Page 139 of The Crown of Nyx

“Enough,” I said, nodding. “Thank you.”

He tensed, but didn’t respond. Instead, the shadows surrounded us again, and this time, I was more than ready for where they dropped us off.

56

Ivy

When we returned to the cave where we’d left the others, the situation hadn’t changed. The shifter male was still on the ground, naked, with his arms wrapped around his legs. He didn’t even look at me. It was like he was asleep—or in some kind of trance.

I didn’t even have time to get my footing on the slick, wet rocky ground before I was swept into Elias’s embrace. I breathed in the scent of pine as I buried my face in his shoulder.

“You healed now?” His voice was muffled from where it was pressed into my messy hair, gruff but relieved.

“Yep,” I replied quietly. “All better.”

My shoulder was a little numb from the pain, but I was otherwise healed. Elias’s arms tightened around me for only a moment before he set me down gently. “Good,”he growled. “How bad was it?” That wasn’t directed at me, but to Rowan. Probably because he already knew too well that I would just brush it off.

Rowan crossed his arms as he glanced at me with soft yet determined eyes. “She healed eventually. After we…” He motioned between us, like he couldn’t say the words ‘we had sex’. “But it didn’t look great when we got her shirt off.”

“She should have healed a lot quicker than that,” Damon added, voice tense. Through the bonds between me and all of my mates, I felt their irritation that he’d even looked at my shoulder.

But no one said a word about it. Maeve, who stood closest to the demon king, pushed off the wall of the cave. “And how are you feeling,a mhuirnín?”

I blew out a breath, leaning into Elias’s chest. “Better,” I admitted. “But it really didn’t look great.”

No point in hiding it when Rowan and Damon could just prove me wrong. I rolled my shoulder back, wincing as it twinged. Not as bad as earlier, but the healing was slow.

Elias brushed his fingers over the wound and his claiming bite, brows furrowed. There was a slight glow to his green eyes, but he shook his head. “We’ll need to keep an eye on that,” he murmured. “You should be healing a hell of a lot faster now.”

I swallowed hard. Before anyone else could say anything, the shifter made a pained sound. His eyes flew open, but rather than being blue, they were red, bloody tears falling from the corners.

I sucked in a sharp breath as he convulsed. Elias wrapped an arm around me, growling. Maeve appeared near the shifter, her face carefully blank. Rowan andAdrian stared in horror, Orion and Hawk moving a step closer. But no one tried to help him.

Blood bubbled from his lips as he tried to say something, but it was cut off by more blood.

“No!” I shouted. I wanted to run to him, to try and stop whatever it was Dante was doing to him, but it was too late.

The male jerked, his body hitting the ground. More blood spilled from other parts of his body; his mouth, which he choked on, his ears. And we watched as he stilled, before slumping as death claimed him entirely.

The forest wasquiet as we buried the shifter between two trees, where the earth was soft enough for us to dig into it, but hidden so he wouldn’t be found by scavengers.

Tears blurred my vision as we lowered the shifter into the ground. “We don’t even know his name,” I whispered. “He died not knowing it.”

Tears made it hard to breathe, hard to think. He hadn’t deserved to die. Especially not in pain, not in the way Dante had taken him.

“Hemust have made sure there was a way to shut them up if anything happened to his handlers,” Adrian said, teeth gritted. “Fuck. He’s a monster.”

My gaze darted from him, to Hawk, Elias, and Rowan, who were filling the grave with dirt. I couldn’t even bring myself to answer that. How many others could he have killed in the same way?How?

“He could have killed our prisoners,” Maeve said, her voice steady. “We had three to begin with. One died. We thought they’d killed themselves, but now I wonder if he executed them instead.”

Bile rose in my throat as I shook my head. My gaze remained glued on the guys shovelling dirt into the grave. Soon enough, the body of the shifter was covered, the stench of blood overtaken by the smell of wet earth and rain. I had no idea how long his body would be able to remain hidden, but I hoped he could rest in peace here.

I wiped the back of my hand over my cheek, wiping the evidence of the stray tear away. I felt guilty for the tear, for the sadness washing through me.

“It’s alright to mourn him,” Maeve murmured, stepping up beside me. “It’s alright to mourn all of them.”

For the first time since we’d brought the body from the cave, I tore my eyes away from him to stare at her. “What?”

---