Kresley is born of an Angelic bloodline, as are all the Knights' mates. Her fire is from the heavens. She will get the ring.”
“Please,” Lucan said, thinking of how much he had sacrificed to ensure her safety, to find her in peril again.“I will do anything. Just let me go to her.”
The twins' eyes darkened to a deeper silver. “You will go to her, but you will not interfere,” Lithe said.
“You will wait until she removes the ring from the Wolf, and then you will kill the Wolf leader,” Litha added.
Then together they spoke, “Only then will Kresley be free.”
His heart missed a beat. “What does that mean? Only then she will be free?”
Evil smiles slid onto their faces. “Kresley touched one of your bracelets. She touchéd us. Once again, she is ours.”
Lucan felt as if his heart was going to explode but his body was stiff, incapable of moving. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t reality. It was one of his nightmares. Let it be one of his nightmares.
“Don’t worry Lucan,” Lithe purred. “The mark is temporary. It will fade if we allow it to.”
Litha added, as if her words would actually comfort him, “And it’s invisible, so Kresley doesn’t know she's been marked again.”
“It’s our little secret,” the girls whispered together.
“We will bargain for your mate,” Litha said. “She goes free if the Wolf leader is dead by the next full moon.”
Then together, “Otherwise, she is ours again forever.”
Forever. The word echoed in his head and turned into his own scream. No. No. No! That one word formed in his head as fury did in his body. Images he’d long ago suppressed flashed in his mind– his father running from a Beast, his sister bleeding in his arms. Kresley wasn’t supposed to end up like them. He’d taken no chances. Made sure she was safe. More images of blood, of failure, the taste of his family's fear in the air. Rage ripped through him and he forgot his limitations, forgot his inability to attack the Guardians. He shoved off the headboard and lunged toward them. Threw himself forward and reached the closest of the two twins. Instantly, pain cut through his mind and stilled his actions. Lucan grabbed his head.
The twins were beside him now, their bodies pressed to his sides, disgustingly intimate. Their lips pressed to his ears. “The Wolf will try and seduce her. Already he has met her. She is working for him, his personal assistant. Already he lusts for her. You will want to kill him.” More images of the Wolf making love to Kresley flashed in his mind, twisting him in knots no matter how fictional he knew them to be. “The Wolf’s life for Kresley’s.”
A moment later they were gone, as was the pain in his head. He fell to his hands on the mattress, inhaled, blinked.
There was no time to recover, no time to allow his body to heal. He shoved off the bed, weak from days of lost nourishment and nightmares, with a vow repeating in his mind: He would not be played for a fool again. The twins had turned the tables, changed the stakes, shown their hand; they wanted something – they wanted that ring. And he had every intention of figuring out how to use it against them.
But above all, he had to find Kresley – find her before the wolves killed her as they had done to so many before her.
***
Five days had passed since she’d made her deal with the devil, since Kresley had agreed to trade the ring for Lucan’s freedom. Five days of emotional turmoil, of worry, of wishing she could go to Lucan and ensure his safety, but knowing she didn’t dare. Knowing Lucan would try to protect her if he knew where she was, what she was doing. And right now, he couldn’t even protect himself.
The fact that Cullen Moore, the Demon leader of the Werewolf Pack, wore the ring, had been a blow–a mountain that seemed impossible to climb. How would she get to him? To the ring? But she’d calmed down when a lead from Adrian had
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