Page 25 of Fire Kissed
Aric’s groan is more of a growl, but Kyvain doesn’t look at the man who sent him to his new eternal dwelling place. He only looks at me with those big eyes and etchings of pleading sorrow written across his sunken face.
My battered boots squeak as I turn my back on him and keep walking. I’m the reason he’s here. But if it wasn’t for me... he’d have given Bea a lifetime of torment as her mate. As my mate, he earned a lifetime of death.
It seems fitting. It seems like justice.
Then why do I feel bad for what I’ve done to him?
My mind goes back and forth as I race through the halls, doubling back with each shift of the building, until finally the number twelve is written in big black numbers at the top of the stairs.
I drop to my knees the moment I feel him. A sudden sense of tiredness in my soul settles in from everything I’ve been through in the last several hours. Life feels too heavy right now.
I just can’t leave the one man who I’ll never stop thinking about for as long as I live.
“You shouldn’t be here, Rhys,” Latham tells me, his hand dangling from the lazy way he rests his arm across his bent knee. His head never lifts from the black brick wall he leans against, like he, too, is too exhausted from sitting here to fully move anymore.
I’ve been in this place for less than a day. How long has Latham been here in between jobs Hela sends him on? How many days does he have left of pushing forward? How does he bear it at all?
No. I won’t leave him.
I pull at the dark, metal cage, but my strength must be waning. It doesn’t budge an inch. I shake my head and step back at Torben’s side.
“Torben.” I don’t look at him, but I feel all three men feeding me their intense attention. “Rip the bars open.”
The snort of one of them is the only sound. And I just know it has to be Aric’s arrogant ass.
“Torben’s a god, not a superhero, Love.” Aric snickers a bit more. “These cells are enchanted by the Queen of Hela. And no one has power like she does.”
“I have a key.”
I blink at that grumbling admission.
My head turns ever so slowly to look up at the man whose superpower this entire time has been lying his ass off to me.
“You’ve had the key the whole time?”
“Why do you think we hate each other so damn much?” Latham keeps his eyes gently closed as he speaks. “He protects me when we’re on missions. And imprisons me in our free time. He’s as bad as Serpan.”
I twist so fast that I’m standing and in his face within a flash of a second.
“You’ve had the key the whole time?!”
“I can’t help him.”
“You’ve had the key the whole fucking time?!” I screech so loudly that the screams from deep down the hall heckle in the wake of my anger.
“Yes. But—”
“Give it to me.” My lips purse as my hand juts out until it pokes him harshly in his big, brutish chest.
“You can’t release him, Princess.”
“Give. Me. The. Fucking. Key.”
“If you—”
And then I leap.
I climb that warrior of a man like most women only dream of doing. Except instead of wrapping my thighs around him, my arm cranes against his throat and windpipe. With more and more shaking power, I drag that enormous mountain of a man to the dirty ground. He gasps against my hold, my strength trembling out in waves that just have my wolf humming in satisfaction.
