Sitting with Audrey on his lap, the Dragon Leader simply stared into her gorgeous face as she adjusted to the effects of traveling through time and space. Slowly, her eyes opened. She gasped right before smiling a smile that lit up not only Rian’s heart, but his entire existence.
Lifting her hand, she cupped his cheek and sighed. “There you are. There is the man I love.”
Leaning to touch the lips he longed to kiss every second of every day, Rian stopped short as a noise outside the back of the cabin drew his attention. From the furrow in Audrey’s brow, he knew she’d heard it too. She opened her mouth to speak but Rian lifted his finger to her lips and mouth. “Shhh.”
A single nod and she quickly and quietly crawled off his lap. Vowing to draw and quarter whoever dared to interrupt his time with his mate, Rian stood, held up his index finger to indicate he’d be right back, and stalked toward the back door.
His hand touched the knob as the sound of a limb breaking under a footstep echoed from the silence. He could hear Audrey telling him to be careful through their link and sent back his love as he turned the knob and threw open the door.
Opening his enhanced senses as wide as he could, Rian bared his teeth and snarled, “Come out, you stupid bastards. I swear to the Heavens I’m gonna kick your asses into next year, but first I want a fucking explanation.”
One by one, Rory, Royce, Kellan, and Brannoc came into view. Rory started to speak, but Rian never heard his brother’s words as a shriek of sheer terror rent the air.
Turning and running toward his disappearing mate, Rian bellowed, “Audrey!”
But it was all for naught. His foot hadn’t even reached the threshold of his cabin when Audrey shimmered from sight, leaving only the maniacal laughter of her Demon Lord echoing in the darkness.
3
Being pulled away from her mate after just arriving to the haven of his cabin was bad enough, but landing ass over teakettle in one of the torture dungeons of hell was worse…way worse. And the hits just kept coming…
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You have been a very bad little poppet, my sweet,” Adramelech sing-songed as he stood in front of her still dressed up from the party.
A British accent today? That’s new.
A barely discernable tick in the scale-like skin around his yellow eyes told Audrey all she needed to know…there was going to be punishment and it was going to be bad and she was going to be on the receiving end. As if reading her mind, the Chancellor lifted his right hand and snapped his fingers.
Magic instantly filled the chamber as Audrey was yanked from sitting on the cold stone floor to hanging from huge iron shackles with just the very tips of her toes touching the ground. It was a familiar position but one the princess had avoided for several decades. Hanging her from the ceiling and teasing her with pain used to be one of the Chancellor’s favorite pastimes. However, it had gotten old when she yawned during one of his tirades about her insolence for doing only the good Lord could remember what. After that, he’d found new and inventive ways to discipline her.
Looking at her captor, Audrey watched him pace to the very edge of her peripheral vision first on one side, and then the other. It didn’t take a crystal ball to know that Adramelech was deciding exactly how close to the brink of death he could bring her without actually killing her. It was the first time Audrey truly thought he might go through with it.
He might actually kill me…
She wanted to smile. There was actually a chance she might escape hell. Of course, it would be in the jaws of a hellhound, but beggars can’t be choosers and at this point, any escape was worth the price. Audrey was done being a prisoner.
She thought of her mother’s favorite gypsy saying—Îngropa?i-ma în picioare, mi-am petrecut întreaga via?a în genunchi. It sounded prettier in Romanian but more to the point in English—Bury me on my feet, I have spent my entire life on my knees.
Audrey’s anger threatened to boil over. It was the cold hard reality of her life. She was about to be one-hundred-and-nineteen years old and about a hundred of those had been spent serving a demon. No, not just a demon, but a Demon Lord. Not just a Demon Lord but the Chancellor of Hell. If her only hope of ever getting out of the messed up life she’d been thrown into was as hellhound chow, then she was more than ready.
As if they knew she’d thought of them, in skulked the Chancellor’s pack of hounds, led by Bás and Balor, the two almost always at Adramelech’s side. It was hard to tell their gender but Audrey was sure they were both male. It did appear that Bás, who was just a wee bit taller, was the leader and Balor, whose chest was as broad as a barn door, his second. Audrey thought of the stories her grandfather told about the werewolves the villagers thought were stealing the children from their community when he was a child and knew the elderly man could’ve never imagined the beasts now standing before her.
The pack of seven circled where Audrey did her best imitation of a ballerina on pointe while being suspended from the ceiling. When they were all in place, Bás growled. As one cohesive unit, they sat, staring at her as if she was a big yummy doggie treat. Adramelech smiled as he said something in Latin she couldn’t quite make out and Balor jumped to his feet.
The hellhound trotted to Audrey’s side and stopped. His shoulder touched her hip, reminding the princess exactly how big he really was. She’d seen the entire pack stand on their hind legs, and even the smallest among them was at least an inch taller than her five-feet-eight inches.
He nudged her as instructed by his leader, making her feet lose contact with the floor and her wrists and shoulders to shout in pain. After swinging for what seemed like forever, she was once again stable and surprised the hound remained at her side.
Audrey’s skin itched where his coarse black fur poked through the fabric of her frock. She was shocked to look down and see the hound staring at her. Even more surprising was the expression in his blood-red eyes. It was one of sadness, almost despair, and in direct opposition to his usual threatening demeanor. He seemed to be trying to communicate with her. Or maybe he just knew what was coming and felt remorse for his part in her punishment.
That didn’t fit with what she’d seen from the pack in the past, but nothing was ever as it seemed in the Underworld. Everything constantly changed. Either way, it was disconcerting and something she’d never noticed in all the time they’d spent in the Chancellor’s service together.
Another command from the Demon Lord had Balor baring his teeth and growling. The hound’s actions were ferocious but dampened by the forlorn look in his eyes that remained no matter how loudly he snarled. It was obvious that Balor was simply going through the motions because he had to. He did not have the free will that Audrey did. The poor dear was simply an animal doomed to serve Adramelech for a lifetime, with no options but to obey or die at the teeth and claws of his own pack mates. Before this moment, the princess had truly thought of all the hellhounds as little more than mindless beasts, but now she had to wonder. Her pondering was cut short when Adramelech uttered his third command.
In a flash, Bás was on her other side mimicking Balor’s actions but without any of the misgivings she’d seen in his counterpart’s eyes. No, the larger, crueler, leader of the pack was ready to do whatever the Demon Lord commanded without thought, and Audrey knew without a doubt that it did not bode well for her. Bás had always looked at her like a piece of meat and the glint in his red eyes said he was imagining bits of her sliding down his throat at that very moment.
Now, isn’t that a pleasant thought?
“So tell me, princess, exactly where have you been this evening? Or more importantly, who have you seen? Could it be a certain suitor who after all these years still pines for your favor?” As if matters weren’t already bad enough, Adramelech sauntered toward her as he spoke, an evil sneer on his lizardy lips and a torturous glint in his eyes that made his fake British accent all the more annoying.
