whipped his hand across his torso. My body rose and slammed against the wall on the right, then the left. I moved to the ceiling and the floor. My body banged and bruised with each impact. If I didn’t get out of his hold, I was going to die.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Billie move away from the bed, and then she ran toward Anil, shoving her body into him. He back handed her across the face, but he had lost his focus, dropping me. She fell to the ground, losing consciousness.
I ran at him, and he pushed out his hand, sending me sliding backwards on my feet. I could feel my heart pulling toward my chest as if it wanted to burst through. He was going to use his magic to tear my heart out. I couldn’t let that happen. I pushed forward against his magic, but it felt like walking through thick mud.
Billie opened her eyes and regained her ground, getting up and jumping on his back. She clawed at his face with her nails, letting out a guttural scream, and he responded with equal cries as her nails drew blood. Having again lost his focus, my muddy push soon became clear. I ran at him, grabbed his head, and twisted it, breaking his neck in less than a second.
Billie jumped back from him, and we watched as his body toppled to the floor next to Chilli’s. I should have had feelings about killing him. At one point, we used to be friends, but time had passed, and we were different. Most importantly, he was going to hurt my omega, so our past didn’t matter anymore.
Billie stood there, visibly shaken by the death around her. I pulled her to me, my body relaxing around her as if a great weight had been lifted off of me.
“It’s okay. I got you now. And thank you for saving me.”
She rested her forehead on my chest. “You saved me, too. We make a good team. Take me home, please,” she said in a soft voice.
The demon threat was over now that Chilli was no longer around. Where was home to her? “Where’s home, beautiful?”
“To the mansion. With all of you.”
I smiled, overjoyed at her response, and we headed out of the basement.
To home.
EPILOGUE
BILLIE
Almost two weeks had passed since the kidnapping and attack, and I was still rattled. I would be for a long time. I was not sleeping in my bed alone. I felt like a kid, and the guys had become my teddy bears. I just didn’t feel safe without them at the moment.
The threat was gone, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I still got anxious walking around, even though I was claimed now. I tried to hide it as best I could. I didn’t want the men being my bodyguards anymore, which they only agreed to after I promised not to do anything that wasn’t in a public setting. So, no dark alleys for me.
The deaths of Chilli, Anil and the vampire in his pack were excused once proof was found in Chilli’s house of her summoning and control spells, including mini dolls of myself and Anil and his pack. At this point, I wasn’t shocked that she had made what appeared to be voodoo dolls of us for control. The other Anil pack members filled in the blanks and served as witnesses as support that she was behind the attacks, and there was even a witch in the coven, part of her inner circle, who confessed to knowing she was calling demons to capture someone. Although she claimed not to know who that someone was. All of those witnesses, coupled with taking a magical lie detector test, which had been legally proven to be more reliable than a non-magic test, and we were officially out of the clear for the deaths.
I never wanted to experience any of that again.
It was a Saturday night, and I had decided we should all go out to dinner to do something other than worry about me. While I was shaken, I didn’t want to be frozen from living again. For one night, I wanted to justbeand have no worries plaguing the back of my head.
I looked in my full-length mirror and twisted and turned. I was wearing a form-fitting knee-length orange knit dress that really popped against my brown skin, which was dusted with a shimmery lotion for added shine. I wore gold stilettos, and my curly hair was piled on top of my head with select ringlets framing my face. “Is this too much?”
Lila sat on my couch, sipping a glass of champagne. She looked fabulous in an equally tight forest green mini dress and black heels. Her honey blonde hair was flat ironed bone straight, and bright red adorned her lips. “You look incredible. We both do. Here I am going out as a sixth wheel. They do realize that after dinner, we are getting drinks, and someone is going to have to be my wing man or at least three of them must leave to avoid confusion. I look too damn good to just be hanging around them all night.”
I nodded with a smile. I definitely wanted Lila to find her love. It might not happen that night, but I was rooting for something to come for her soon. “No, we won’t waste your pretty. On an unrelated note, I wanted to tell you that I think I’m going to be more active in the coven.”
She leaned back, face shocked. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“You know, Chilli did a horrible thing, and I won’t forget it. But she had some points. There is that dark mage group out there, and I have this power, and it has definitely grown since being claimed. I also want to stamp out corruption, so there isn’t another omega who goes through what I did. We need to stop treating omegas like we are less than people. We need more safe people in power. Maybe one of those safe people is me.”
Lila pretended to wipe tears from her eyes. “That’s beautiful. But seriously, I’m glad. We could really use you. Your father would be proud of you. Look at you, you get some dick and want to change the world.”
I dropped my head, hands on my hips. She was really too much. “I hate you.”
