I’d ordered him not to follow, made him swear to keep his distance. Even the dead weren’t safe from the void god.
“Get your fucking hands off my mistress!” Pucker’s voice shook the air.
Ruin paused his work on me, regarding the ghost with mild, contemptuous curiosity. “A familiar? How quaint.”
“Run!” I tried to scream, but it was a thin, wasted breath.
Instead of fleeing, my familiar charged. His phantom form blazed with defiant fury, a stream of profanity heralding his attack.
He threw himself at Ruin, swinging wildly in a desperate, futile attempt to pull the void god’s attention from me.
“Such loyalty,” Ruin mused, effortlessly deflecting the phantom assault. “And all of it pointless.”
His hand shot out. And somehow, impossibly, it closed around Pucker’s incorporeal form, solidifying the ghost in a grip of pure nightmare.
“No!” The word was torn from my ravaged throat. “Spare him!”
“I have never tasted a ghost,” Ruin said with clinical interest. He unhinged his jaw, the flesh stretching far beyond any mortal anatomy, and swallowed Pucker whole.
Tears of pure, scalding rage burned tracks down my bloodied cheeks. A sob lodged in my hoarse throat, a silent scream of loss.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Killian
Ipaced my penthouse, my emotions at a boiling point, fear for my mate icing my veins. Tyson clawed at my insides, both of us unraveling with every second that passed.
“One more day,” Cade said. “Let us organize the forces properly…”
“She doesn’t have one more day.” The words came out part snarl, part dragon roar. “I’m not playing politics with armies and supply lines while my mate might be half-dead. I’m going to get her. Now!”
Fates pity those who stood in my way.
I took six of my most trusted men: Cassius, Rock, Archer, Voss, Jax, and Theron. Warriors who had bled with me. Each had proven himself a dozen times over. More importantly, each one would die for my queen without hesitation.
Underhill had sent two of its shadow beasts, creatures of living darkness and claws. The dark forest had sealed itself away for centuries, until Barbie crashed through its barriers with herraw charm and signature disregard for rules. Now, it considered her its own. Kinship was everything to the wild magic, and Underhill wanted Barbie back.
I managed multiple portal jumps in rapid succession, each one bringing me closer to my mate. When the final leyline spat us out, half my team doubled over and vomited.
The blackened lands spread before us under a sky the color of old bruises, the air thick and hostile. The ground squelched beneath our boots—not with mud but with earth saturated by blood.
Rising from the desolation was a palace of bones. Skulls mortared into walls.
My men swallowed hard, faces grim, eyes burning.
“Shit,” Rock growled. “This is a house of horrors.”
“This abomination must be stopped,” Cassius said. He was my right-hand man, a warrior of few words but unwavering loyalty.
“Quiet,” I ordered. “I feel her.”
I felt my little scorpion.
The mating bond between us blazed to life like a bonfire in my heart, no longer muted. She was here, and she was?—
In pain. So much pain filtered through our link that I had to lock my jaw to keep from screaming. My dragon roared in rage, urging me on.
