Page 99 of Lifebound

I slammed onto the ground on the side of my face and all my lights turned off at once.

* * *

Movement.The sound of footsteps was everywhere suddenly, and then I was being picked up. Sat up. My arms were being pulled behind me, too, and then something cold and warm at the same time wrapped around my wrists.

My eyes opened. Every alarm in my head rang at the same time. Rune was beside me, eyes half-closed, blood on his left temple—and two men were behind him, holding his arms back while a third locked something around his wrists.

A thick chain with colorful electricity bursts moving on the surface of the metal that looked like tiny lightning bolts.

My heart stood perfectly still. I turned, tried to move, tried to get closer to him, but someone grabbed me from behind and stopped me.

Finally, I had no choice but to look ahead at the two men and the woman standing in front of us, watching us with ice-cold smiles on their faces.

They were possibly some of the most beautiful beings I had ever seen in my life—and their pupils were slit like a lizard’s.

Incubi.

The fear that suddenly exploded inside me emptied my lungs. My heart was trying to break through my ribcage as I tried to look for a way out, hoping against all odds that there was a place to hide, somewhere we could crawl to, somewhere we could run because I couldn’t accept the fact that we werechainedand in the presence of three incubi—no,seven.The others who’d been standing behind us, chaining our hands together, came forward. Another three men and a woman.

Fuck, it was so hard to breathe. I was sweating from head-to-toe seconds in. They were absolutely gorgeous, all of them, and their smiles were made to kill, and their smooth skins could have been drawn rather than made.

I looked at Rune and he was dragging himself as well as he could closer to me, but his eyes were onthem.

“What do we have here? Intruders, huh,” said one of the incubi, a tall guy wearing a leather vest with nothing underneath, so that I could see all the tattoos that marked the skin of his muscular arms. Fucking hell, how was he real? His brown hair and the diamond stud on his ear and his white teeth…

“Must be our lucky night,” one the incubi said, the one with short blonde hair and chocolate brown skin. Her body was a perfect hourglass shape and the golden dress she wore was as tight on her as a second skin. I could see her nipples peeking through, and fuck if I wasn’t getting turned on.

Please, please, please, no…

Out of all places, we had to end uphere?!

“Look at that—he’s delicious,” said the other incubus as she looked at Rune. My stomach twisted. She was also gorgeous, slimmer, taller, with hair as black as the night and eyes so green they could have been made out of moss.

“Mine,”said the other, and actually winked at Rune, and now I was imagining grabbing her by the hair and dragging her to another fucking country, screaming—he’smine,bitch!

“We were transported here by an imp,” Rune finally said, his voice as composed as ever, as dark and as low. “We don’t want any trouble. If you let us go, we will leave.”

The men and women looked at one another for a moment.

Then the guy with the tattoos stepped forward, gripped Rune’s hair and turned his head to the side to look at the tattoo on his neck.

Rune’s face was right in front of mine now, his eyes on me. Dark. Expressionless.

I’m sorry,I tried to tell him with mine, though I still had no idea how in the fuck this even happened.

But then the guy let go of him and stepped back, squatted in front of us.

Even the stubble on his cheeks looked smooth as hell. “A marked fae—we certainly don’t get that every day,” he said.

Another incubus came closer, stopped behind the tattooed guy and raised on his tiptoes as he stared at Rune’s neck, smiling an awful smile. “I’ve seen something like that before. That’s not just a mark, man—that’s a seal.”

Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.

All of the men and women suddenly laughed and whistled, clearly surprised. Meanwhile, I had no idea what the hell that even meant.

“Are you sure?” the tattooed guy said.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure. I’ve seen it before. I know how it feels. It’s a seal, all right,” the incubus said, grinning ear to ear.

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