Chapter 5

“What the fuck did you just say?” Rowan stared so desperately into her eyes Sylvie could’ve sworn he’d lost his mind.

“My mates,” she spat back, twisting again in his grip. His body lifted from hers in an instant, and her head almost thumped into the dirt. She rolled and spotted him a few feet away, hands buried in his hair, not facing her. His whole frame shook as if he were fighting an internal battle.

“Why would they do this?” he muttered, pacing while Sylvie sat up and brushed the dirt from her hair.

She refrained from asking who as she stood and crossed her arms. Should she try running again? He wasn’t even looking at her.

Just as she took a tentative step, he spun, face slightly morphed. His jaw and teeth sported rows of long, sharp teeth, and his golden eyes took on a feral quality— no white surrounded the iris.

“Elias and Kian?” he questioned, his rasping voice sending chills down her spine.

Staying entirely still, Sylvie stared at him blankly, only making him shift further into an animal, dark hairs sprouting from his exposed skin.

“Yes,” she replied, backing up a few steps. His gaze shot to her feet, and he let out a growl in warning.

“Do you have proof?”

The shifting eyes from her face to her heart terrified her. Her throat constricted, and her eyes watered as he advanced. Was he going to try to look at her body with force? She rather die than let that ever happen to her again. Shifting her feet into a more stable stance, Rowan froze his approach, his skin returning to its fleshy, tattooed appearance.

“I have two mate marks,” she replied, keeping her hands at her sides. Any second, she’d have to swing on him; she just knew it.

Rowan’s mouth shifted, his canines returning to normal length. “Can I see?”

Shock marred her features. He was asking her permission? Why would someone who ordered her torture ask consent to see her bare body? There was no point fighting it. Her fight drew all her remaining energy, including the desire to be sarcastic or vicious.

With a subtle nod, he closed the gap between them, pinching the thin fabric around her neck and tugged lightly. His forehead bumped with hers as he looked at her markings, his breathing quickening ever so slightly. Warm fingers dipped beneath her shirt and brushed them softly, the action forcing tingles through her whole body.

“That’s enough,” she breathed, fighting the flush creeping up her cheeks.

Pulling back, he met her eyes, the colour back to its hazel green.

The forest around them sang as their gazes locked and breathing synchronised. This was all wrong. He kidnapped her, ordered someone to abuse her, fought her and told her he loathed her. She was not into this. Stockholm syndrome was not in the cards for her. She wouldn’t be so fucking stupid. So stupid.

“I don’t know why but-”

“Alpha! They found it!” Jace yelled, barrelling from the path with two other people. Sylvie sprang away, hoping they didn’t see how close she was to their leader, but Rowan didn’t move.

“The Faery called and said they captured the guardian. They need our confirmation about the tradeoff time,” the woman next to Jace said. Her tall build and muscled everything flexed as she regarded the pair.

Rowan turned, nodding to them both before hardening his gaze on Sylvie. “Tell them we’ll come now.”

Sylvie had at least hoped for a change of clothes before being thrown in the back of Rowan’s truck and driven to her new home. The first time seeing it would be a fucking hostage exchange. If anyone had told her this would be her life when she was a ratty foster kid, she would have died on the spot.

This was insanity.

They took a different route than what Jace drove originally, the trees thicker and the roads more winding. The car seemed to be inclining a fraction, the engine droning as if stuck in the wrong gear.

The growing excitement overrode some of her nerves as they drove closer and closer to her mates.

“How will we do this?” Jace asked Rowan from the passenger seat.

Rowan shook his head, not answering, and Jace flickered a scowl over his shoulder at Sylvie. She poked her tongue out at him, eliciting an enraged expression, and she smirked, turning her gaze out the window.

He would never hurt her again.

Not after today.

She thought about telling Elias what he had done just so she could see Jace suffer as she had, but then Rowan’s threats entered her mind. If he was being honest, and one bite from a shifter could kill a vampire, she couldn’t risk his safety for her desire for vengeance.

Legs curled beneath her, she snuggled down and let her eyes close. This time she would rest without the threat of a beating. At least, she hoped.

As her mind drifted from consciousness to dreamland and back, Rowan’s voice penetrated her mind.

“-should have told you sooner. She’s my mate-”

“-not possible. She’s a mutt-”

Vicious growls jolted her awake, her drooping eyes falling closed again long before her heart stopped racing.

“Wake up.”

Fogginess dragged her down against the orders, and a soft grunt escaped her lips.

“We’ll arrive in a few minutes. Wake up.”

“Go away,” she grumbled, waving a floppy hand in front of her face.

Again, darkness dragged her deep, only the occasional rolling of her head startling her awake.

A hot, tingling grip wrapped around her back and knees. With eyes glued shut, her face rubbed into soft fabric, savouring the fiery scent.

Angry voices shouted around her, the garbled words thudding in her mind like a pounding headache.

“Princess?”

Her eyes flitted open, the dim light of the overcast sky still too bright for her tired eyes. Her head rolled toward the sound, and a blissful smile spread across her lips.

“Kian?”

Elias’ shaking form stood just ahead of Kian, his eyes the deepest crimson as he raked his gaze across her.

“Are you hurt?” his low voice held a warning. Don’t lie to me, it seemed to say. Without thinking, she searched for Jace, seeing him standing staunch beside the man holding her.

Rowan. Shit.

She twisted and punched, landing a hard crack on the bottom of his chin, forcing him to drop her to the ground. Elias swooped in and caught her, instantly appearing back at Kian’s side, both men checking her over with subtle caresses.

A snarl crossed with a grunt of disgust came from Jace, and Elias narrowed his gaze at him.

“What did you do to her?”

Sylvie shook her head, tugging on his collar insistently. “Please, don’t, Elias.”

She couldn’t risk his life. Not when they had all just reunited. “I’m fine. Look at me; I’m fine. Just need rest.”

He dragged his gaze back to her, running his thumb down her scar. Something inside his haunted expression scared her.

A guttural growl pulled her attention back to Rowan, his golden eyes flitting between them.

Kian stepped forward, a small chalice in one hand: raised in front of him. “Mixing the blood of two shifters in this and drinking it will create a bond between the couple. Not a true mate bond, but enough that your kind should be able to reproduce.”

“Should?” Jace growled, stepping forward to snatch the cup, scrutinising it with black eyes.

Sylvie wriggled in Elias’s arms, and he lowered her carefully to the soft grass. She reached towards Kian, and he spun as if knowing her intention, taking her hand and thumbing the ring on her finger. She didn’t dare look around and take in the splendour of her new home. It might not be her home for long if Elias had anything to do with it. He’d want her living somewhere the shifters didn’t know about, to be sure.

Standing off, Jace and Rowan eyed the unlikely trio before both of their pockets buzzed. Rowan didn’t move, but Jace pulled a phone from his pocket and answered, the sounds of distress pealing out across the space between them. Sylvie couldn’t make out the words, but the tensing males around her apparently could.

She peered back at Elias. “What’s happening?” His gaze shot to her, jaw clenching when Rowan growled.

“This is why you monsters deserve to die. Every fucking one of you.”

Spinning to the voice, Sylvie swallowed, seeing Rowan’s furious glower. The hatred in his stare burned holes through her chest.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Yet another Vampire attack on my people-”

“It’s daylight,” Kian stated with a furrowed brow. What did that have to do with anything? Elias could be in the sun with no effect.

“Not turned vampires,” Jace hissed through his teeth.

“Born- vampires haven’t set foot on the earth realm in decades. How do we know this isn’t another infighting war incited by the humans you illegally turned?” Elias’ harsh words took Sylvie by surprise. There was so much she didn’t know about her kind.

“Our species are dwindling, you Vampire scum. All the humans we turn know the risks and choose to join us. This was your brothers’ doing. He’s been sending his followers after us for years.”

Elias had a brother? Sylvie didn’t know who to look at, each man’s expression telling inside stories she couldn’t start to decipher.

“Not possible. The Silver City is cut off from Earth. They’d need a powerful realm crosser to achieve that, and they all died in the shifter crossing.”

“Don’t try to preach our history to me, bloodsucker Prince.”

“Why? You weren’t there. I was.” Elias and Rowan stared each other down while Kian’s grip tightened on her hand. Through their bond, Sylvie could feel a strange mix of emotions coming from him—anger, nervousness, relief, and acceptance.

“We should just kill them,” Jace growled, his hands clawing, brown hairs spiking through his skin. His black eyes cut across them. “Finish what I started with that whore.”

The second his throaty bass spoke the words, Sylvie’s eyes closed, and breath sighed from her lungs, defeated. Why did he have to say that? She could have taken his torture to the grave, like every other abuse she had suffered in her lifetime.

It was her burden to bear. Hers alone.

Growls, hisses, and flesh-tearing flesh hit her ears while a tug pulled her in the opposite direction.

“We have to move, Princess,” Kian’s voice tugged her lids open, but her feet sank into the earth.

“No,” she shrugged him off and turned toward the chaos. Elias flitted around a ten-foot brown bear, both littered with deep wounds, while Rowan stood to the side between a shift.

The bear’s mouth dove towards Elias, and Sylvie found herself running. Her mind emptied, the sound of her rapid heart the only sound as she barrelled into the bear’s chest, knocking it away before its teeth collided with her mate.

“Get back!” she screamed, her throat straining from her terror-filled shriek. It all happened so fast; she didn’t see the three-inch claws until they dug into her soft skin.

“No!”

Blood drenched Sylvie as burning pain lit her shoulder on fire. The force of Jace’s hit sent her flying, the new angle giving her the perfect view of Rowan shifting into a massive wolf with the colour and sleekness of a raven. He leapt and dug his inch-long canines into the bear’s throat, tearing and growling as Jace’s claws raked down his sides.

Kian appeared at her side, his hands running over her body, searching for wounds, while Elias appeared behind Jace’s bear form, pulling the head back to give Rowan better access.

“Stop,” Sylvie called weakly, dragging her body across the grass. She expected Kian to stop her, but he didn’t, instead offering a hand to pull herself up. Her exhaustion spiked from the blood loss, but her voice stayed firm.

“Don’t kill him!” she shouted, slipping through the bloodied grass.

Jace was misinformed. He had reasons for treating her the way he did, and though it didn’t excuse his treatment of her, it made sense. He deserved retribution, but this was a slaughter. She wouldn’t let Rowan and Elias kill him on her behalf.

Rowan let go first, growling loudly at the bellowing bear, who dropped to the ground and whined. He must have realised how close to death he had come. Elias let go as Jace fell, appearing at her side looking over her gushing wound, but she shrugged him away to dragging her feet to the fallen chalice.

She scooped it and held it in front of her with a shaking hand. Rowan growled and jerked his head, Jace limping away in the direction he gestured to before turning his dangerous gaze on her.

“Sylvie,” Elias warned, but a soft ‘wait’ from Kian stopped any more words as she approached the solitary wolf. Blood dripped from his snout and sides, and as she got closer, he shook his body, the red liquid flying in all directions, hitting her skin with the droplets. Her shoulder sizzled, but the radiating pain replaced the tingling almost as quickly as it appeared.

“Here,” she said, offering the chalice in front of his jaw. He could kill her if he wanted or bite her hand off. He wouldn’t have gotten far, Elias and Kian were sure to avenge their mate, but Rowan had the power then.

Instead, he carefully clasped his teeth around the cup, his warm breath coating her and pulled back with a low rumble, tongue darting out briefly to touch her blood-covered hand.

Was that her blood or Jace’s?

Something stirred in her chest, but before she could focus on it, Rowan spun and sprinted towards the woods, leaving his jeep parked near a manicured garden. With the danger finally over, Sylvie’s breaths quickened, her body screaming in pain, and she staggered, dropping to her knees and letting the love of her mates wash over her as her vision turned white.