“A mate? I thought that just meant you wanted to fuck someone. Really badly. But then…that would mean I would have had multiple mates, and—”
I’m across the bed of Lilly’s in a flash, my hand on her throat and her body dangling in the air like a fucking serpent looking for its next place to sink its fangs.
“I’d be very careful with your next words,mate.” The smirk that spreads across my face drips with venom. “Or you might find yourself, I don’t know…”
The color in her eyes sparkles like stars catching fire. As if my threat excites her. Mania ripples through my veins once again, and my palm heats as warmth spreads through my body in waves. I need to rip her clothes off and fuck her until she finally submits.
“Aw, little king,” she all but purrs. “Don’t tell me you have a jealous streak?”
I slowly lower her to the ground. Her feet don’t even hit the blades of grass before I want to hurl her across the world.
“Because I’m not the kind of girl who should ever belong to a man so easily triggered by other men.” She pauses. “Or women.”
My jaw tightens.
“That’s it!” Creed’s hand flies up and a pile of bricks forms between our feet.
“Creed,” I warn, fingers flexing on her throat.
He ignores me and the stones grow higher.
Haide is out of my hand in a flash. Before I can reach her, a portal opens and snaps shut, leaving nothing but a dust of smoke.
“Fuck!” I yell, glaring at them all. “What the fuck? Where did you put her?!”
Knight rolls his eyes. “Chill. We don’t have time for petty mate drama—”
“Says the guy who killed his mate’s best friend in a jealous fit and then felt bad later and wiped it from her memory!”
“But since you’re hellbent on making your point”—he continues like I didn’t speak—“and Rathe U is reopening…” I already know what he’s going to say before the words leave his mouth. Like a hit of Pixie Herb, my muscles relax.
Because this just became a game of cat and mouse.
And I’m nothing if not a thorough hunter.
Chapter Seven
Haide
I hit the hard dirt as the portal snaps closed behind me. Momentum carries me forward. I don’t stop. I don’t want to stop. Nothing here is good—nothing!
Don’t look back.
My legs pump beneath me, blood roaring through my ears as I break into a run. I prefer to be the one doing the chasing, but this place is wrong. So fucking wrong. Too clean, too still, too…everything. It doesn’t taste like salt and coal. It doesn’t burn when I breathe in too deep.
I need Zev. I need the violence. The dragons screaming overhead. The constant certainty that death waits around every corner. Not this. Not whatever hell I’ve been forced into. Not Legend’s hands on my skin; and not the way my entire body detonates like a damn landmine when he does.
A mate.
I run harder, ignoring unfamiliar landscapes that blur past. Trees that aren’t charred from an angry dragon. Grass that is actually green.
My hut. My weapons. My island where things make sense and nobody talks about queens or bonds or—
“Going somewhere, little monster?”
I duck on instinct, rolling as Legend lands directly where I’dbeen standing.
“Fuck off.” I’m already moving again, but he’s faster. Bastard. Of course he is.
