What? I took two steps away from him. His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, closing around it in a bruising grip.
“Stay,” he commanded coolly.
I didn’t have any other option than to obey. The masked people fanned out, surrounding us in a large semi-circle. Only one came forward. They held a rusted metal chain in their gloved hands, dragging someone attached to the other end. I realized it was a guy when he started speaking to Samael directly.
“You crazy motherfucker. You really pulled it off.”
“We pulled it off. And we’re not done yet,” Samael replied.
The stag guy whistled, and, like well-trained dogs, his people moved into action.
Both Bella and Makayla were apprehended, two people on either side of them, each holding an arm behind their backs.
“Samael, what the fuck have you done?” Bella seethed, being brought to her knees while struggling to break free.
The main stag’s head swiveled in Bella’s direction. “Oh, no. Malum, the princess seems upset.”
Malum?
“She’ll get over it. Let’s finish this.”
“Right.” He gave a firm tug on the chain and a man came tumbling forward, landing on the rotting hardwood with a thud.
Felix? The man’s distraught face registered in my brain the moment I saw it. He was the one who’d driven us here. But I saw him pull off. How did they capture him?
He was shaking so badly the chain began to sway.
“Let’s use him to block the door, just in case. Can we make him unrecognizable?” Samael asked.
“Remove his hands and his head?”
“That works. Break his legs first so he can’t go anywhere.”
What was this?
“No!” I broke free of Samael’s grip and rushed to Felix’s side before he could grab me again, glaring at both him and the creepy deer-headed asshole. “What are you doing? He helped us!”
“Lilith.” He said my name with a sigh, as if I were a child throwing a tantrum. “He’s an old man and a driver. He’s served his purpose.”
“Such a renowned since of justice. You’re sure she’s a Savage?”
Samael gave him a flat look. “Handle him. I’ve got this.”
The stag laughed and began dragging Felix by the chain wrapped around his neck.
I’d tried to stop it, but once Samael took hold of me there was nothing I could do. My mind whirled. I didn’t understand what was happening.
“But he’s one of us,” I found myself saying.
“Not anymore.”
What? With my back to his chest, I had to partially twist to look at him. “What does that mean?”
“That’s not important right now. We need to leave.”
“Why are you doing this?”
For the longest seconds of my life, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but even when he did it wasn’t what I expected.
“Because you’re mine.”
Did that answer account for what he’d just done?
I trusted him.
I trusted him long before I fell for him.
Blindly.
Foolishly.
That loyalty was my Achilles’ heel.
When it came to Samael, I ignored every obvious warning sign and disregarded common sense.
Following him was the biggest catalyst of my life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Present
I hid it well, but because of him I loved bloodshed as much as the next girl. Overt displays of violence tended to make my heart race with excitement.
This… what had been transpiring for the past twenty minutes… It was wholly unnecessary and beginning to bore me. Not to mention the clean-up was going to be a pain in the ass.
That wasn’t my problem, though. I never dirtied my hands if I didn’t have to.
An audible crack reached my ears as Brody’s giant black boot connected with Jim’s face. He bellowed in pain as his jaw shifted from the impact, going abnormally far to the right. I couldn’t see any in the glow of the bonfire, but once the sun rose, I knew I’d be able to find half this guy’s teeth scattered about.
I wondered what he did to deserve this. The newest recruits always went through a probationary period before being fully inducted as a proselyte. You didn’t allow just anyone into your faction, no matter how eager they seemed.
The people you surrounded yourself with would be your family. They’d be the ones at your back and by your side, helping you survive. Those who didn’t make it all the way in were almost guaranteed to end up like this man.
Dead.
He may have been alive right now, but his death was inevitable.
Brody’s large form cut off my line of sight, shifting a second later as he undid his jeans and began pissing on Jim’s face. Raunchy laughter erupted from the other men, a few whipping their dicks out to join in.
Always so classy, these guys.
As their urine rinsed the blood from Jim’s face, he coughed and gagged, unable to prevent some from entering his mouth. An overwhelming stench of ammonia began creeping towards the pine tree I was leaning against. My nose scrunched in disgust. Someone seriously needed to start drinking more water.
Taking this as my cue to leave the area, I pushed away from the tree and prepared to take my ass to bed, faltering when Brody moved again.
Samael’s weighted stare met mine as he approached the group of barbarians from the opposite direction.
He didn’t seem surprised to see me out this late or standing near the pits. But then, he’d always had the freakish ability of knowing exactly where I was and when. I used to find comfort in the fact that he could find me no matter what. Now I couldn’t stand it.
I turned and kept walking, flats moving over the leaves littering the dirt path. There were only a few yards between this end of the camp and the other, sparsely separated by a thicket of trees.
Samael called to me as I rounded the first slight bend. I didn’t answer. Our last conversation—if you could call me yelling while he remained infuriatingly impassive a conversation—hadn’t gone anywhere but sour. I wasn’t up for a continuation.
I’d been doing all I could to avoid seeing him at all recently—a task so much easier planned than implemented when he was the equivalent of a king around here. Even when I didn’t see him, he was there. In revered whispers. Inspirational speeches.
Executions.
I hated bearing witness to his uprising while on the outside looking in, but it was a necessary measure to guard an already battered and bruised heart.
“Lils,” he tried again, closer than before.
Dammit.
I forgot how fast this man could move. Despite knowing how irate he got when ignored, I still didn’t slow. Besides, I’d asked him to stop calling me that nearly a year ago.
I could feel him coming up right behind me. It was impossible not to when his aura was bigger than everything that surrounded us.
It had been this way since we were young. The first word that came to mind when I tried to describe it was ‘smoldering.’
His aura burned so intensely, you were damned to be trapped within it, happily falling victim to the blaze, or fighting not to become enflamed.
This was exactly why I should have moved faster. He wouldn’t have been able to reach out and grab hold of my wrist, leaving me no other option but to stop walking.