Page 27 of Drawn to the Demon Duke
I am usually a gentle male. I only have to show my fierce side to remind my subjects why they do not want to cross their ruler. But now?
I rumble a warning sound deep in my chest. “What do you think you’re doing, hunter?”
Susanna lays her hand on his arm. I’m already imagining tearing it from his socket when he eases himself from under her touch, putting a foot’s length between the two of them.
I decide he can keep the arm… for now.
She doesn’t seem to mind that he moved away from her. Meeting my furious gaze, she says simply, “His name is Dagon.”
I am aware. “Dagon of Caol. Hunter of his clan. Not your mate, Susanna.”
“No,” agrees Dagon. “But I am at her service.”
Is he? “Explain yourself.”
“Haures,” begins Susanna.
The missing honorific catches the attention of every demon in my throne room. Even Dagon turns to look at her curiously, as though he’s surprised that she would address the Lord of the Shadows so carelessly—even as he’s standing between my duchess and I.
I shake my head. Not because she used my name… as my mate, she is the sole creature apart from the doppelseers that I’ll allow it… but because I want the hunter to explain himself.
Then I will decide his fate.
It’s what I must do as the duke. Susanna’s male wants to challenge Dagon for even daring to think he can come between us, but Duke Haures? I must listen to him…
…and then I will sentence him to the shadows.
“Dagon. Don’t make me ask again.” When he doesn’t answer quick enough for my liking, I snap. “Tell me? Why do you presume to stand between me and my mate?”
A hush falls over the room. I don’t care. If I can’t trust my personal mage or members of my guard, then I have a much larger problem than hiding the truth of why I’m keeping a human in my realm. I fear that some of them… the ones I had tending to Susanna while I kept her locked-up and safe in thedungeon… thought I was using the first law to keep a mortal woman as mine.
They didn’t know that she was my one true mate—but now they do.
Dagon is the only one who doesn’t seem surprised. Neither does he seem like he’s concerned.
“She saved my life,” he says at last, and through the thin bond connecting me to all of my subjects, I can sense he his prepared to sacrifice his before me even before he adds, “I owe her mine. I would pledge it to her until I can repay my debt.”
“Oh,” exclaims Susanna. She flaps her hands in front of her pretty mouth. “I know what he’s trying to say. It’s this thing we have back home. I’ve seen it on, like, every sitcom and cartoon ever.Gill-uh-gan’s Eye-land,” she says, an unfamiliar human word, followed by two I know, “and the flint and stones. It’s a life debt. He thinks I saved his life. Now he wants to promise to be, you know, my bodyguard until he can save mine.”
I am Duke Haures. I don’t need anyone to keep my mate safe aside from me.
I glare at Dagon. “Is that so?”
He jerks his head. “There is a tie between us, you grace.”
A tie?
Abond?
I snap my fingers, clicking my claws. “Glaine,” I call. “Retrieve the demonkiller.”
Susanna yips.
Sammael moves forward, proving that he is more than just a mage when he grabs Dagon by the shoulder, shoving him down to his knees. A pointed kick to his back has the hunter bowed over, forehead pressed to the tile.
At the same time, Glaine summons the blade I gave him when I made him the head of my guard. Only one of a handful of weapons charmed to eliminate an immortal creature, when Iwant to make a spectacle of an execution, I call on Glaine and his sword.
He positioned it over the back of Dagon’s neck.
