Page 25 of Hell Bound

It only made him laugh.

“Don’t worry, tonight he paid his part of the cost. You’ll pay yours in due time.”

Ominous as that sounded, I held his stare. Fuck him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of cowering in fear.

It was the least I could do for the poor, headless demon crumpled on the ground.

“It would seem my wife has had her fill getting our guests killed, so let’s begin tonight’s showing, shall we?”

Roars of excitement and thunderous clapping made me jump. Asmodeus lifted his hands in the air, reveling in the applause as he scanned the crowd of sycophants. Looking down to me, his perfect lips curved into a cruel smile.

I only barely stopped myself from vomiting when he brought a hand to his mouth and slowly licked a path through the blood that still covered his hands, just as vividly red as the owner’s eyes had been.

“Now that the commander of my wolves has returned, I think it’s only right that we celebrate by allowing him to prove his mettle in combat. Let him prove that he still deserves to lead my pack of loyal beasts. Lucifer!”

My heart lurched in my chest before I even saw him move. That name struck an unnamable chord in me, and the reverberation through my nerves made my hands clench into fists.

The commander stood from a table at the outskirts of the gathering and strode into the center of the ballroom. The guests had stepped back to form a circle, leaving him a solitary figure awaiting his challenger.

I hated him for bringing me there, but my entire body came alive at the mere sight of him.

He was the antithesis of Asmodeus, darkly handsome next to Asmodeus’s golden beauty. Yet there was a light in him that I could feel more than I could see.

Something that separated him from the brute who was his master.

His gaze landed on me, lingering only for a millisecond. It only took that long for a bolt of electric lust to course through me.

I shouldn’t want him, and yet somehow he was the only man who’d ever stirred such sensations in me.

“Any wolf who’d like to challenge Morningstar, join him and take your shot. Best him, and you shall take his position as the leader of my pack!”

Lucifer’s jaw went tight, a muscle twitching as soon as Asmodeus called it “his” pack. I had no chance to examine that further because a demon who was every bit as imposing as Lucifer stepped through the crowd.

“I challenge Morningstar for the right to lead.”

“Excellent!” Asmodeus looked positively giddy at the prospect of this matchup, and there was clearly no love lost between the two demons in the center of the makeshift ring. “The strongest two of my wolves, now we’ll see who’s truly the fittest to lead.”

The crowd grew louder, and it seemed like I was the only one who wasn’t frothing at the mouth for the blood that was about to be spilled.

“No shifting, and there’ll be no killing—” Several groans sounded through the room. “—but anything short of that is permissible. Now, give us a show, beasts!”

The challenger—Odragir, I learned from the chanters in the audience who were on his side—had torn his shirt off as soon as Asmodeus had given the command, baring a chest and abs that would make fitness models in the mortal world weep with envy.

When his eyes burned green as he looked over his opponent, I knew exactly which wolf he was.

Lucifer remained clothed, which was admittedly a pity. The fabric did nothing to hide the power underneath, however.

It exuded from every shift of his body as he dropped into a fighting stance.

They lunged at one another almost too fast for my eyes to track, and blood spewed from the clash. I couldn’t tell who was hurt in the whirl of motion as they slashed at one another.

But I found myself praying it wasn’t Lucifer.

It had nothing to do with my strange attraction to him, but with the fact that he’d been humane, if not actually kind, when escorting me here.

Everything about Odragir said I’d have been dragged by my hair the entire way.

Suddenly one of them cried out, and the movement slowed enough for us to actually see what was happening. Apparently “no shifting” meant something different to me and Odragir. His face had elongated just enough to form a wolf’s snout.

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