The ground shook. The broken cage vanished.
Of course, the prick would have wards and a spell set to detonate and kill anyone who found this place. And for the cage to disappear with its prisoner.
Bastard!
Flames rolled closer. He used his body as a shield, covering both his sire and his female from the soaring blaze. More steel-infused granite rained down, and he cursed.
Leya grunted, swiping her dirt-smeared face, eyes wide with fear. Blood flowed from the lesion on her cheek.
“Leya, you have to shield us!”
“What?”
“With your mind, keep the debris at bay. You can do this,caeli mea! Take whatever you need from me like you did before!”
She grasped his arm and shut her eyes as the ground shuddered. Her grip tightened, her brow furrowed. Sweat beaded her brow as she strained to make it happen. Then he felt the draw on his powers and the debris suspended in the air around them.
“Hold onto me, baby. Don’t let go.”
Her arms slipped around his waist as he summoned his powers, but they trickled through—fuck that. If he couldn’t use what he had… He drew from the energy in the place.
It swirled through him, edged with sinister rage, turning everything within him dark and lethal, consuming every bit of his weakness—
He shot up through the disintegrating volcano, through the snowstorm above, and upward into a spinning vortex of what could only be a portal.
“No!Aerén!” Leya cried out, her voice faint in the churning tunnel.
“What?”
She didn’t respond as they were spewed out of the terrifying eddy. “Leya, hold on,” he yelled as they crashed downward, plowing into a snow pile.
Grunting, he pushed to his knees in an eerie stillness, still carrying his sire. No storm. Nothing at all.
“Leya?” He glanced back, searching the pristine whiteness for her.
No, no, no!He lay his sire down, scanning furiously as he dug through the powdery heap, aware she wouldn’t last long buried in snow. “Leya!”
Only silence answered him.
His heart stuttered, terror icing his veins. Her faint vibration that always tugged at him remained silent.
“Leya!” his voice boomed across the still landscape, the emptiness revealing the horrifying truth.
CHAPTER34
“Leya, answer me!”Aerén yelled, but it was useless.
There was no volcano here, just an unending, unmarred snowscape of dips, snow piles, and rocks with black mountains in the distance.
Leya, where are you?
The freezing air distorted as his nemeses, Sebris and Taegér, took form.
Fuck, he couldn’t deal with them now.
“I sensed an anomaly in this place and heard you—” Sebris’ gaze lowered to Aerén’s sire.
His heart splintering, Aerén scooped his sire from the snowy ground. His skin was impossibly chilled. Aerén immediately shared his warmth with hispateri.
