Page 52 of My Guardian Gryphon

“Take their bodies and put them on spikes in the center of camp.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He and Cal both grabbed a bloody body and the decapitated head before scrambling to be the first out of the room. Once the door closed behind them, I turned my attention back to the bound woman on the table.

Her eyes opened wide when our gazes met, and she struggled against my hands on her body, on her breasts, then on the white marks decorating her collarbone. I pressed the runes in a particular order, and they glowed bright and hot enough that I felt the magick inside them begin to pulse. It wouldn’t stop until her mate’s skin touched hers.

She hissed and jerked away from me, but I used my magick to hold her arcing body down and in place, freeing my hands to unzip my pants.

“What’s your name?”

“Go to hell, you bastard!” She spit at me, and I leaned down to lick the side of her face, human, coated in magick. It’d been so long. I hadn’t taken a human woman since Cera. Their bodies were weak and could barely withstand the beatings I preferred to dole out. Even my harem back at the palace were Djinn, not human. Their bodies were resilient and strong, so strong.

This one was different. She was a Sister. She was worth being careful with, gentle even. Worth keeping healthy. She would be the mother of my children. The mother of a new race.

Chapter 20

ALEK

I’d lost Gretchen, but we’d been over every inch of the town and couldn’t find her. Couldn’t catch her scent everywhere. I hadn’t slept yesterday all. I could feel her pain, her anger, her fear. Jared was the only one that knew. He’d been there when I realized she was gone. He’d been the one who kept me from telling Rose right away. He’d said we would find her, but we hadn’t.

She was nowhere and I could do nothing.

I was useless to her. I’d lost her. I’d failed her. The knowledge ripped through my soul like Jared was burning me alive. His fire would’ve been preferable to the torture I was living through every moment she was gone.

Now, Djinn were everywhere, and Lycans. Blood slicked the streets. I ran next to Jared. Screams came from a nearby house, and we both turned toward the panic. We weren’t fast enough to catch a Djinn unless we surprised him with a sword in the back, but the Lycans we could kill.

We burst through the already shattered front door. A large gray mammoth of a wolf had another wolf’s neck in his mouth and two frightened children cornered, shielded only by their mother’s bloody wolf form. She was still alive, but barely. Her heart had slowed in the few seconds it took for Jared and me to cross the room.

She snarled at the intruding wolf, but a Djinn kept blinking in and out of the space, stabbing her with a dagger each time he blinked in. Echoes of his laughter filled the room, mixing with the haunting, heartbreaking screams of the children.

Those screams were not unlike the ones I’d heard when my parents had shoved me through the open portal. So many had died that day.

Jared launched himself toward the mother and her children.

I leaped for the monstrous bloody wolf, shifting in midair. My front talons sliced through his mangy hide, and a howl of painful anguish satisfied my bloodlust for at least the present moment. One of these Lycan traitors had taken Gretchen. My mind envisioned her mangled body strewn on a street somewhere in town among all the other dead and wounded. Why couldn’t we find her?

Fate had given me one perfect night and then punished me for taking it. It was my fault she’d run. If I hadn’t entertained the notion of sending her back to the castle, she wouldn’t have left. She’d trusted me, and I’d failed her. In the end, I’d told Jared I was leaving with her anyway, but by then, it was too late. When I’d gone to get her from my bedroom, all I’d found was the memory of her scent and an open bathroom window.

Jared and I had tracked her trail until it’d faded into nothing. I’d wanted to kill myself right there on the spot, but moments later, the entire town had gone on alert. The sirens had gone off in a dozen different areas. The town was screaming in pain around me and I couldn’t ignore them. They were my friends, my family, and they were dying.

Screams had torn through the normally quiet streets. Everyone had run for the bunkers or the castle, mostly for the castle. It was the safest place in the town.

“Alek.” Jared’s voice was a faint call in the distance. “Alek.”

I opened my massive beak and screamed at my friend. The sound blasted out the windows in the back of the house, but he barely blinked, flames burning brightly in his eyes.

“He’s dead. So is their mother.”

I snapped my beak, anger ripping at my soul, and tore my talons through the dead wolf one more time for good measure. Jared had the two Lycan children in his hands. “You take them to the castle courtyard and then get your ass back. I’m going to keep working my way down Avenue B.”

I threw my massive head toward the ceiling above us, and he nodded.

I wrapped my wings around the children he’d placed on my back and moved away, waiting for him to open the ceiling so I could fly.

He lifted his arms. Flames soared from his hands, and his entire body was quickly engulfed. The fire was hot enough to singe the feathers on my chest, but the children were safe beneath my wings. A few moments later, the ceiling and roof had disintegrated and the fire had been extinguished.

“You’re clear.” He turned and disappeared out the front door.

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