Page 9 of Inflamed By an Incubus

Evelyn frowned at him, trying to place him as heat bloomed in her veins and she fought the sudden wave of desire that threatened to steal her breath.

She saw a flash of him in the courtyard of a dark grey stone castle.

Felt the cold bite of steel in her side again.

He had been there.

His gaze shifted to Archer and narrowed, and panic lanced her, the haze of desire swift to dissipate as she realised he meant to attack her friend.

She barked, “Stop right there.”

And drew her gun.

Chapter 2

Guilt gnawed at Fenix’s stomach as he stepped out of the teleport into the grand entrance hall of his home in the heart of the Scottish Highlands.

Would the little witch be all right with the mad elf prince? Maybe taking Rosalind with him instead would have been the wiser move, but stealing her away from her mate would have been a death sentence. The last thing Fenix needed after spending months locked in a cell in that dank demon castle in the Fifth Realm was a powerful and dangerous male hunting him down to slaughter him.

Although Fenix suspected that Vail would draw out his death, savouring it and ensuring it was as painful as possible.

And not because he was insane.

Fenix wasn’t a stranger to the crazy things being mated made a male do.

Case in point, he had been so caught up in tailing his own mate that he had ended up captured by the same demons who had cornered and overwhelmed her team of mortals. Frayne, the king of the Fifth Realm at that time, had ordered their deaths and forced Fenix to watch as he had skewered his mate through the side with a sword.

Fenix relived that moment every time he tried to sleep.

Had spent countless hours deliberating the things he could have done differently and how they might have affected the outcome, fully aware that he couldn’t change the past.

His mate was dead.

Stolen from him before he could even accidentally make her fall in love with him this time.

The end result would be the same—her body teleporting to somewhere far from him, her rebirth happening, and her not remembering anything. By now, she could be anywhere, adjusted to her missing memories and living a new life without him.

And while part of him wanted to leave her to that life and wished her all the happiness in the world, the rest of him had been restless and eager to find her from the moment he had felt her vanish from the courtyard of the demon king.

He wasn’t sure whether he felt a powerful urge to find her because he loved her and couldn’t live without her or because of the curse.

Maybe it was a mix of both of those things.

But as always, he was back to square one. He had no lead on her new location, no clue as to how to find her, and still didn’t feel any closer to tracking down the mage who had done this to them, condemning them both to a miserable eternity.

Fenix felt sure the bastard was still alive—that he had chosen the path of immortality like all blood mages now. Or at least he hoped that was the case. Drystan had to be alive. It felt as if all of Fenix’s hope hinged on it. He needed a reason to keep going, to keep searching, something more than potentially finding a cure for this curse in the research of other mages.

One of his small clan came out from the drawing room to his right, took one look at him and turned around and walked away.

Fenix cast a grim look down at himself, not blaming the young incubus for making a fast exit. He was a mess, every inch of his bare chest covered in grime and his low-slung black jeans caked with dirt and other unmentionable things. His hair was long and shaggy, his nails needed a damned good clipping, and his beard was irritating. He probably looked like a homeless person who had wandered into the mansion.

Months in a damp cell in the basement of a castle would do that to you.

“Tiny,” Fenix hollered, sensing the male just beyond the dark wooden door. “I hope you’ve been keeping the house in order.”

Tiny peeked around the doorframe and blinked wide blue eyes at him, his sandy hair scruffier than the last time Fenix had seen the incubus-in-training. “Oh my gods! We all thought you were dead… this time.”

Fenix scowled at him for that. So he had a bad habit of disappearing for months at a time, leaving the running of his mansion in the hands of his subordinates. It wasn’t as if they needed him here.

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