Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

I put it into my back pocket, and she watches. “Just curious, why didn’t you ever teach me to read?” she asks randomly.

“Someone would have caught us and taken the journal up,” I state dismissively. “That would have been terrible. Besides, I taught you the slave language. It was the only language that mattered, and you managed to form your own journal using it.”

Walking away from her and ignoring her huff, I start stepping over some of the bodies as the rest deal with cleanup.

“Ella was with you, wasn’t she? Why not bring her with you? I saw her just before you called,” Kya prattles on.

“What was she doing with your sister? I thought that’s where you were,” I go on, my jaw tensing as I glance down at Hank’s shredded body. That’s an unfortunate inconvenience—losing a soldier so close to the final battle.

“The baby is a hungry succubus, and we were feeding her,” Kya states like that makes all the sense in the world, and I heave out a breath before pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Why are you following me?” I ask on an exasperated exhale.

“Are you still planning to die?” she asks quietly.

I turn to face her, finding unshed tears in her eyes, despite the fact she seems to hate them being there while she’s in front of me.

“I plan to let Alton die,” I tell her before starting to dematerialize, but suddenly she launches herself against me, arms going around my waist as her body shakes a little.

I stand frozen, a little horrified to see her hugging me so tightly, and awkwardly pat her on the back as my brow furrows.

She clears her throat, releasing me abruptly as she wipes away a stray tear, then avoids looking at me as she shrugs a shoulder. “Okay then,” she says, her tears seeming to dry up as she walks off.

A heavy breath shakes out of me when I realize just how relieved her tone is, and I close my eyes, dematerializing back into my cabin and taking a seat at my desk.

Scrubbing a hand over my face, I swallow the lump in my throat, groaning inwardly as the journal reminds me today’s battle is not the new variable I was hoping it would be.

Hope is a dangerous thing for a man like you, the journal reminds me, causing me to slam it shut as I stare at the drawing on my desk.

I pull it out, smiling sadly at Ella’s laughing eyes. I sketched it last night, when she was laughing at me for tripping while in lycan form and falling head first into a puddle after she distracted me.

She fell to the ground in flesh, laughing so hard I shifted immediately just so I could kiss her like that, know her taste when she’s that happy. Then I tasted her for the rest of the night, while teaching her to use heartbeats as guiding instruments, controlling the monster from the subconscious since she loses consciousness.

It’s not ready to test without me in her presence, but I need to test it soon, so I can be sure she can control herself in the end when it matters most. If she accidentally kills everyone she loves because she’s lost to a trance…

Picking up the journal, I launch it across the room, roaring in frustration before dematerializing again, refusing to look for her in my mind. Right now, I need to focus on following through with what I started.

Chapter 28

ELLA

“For the last time, all I know is that one Gemini has to die in order to stop Hannah from reigning as ruler supreme,” Alton says on a sigh, sipping his tea in the back of the apartment.

I’m not even sure whose apartment we’ve hijacked, but hopefully they won’t come in any time soon. He’s already put that symbol on the wall to block Slade from seeing us.

“You have no idea how you die or why you have to die? How do you know it’s this battle that the prophecy refers to? The end of days is a trivial terminology, considering my family history is full of stopping the end of days numerous times,” I tell him, leaning forward.

“No clue how I know. I just do. My memories are often fractured. I assume it has to do with the portal opening, obviously. I knew how to close the last one because I read it in one of our family’s old books.” He frowns. “That memory just emerged. I’d forgotten it,” he goes on thoughtfully. “We learned from the last time dragonites were unleashed on us how to close the portal to their world.”

“But not the Lokie portal?” I ask, even though I bookmark this conversation, because I have a follow-up question.

“It’s in a book,” he goes on, lips pursing.

My follow-up question is now legitimate, so I ask, “Did you put a portal book somewhere you knew we’d find it?”

He shakes his head. “No. I haven’t done anything much, since I’m not sure what my brother’s plan is. I’m worried I’ll do something wrong to interfere with whatever he has mapped out.”

“Nobody’s really sure of his full plan,” I mutter to myself, feeling my beasts pacing inside me in a way they haven’t done since Slade told me he’d let Alton die, alluding to the fact he’d live and be with me.