I gasped, stumbling back, clutching the edge of the table. It wasn’t possible. This couldn't be real.
But the vision lingered, as if the Abyss itself wanted me to watch.
I felt it then—a tug low in my chest, like a hook buried under my ribs, yanking me toward the vision.
“Oh, hell no,” I muttered, stumbling back a step. My pulse spiked, and my palms went slick with sweat. “Nope. Not going there. That’s a freakingbattle,not a day trip.”
But the pull only grew stronger, dragging at me like a riptide. I dug my heels into the floor, clutching the edge of the nearest pillar, but it was like trying to stop a hurricane with duct tape. My breath came fast and shallow. My heart was hammering so wildly I thought it would fly straight out of my chest.
“No. Absolutely not,” Icried, as if arguing with the universe itself. “I didn’t sign up for the TV-from-hell package.”
Except it wasn’t a TV. The vision rippled in the center of the room, flat and thin like a pane of glass, but alive, pulsing, bleeding light and sound. Not a screen. A window.
And I was being pulled straight through it.
I clawed at the air, my legs were thrashing, but my body betrayed me. Mercilessly, I kept sliding forward inch by inch. “Stop it! No—stop it, stop it!” My voice cracked into a near-hysterical laugh. “This is how horror movies start, isn’t it? Idiot girl walks through the glowing portal straight into the monster pit.”
The window shivered. Then it swallowed me whole.
Everything around me tore open at once. One heartbeat, I was in the chamber, fighting the pull, the next I was ripped through, slammed into air that stank of blood and smoke. The ground trembled under my feet. Screams and shrieks split the sky. And right in front of me—Zaph.
His sword whistled past so close it stirred the hair at my temple. I dropped to the dirt with a yelp, heart pounding so hard I thought it would crack my ribs.
“What in the great Abyss—?” His voice was a roar, sharp enough to cut.
Another golden alien's crimson aura flared as he cleaved through a lunging Mmuhr’Rhong. “Praetor—who is that?”
But Zaph was already moving. His eyes locked on me, black and burning, and in the next breath, the battlefieldshattered around us. The shrieks, the blood, the ruined ground—gone.
I blinked, and we were back.
Back in his palace. But not in my chamber, from the looks of it… his?
And he was still gripping me, his sword dripped gore across the floor. His fury radiated hotter than fire, darker than the void we’d just left.
I should’ve been terrified. Iwasterrified.
But God help me, I couldn’t look away.
He was magnificent. Every inch of him, blood-slick and battle-born, a golden storm cloaked in black. Primal. Dangerous. Exactly what I’d pictured a thousand times when I unearthed the bones of warriors long dead, brushing dirt from a blade or a buckle and wondering what kind of man had once carried it. And now he was here, breathing hard, his chest heaving, a war-god standing inches from me.
Why the hell was that so damn sexy?
“What in the name of the Abyss were you thinking?” he thundered, his voice shaking the very walls. “How did you get there? I could have killed you!”
I just stared at him, too stunned to breathe. His eyes blazed black fire, his chest rose and fell like a beast still in the throes of battle, and all I could think was—God, his voice is sexy when he’s mad.
Why was I just now realizing that?
This god of battle, dripping with gore and fury, should have terrified me. Instead, I felt drawnto him like no other man had ever pulled me. What the hell was wrong with me?
Of course, my mouth betrayed me. “I have no idea how I got there,” I shot back, sarcasm cracking under the quake of my heartbeat. “Did you… summon me or something?”
He froze, staring at me as if I’d just spoken in a language he didn't understand. Slowly, he dragged a hand through his blood-matted hair; his arm muscles rippled with the motion, and I couldn't take my eyes off.
“I could have killed you,” he repeated, in a much lower voice. It sounded rougher, too, moving like honey under my skin.
Before I could reply, his hand shot out, hard and sure, wrapping around my waist. I gasped as he pulled me flush against his chest, heat pouring off him in waves. His other hand tangled in my hair, tilting my face up until I was caught, trapped, with nowhere to run.
