“Don’t close your mind to me,” she cried, tears streaking
down her cheeks, her voice rough with pain and fury.
His claws lengthened into long, razor-sharp talons, his senses sharpening, all the light disappearing from his soul as he became the monster. The darkness was far thicker and much uglier without her anchor. They had come for her, in his world, and he would not show mercy. “No,” he growled, his voice a distorted wash of malevolent power reverberating through the forest.
“Please…I need to feel you in me.”
Everything in him repulsed at the terror leaking from her. He’d failed his mate. Lachlan had underestimated the reach of the enemy, thinking her safe within the walls of the Darkage with him by her side. He’d allowed himself to be distracted by the heat of mating, and now his woman bled before his eyes, her fear an affront to his senses. And at the center of it, there was a weakness inside he’d never felt before, for she was hurt, in tears, with death only seconds away.
The earth rolled beneath his feet, and lightning split the ground as an assassin from Avindar— the kingdom of lightning, arrived in a whirl of crackling energy. His speed unfathomable as he came with the lightning before the thunder. A sonic boom echoed in the air pushing back Lachlan several feet and pulling a scream from Shilah.
He slipped in her mind, offering her the comfort of the connection. “I won’t leave you, my mate.”
She grasped eagerly at their thread. “Lachlan…they are here to take me back to the empire, and this newcomer’s psychic barrier is weak.”
The Avindite slapped a hand to his forehead, as Shilah’s power buzzed in the air. With almost unparalleled speed, a slice of bright light flashed from his hand toward her. Lachlan moved with the darkness, dipping into the well of his rage and full power to beat the speed of light, appearing in front of his mate as the bolt hit. Pain slammed into his chest, as it cut into his flesh and bone like the sharpest of knife.
His mate’s cry of rage and terror echoed in his mind, along with her disbelief that he’d been hit. “He is an elder from Avindar. His control of lightning is beyond anything we can comprehend. His speed as he moves within the storm and energy of the lightning can rival that of a Darkan.”
Lachlan sent the full power of his element into the force of nature that held his mate captive. The shadows darted and slashed, piercing the tree and splitting through the middle from the root up. Before the assassin who controlled the earthly elements could react, in a blur of speed and darkness, his claws sliced the branch that had lodged itself inside her chest.
His mate fell forward, and he caught her. He swallowed her with his shadows, trapping her in unrelenting darkness, removing her from the sight of the enemy. He built layers of his shadows around her like a wall. A shield that kept away the world. He pierced her chest with his shadows, and she screamed thrashing in his arms.
“I have to find the roots he left within you. Forgive the pain.”
His shadows grabbed the root like tentacles and yanked them from her chest. His mate heaved, sweat slicked her skin, her mouth white with the awful pain. He slashed his wrist and placed it to her mouth, merging his mind with her and coaxing her to drink. She did, shuddering at his taste, at once appalled and aroused by the idea she consumed a part of him. He could feel the power of his blood working through her, checking the flow of her blood and knitting her from inside.
Then he pulled the stake from her chest. Another scream tore from her throat, pain shuddering through her body. The control of his shadows was so absolute it was as if they were sentient. They curved around her, creating a place for her to lie down, contorting to give the impression of comfort.
“Stay with me,” she gasped. “Their well of power is more volatile than those who had waited for us in Mevia. We can leave with the shadows.”
“They cannot get you here, my mate. It would take another Darkan hours to pierce through my shadow barriers unless he is a force like myself. And there is none.”
“I am worried about you!” The cry was torn from her throat, from her soul, and the anguish in her voice tore at him, even as it soothed.
There was no time to offer soothing words, he stepped from the cocoon of the shadows, the bloodletter in him rising with swirling madness.
“Take me with you. I am already recovered. I can fight.”
“No.”
Her frustration burned through the link. “I can sense the power the two men before you have,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “And dozens more are coming, I can feel the wave of energies drawing closer, and their thoughts are uncensored. They are bounty hunters, and the Avindite is a powerful tool for the empire. He assembled them. There is also a warlord, it was his spell which found me, and he is casting a cloaking spell over this area so we won’t be getting any reinforcements.” A hitch of hesitation traveled along their thread. “I will build a compulsion for them to turn away and give up hunting me. My call will be loud and insistent. Please Lachlan, I can turn them away.”
And for the first time since he woke to find his darkness entrenched with his soul, he paused and genuinely considered another option. For her. And only for her. For she meant everything to him.
But there was none.
She was so innocent, too damned naive despite everything she’d experienced.
It gutted something inside of him that he could not give this to her—mercy. He could feel the rage and the menace from those converging on them. He could allow them to leave, give his woman the latitude to plant suggestions in their minds, distort their memories of even finding her, but a message had to be sent to the empire, one stamped with a promise of his own.
The waves of his mate’s telepathic energy rushed through the air, brushing along the minds of the advancing enemy. He peered into the well of darkness he had hidden her in. She sat on the shadow chair, her legs curled beneath her, her fingers twisted in a triangular symbol as she sank into the well of her powers. Her hair crackled, and the thin fractures in her eyes seemed to shatter into more pieces as her powers expanded.
Rage and bloodlust hammered in him with each beat of his heart, clawing and raking for supremacy, but the purity of his mate leashed it. Lachlan looked inside of his being where her light lingered, a bright glow in the darkness of his soul. Chakra pulsed through his body, curling around her silver thread in a protective hold, cloaking the mating link that connected them in unrelenting darkness, pushing her away from their mental link.
Then he coated himself in a savagery that filled him with exquisite pleasure as he moved with the shadows and the unrelenting power of the monster inside him, tearing out throats, and ripping hearts from their chests.
Blue lightning streaked through the darkness as the elder assassin from Avindar breached the shadows, a bolt of crackling energy poised at his fingertips as he crouched. Lightning forked in a spectacular display, streaks stretching through the shadows, ripping it apart. Lachlan twisted, diving left to avoid the pure energy slamming toward him.