Page 108 of Wickedly Yours

“They must have drugged her. But if you can still feel even a trace of her, then there’s a chance.”

I nodded, running my hands over the fresh stubble on my chin. It was weak, at best, butmaybe.

“Is there a chance this is a trap?” Thorn had unfurled a map of the palace, studying it intently. “That he’s going to ambush you, to kill you?”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “He’d love to put me six feet under. He’s wanted to my whole life.” After all, I was never good enough. Never strong enough. Powerful enough. And I’d let that affect everything. The way I saw myself. How I acted.

Until Luna. Seeing the trust in her eyes—how much she loved me, even if she hadn’t said it yet—I knew it was true. I was more than enough.

“He never did before because he knew Damien would forsake his birthright. So what changed?”

“She did,” I said honestly. She had changed me, made me softer. Made me see how love could transform everything.

“We’ll take care of the situation here,” Kairos insisted, laying his hand on my shoulder. “Go. Make sure your wife is safe. We need our future queen after all, don’t we?”

I nodded, my wings sprawling out from behind my back. Ready to take me to my home. Because it wasn’t a place, it was a person.

My mate. I’m coming back to you, Moonbeam. Just hang on.

THIRTY-ONE

zain

Where is she?” I demanded, throwing the door open to the throne room.

My father sat there, crown on his head, with a smirk on his face. “That’s no way to greet your father, now is it?”

I pulled the sword from its sheath at my side, a growl on my lips as I stalked forward. “What did you do to her? Where’s mywife?”

The power pulsed through my veins, and I wanted to unleash it. To destroy everything he’d ever touched. But I kept myself in check.

Because I needed her.

“You can’t kill me,” he said, running his fingers over the elegantly carved chair, tracing the wood. “Not without her. And how can you when you’ll never find her? They already scented her once, you know…” A flash of a canine tooth and his claws dug into the throne. “You know how they like their blood.”

I froze, his threat filling the air. Except—he was wrong.Because Icouldfeelher. Which meant there was still hope. That she was close enough for me to reach.

“Why?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but demanding it anyway.

He laughed. “I’m the demon king. I think the better question, my son, is, whynot?Either way, the answer is simple: I cannot allow you to undo everything I’ve done over the last thousand years.”

“I’m going to find her,” I growled. “And when I do, I’ll be back to end your sorry existence.”

“You can try.”

It was a promise—one I’d pay in blood.

Luna.

I could feel—hear—her pulse nearby, the bond in my veins guiding me to her. As if she was waking up, it was gradually getting stronger.

Thank fuck.

I might have had the ceremony tying our life forces performed without telling her about it first, but I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry now. Not when it was the only thing that tethered me to her completely. The mate bond was there, too, but it was her power that called to me.

I’d left a trail of blood in my wake. Demons hiding in the woods on guard, as if my father had wanted me to find her.

They’d underestimated how much my powers had grown, though. With Luna’s life force joined to mine, I could have leveled the entire forest to the ground.

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