I smiled. I was very good at a sweet tilt of my lips, all while my eyes were telling them to go fuck themselves. “You seem a little slow on the uptake, and I’m sure it’s been a while since you were around anything other than your hand and some demon minions, but it’s frowned upon to steal people.”
As the flames in his eyes flared to life, I was zapped again, this time dialed up to level ten as I screamed.
“Stop!” Victor bellowed. “You cannot touch my shifters like this. There are laws and you’re breaking them.”
The electrical pain died off as I huffed in and out, trying to catch my breath—would I survive if he did that again?
“You think to challenge me?” Shadow Beast asked, finally looking at the alpha. “You mortals worship me, have offered me every conceivable tribute, and yet you would deny me this one shifter?”
I tilted my head to see Victor. “Seriously?” I huffed. “Do you think it should only be Torma pack that gets to torture me?”
Shadow Beast and I were both glaring down the fucktard of an alpha now.
Victor cleared his throat. “There are rules,” he repeated. “And if this shifter is valuable, I expect to be compensated.”
Ah, yes. Now it all made sense. He wasn’t worried about my health or safety. He just saw an opportunity to make a deal with a powerful entity.
“Dad!” Torin snapped, speaking for the first time. “She’s my true mate and I get to decide her fate. No one else.”
Victor nodded, his expression one of jubilation. “Yes, right! True mate bonds exist above all other rules… Even your claim on the mongrel bitch. You can’t take her without her mate’s permission.”
The Shadow Beast’s chest was rumbling. The others might not have noticed because it was subtle, but I felt the deep fury he was rocking.
Victor was about to meet his maker—literally—and I couldn’t feel anything except a sense of satisfaction after the many years of living under his horrid rule.
Just thinking about that had my chest rumbling as well, and when I met the Shadow Beast’s eyes, I shrugged. “You might be a scary bastard, but I fucking hate this pack.”
His pain had lasted a few seconds, while this pack’s had been a lifetime.
“He rejected me,” I added, “so there’s no tie you need to worry about. My mate did not accept the bond.” Making his claim null and void.
“Mera!” Jaxson yelled, sounding panicked and furious. My name was a warning to shut up, but I’d never been good at heeding those. I did flip him off, though.
Torin let out a rumbling howl, his features shifting as he partly wolfed out. “I didn’t even have time to think about the bond,” he argued. “Maybe I would have changed my mind before I fully severed the bond.”
I snorted, twisting my face toward the scariest fucker in the world. “I’m ready to go with you now,” I said. “Anything to avoid staying here with this pack of weak-ass bitches.”
More howls filled the air at my insult. Torma was so used to being the “strongest” pack that anyone thinking they were weak was the worst slur of all.
Shadow Beast cocked his head, staring at me again, almost as if I’d surprised him in more ways than one. Personally, I enjoyed surprising demon creatures—it was one of my strongest skillsets.
With a shake of his head, he dropped me back over his shoulder, striding away from the pack. I couldn’t see the direction we were heading, but I had a very clear view of the inky smoke swirling around us, coating his lower half almost completely. As it reached his heavily muscled shoulder, my body also started to disappear into the darkness.
I was about to be engulfed in shadow and I couldn’t even be upset about it—I was way too freaked out for that.
“Sunny,” Jaxson called, his voice hoarse. “Fight him.”
I chuckled, the smoke caressing my arms in cool strokes. “I couldn’t even fight you bastards when we were kids. You think I can fight the creature of darkness?”
Shadow Beast snarled. “Darkness is not my calling card, mutt. You would do well to remember that.”
Mutt. Charming.
It kind ofwascharming in his almost-Scottish accent.
“Stop them!” Victor shouted, sending his wolves after the Shadow Beast, even as he remained behind in relative safety.
Or so he thought.
